Scandals and American Foreign Policy.

Using John B. Thomson's book Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age as a model, this paper will examine three late twenteith century scandals, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Lewinsky Affair to determine how and under what circumstances scandal impacts on American Foreign Policy. If Thompson is correct, what he labels the media age and other modern developments have created an environment where scandal cannot be marginalized and treated as aberrations. Scandal is part of an accelerating pattern of political discourse that has a particularly powerful impact on liberal democracy and foreign policy creation. Increasingly, foreign policy decisions are distorted by domestic scandal. When we factor in some interesting American cultural variables the problem of scandal and foreign policy becomes even more acute. Using Thompson's scandal typology: money, power, and sex, this paper explores whether some types of scandal have grater impact on foreign policy decisions as well as the manner in which scandal distorts foreign policy decisions in harmful ways. Finally, the paper will explore the question of whether the quickened pace of scandals in the United States in the Bush administration is a harbinger of permanent change in the dynamics of American Foreign Policy. Indeed fear of scandal may become more important than external threat. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]