In 1824, the House of Representatives awarded the Presidency to John Quincy Adams after Henry Clay, who was then the House Speaker, concluded that he wouldn’t be President and cut a deal that landed him the job of Secretary of State.
It seemed like a good deal for Adams and a good deal for Clay. But to supporters of Andrew Jackson, America’s first true populist leader, this was a “corrupt bargain”, a sign of a decadent and untrustworthy political process, and a rallying cry for a new class of American voters.
The “corrupt bargain” would haunt both Adams and Clay for the rest of their careers. Adams became only the second one-term President (the first was his father), losing easily to Jackson in 1828. Clay, although he would prove to be the most powerful Speaker in history, would never become President.
Congressional Democrats are now embarking on their own version of the “corrupt bargain”. House Democrats have dreamed up a parliamentary device to vote on a health care bill that will become the law of the land (for how long, nobody really knows), without actually ever voting on it.
They are using a parliamentary device known as the self-executing rule. This is a rule that allows debate on one piece of legislation while deeming another piece of legislation passed through the House. Pelosi herself has said that she thinks that the Senate bill is so bad that she doesn’t want to put her members through a stand-alone vote on it. But this is the legislation that may become the actual law of the land, especially if the Senate decides not to live up to its promise and pass the companion piece of the legislation, using reconciliation rules.
And the reason the Senate may not keep its word is because it will have to go to uncomfortable lengths in order to pass the companion piece of legislation. In fact, it looks quite likely that the Vice President will be forced to overrule the Senate parliamentarian in order to allow the upper chamber to pass the bill as desired by the House. Over-ruling the Senate parliamentarian is nasty, nasty business. Robert Byrd, the inventor of the Byrd Rule and the keeper of all Senate traditions, cannot be satisfied with this breach of Senate decorum, all to pass legislation that enjoys the support of only about a third of the American people.
These corrupt bargains don’t even include the other corrupt bargains that got the Senate to this point in the first place. Those corrupt bargains include the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, the Gatoraide and all of the other special deals that drive the taxpayers crazy.
There is a populist revolt going on in the country. We have seen populist revolts in the past. Andrew Jackson used the anger of the “corrupt bargain”, to sweep into office and to take power from the Yankee elites. American politics is still feeling the effects of the Age of Jackson.
The irony, of course, is that Jackson is seen today as the father of the Democratic Party. His heirs are doing to the country what Henry Clay and John Adams did to him.
Tags: Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, House, John Quincy Adams, Robert Byrd, Senate
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“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” – Attributed to Otto von Bismarck.
Hi – I do have some comments to make on your article- can’t entirely agree with it, but well written.
As a John Adams fan, though, could you correct the last sentence of your article to “Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams” rather than “Henry Clay and John Adams” so as to make a distinction between JQA and his dad? Thanks.
I don’t believe for a moment that JQA or Clay perceived the event as a corrupt bargain. JQA, much like his father, was a stridently honest and incorruptible man, arguably the most honest of his political generation. Clay’s positions on tariffs and the Bank of the United States were much more closely aligned to JQA’s than to Andrew Jackson. As I’m sure you’re aware, Jackson absolutely hated the Bank of the United States, and for that matter, he blamed his political enemies for the charges of bigamy that he believes so hurt his wife that it contributed to her early demise. It became a very personal thing for Jackson to unseat JQA and Clay. It’s fair to say that Jackson was motivated by anger or even revenge in the election of 1828.
From both JQA’s and Clay’s perspectives, it made complete sense for Clay to support JQA in the House votes for President and later to name Clay Secretary of State as the two men had so many similar positions. As the Secretary of State so often became the next President, it was JQA’s way of maintaining what he hoped was his Presidential legacy, or in today’s parlance “succession planning”. Perhaps a somewhat modern equivalent is Obama nominating Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.
Of course, Jackson was able to leverage his winning the popular vote and his lead in electoral votes into the perception of a corrupt bargain, but that perception hardly makes Clay’s support for JQA corrupt, or JQA’s naming of Clay as Secretary of State. It seems like good politics mixed in with terrible public relations to me. As we all know, JQA, public relations wasn’t one of his many talents.
In a time of less electoral votes, deadlocked elections and Congressional votes were even more common than today. Working through these deadlocks was hardly corrupt. To say so is to label many other events corrupt, such as the “bargain” between Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton that eventually led to Washington, D.C.’s present location!
As I’m sure you’re aware as well, the election of 1824 wasn’t the first time that a Presidential election was decided by the House of Representatives. In 1800, Adams-Jefferson contest was also thrown into the House. It was Alexander Hamilton’s famous support for Jefferson that gave Jefferson the election at Burr’s expense and further deepened the animosity between Hamilton and Burr. Some of the elements present in the election of 1800 were also present in the election of 1824: A deadlocked electoral vote with a third party throwing support for the winning candidate. In fact, there may be more of a foundation to accuse the election of 1800 as a “corrupt bargain” as the elements of one party (Hamilton and his supporters) worked to place an opposing party in the Presidency at the expense of their own party.
A closer parallel to what can be perceived as a modern “corrupt bargain”, I believe, is the election of 2000 and the the Supreme Court decision that resulted, essentially, in conservative justices handing over the Presidency to a conservative candidate when they clearly overrode the State of Florida’s right to manage its own election. An override that was a clear reversal of several and recent decisions by that same court supporting states’ rights.
Dave,
Thanks for the comments. I fully realize that Adams and Clay thought that their deal was completely legitimate, much like Pelosi and Louise Slaughter think that their “deem and enact” scheme is fully consistent with the House Rules. But in the court of public opinion, both deals don’t pass muster with the American people, who are the ultimate judges. Like 1824, the American people are much more populist and much less trusting of the political class, which makes business as usual even more perilous.
Thanks again for your comments…