Influencing from impaired administrations: Presidents, White House scandals, and legislative leadership

Journalists and scholars alike have suggested that scandal has a harmful ef fect on the effectiveness of the political system. Little systematic eviden ce exists to validate this claim, but we address the problem by offering th eoretical reasons and empirical evidence that White House scandal-independe nt of other influences such as public approval of the president-has a negat ive effect on presidential support in Congress. We analyze individual House members' votes on key legislation during the Watergate, Iran-contra, and M onica Lewinsky scandals, employing as an independent variable an innovative measure of scandal presence and intensity. Our empirical tests show that t he usual contextual influences on congressional voting are significant and that scandal has a strong, negative effect on presidential support. After d etailing these findings, we conclude with a discussion of implications both for presidential politics and for the presidential leadership literature.