School for Scandal

The famous Abscam scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s was not as tawdry. It was all about money, not unlike some of the scandals of today.

White House scandals have unfolded around libidos run amok, like the Monica Lewinsky affair; or politics, as in Watergate; or geopolitics, such as Iran-contra; or a combination of politics and national security, such as the still-unfolding Plamegate scandal and related debates about the Iraq war.

It's a tough time, wearing that scandal bull's-eye. You become an embarrassment in the eyes of some. Caught in the scandal machine's cross hairs, some folks have resigned and walked away. Former House speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) and former representative Tony Coelho (D-Calif.) both resigned from the House in 1989 amid ethics scandals in which they had not even been indicted. In 1995, Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) resigned after an ethics probe into his alleged serial sexual harassment of women on the Hill.

Your integrity -- the thing on which you've traded for so long -- gets stripped. Your self-respect gets battered. And if only one side of the story has made its way into the news media -- usually the prosecutor's side -- then you're virtually convicted in the court of public opinion.

Scandal stories "mutate," says John Payton, a senior partner at WilmerHale. Especially when only one side of a scandal can be told, "it's quite poisonous," he says, leading to "runaway stories" that recycle one set of facts over and over.

Jefferson alluded to this phenomenon in a May 15 statement in which he asked the government to "refrain from this process of death by a thousand cuts that generates salacious headlines and bad press for my family."

Says Davis: "There is a whisper or a buzz when somebody is a figure of controversy in the media regarding or associated with the word 'scandal.' And the minute that association is made and repeated over and over again, by its repetition people start to assume that it's true. And then the social embarrassment sets in where somebody walks into the room who has been the subject of headline accusations and becomes -- it maybe slightly excessive to say this -- untouchable. Don't be seen too close. Don't be photographed with [the scandalized]. Look away if he or she is approaching. I am not exaggerating. . . . I think this is a terrible thing."

Roberts recalls a fellow lawyer whose client, a public figure, complained "that he felt like a pariah and used the specific reference to the sighting of a camera. People would immediately walk away from him, did not want to be seen in shooting distance."

But it all depends on the kind of good or ill will you've built up before the bad times come, says Malek, chairman of Thayer Capital Partners.

"If you're the kind of person who was resented before the fact, somebody who swaggered and threw your weight around before you had some problems and you built up a cadre of people just waiting for you get to get your comeuppance, that's one thing," says Malek, who is a friend of Raines's.

"If you're a good person, well-respected, self-effacing, contributing to the community and those around you, if you're that kind of person, the real people continue to respect you and continue to want to be around you," he says. Raines, he adds, falls into this latter category.

Federal regulators reported last month that under Raines's leadership, Fannie Mae's earnings had been misstated by about $10 billion and that the company engaged in "extensive financial fraud." The questionable accounting, the regulators' report said, "made a significant contribution" to Raines's pay, which ran into the tens of millions.

What will become of them, these prominent men (and they do tend to be men) who have become suspects? There may be indictments. There may be trials. The hard times may get harder, for them and their loved ones.

It is unlikely, though, that any will fade away. Public figures rarely do, especially not elected ones. They can't just quit. Politics in is their blood. The adrenaline of it. The sense of service. Yes, do tell, even the egotism of it.

Leon Panetta, a former Washington politico on both the legislative and executive sides of government, has seen it happen time and time again: the aftermath of scandal.

"Most of these guys are bred to try to stay in," he says of battered politicians and the game of politics. "Unlike Barbaro, they try to continue to limp along in the race."

Of course, it all depends on the outcome of their cases. For as former Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham tearfully learned at his sentencing, scandalous bribe-taking can send you straight to jail.