University of the District of Columbia professor G. Derek Musgrove is finishing a book called “The Harassment of Black Elected Officials,” which he hopes to have ready for editing this summer. Q. What are you finding so far? A. The book has these two narrative lines. The first is that … during the late 1960s, early 1970s, you get actual police and intelligence community repression of black elected officials. … That basically stops in the mid-1970s, around Watergate. Right when that stops, you start to get all these news media investigations of corrupt officials. … As Watergate cools down, you have the Reagan administration, and they dramatically ramp up these corruption investigations. That’s one side of the story. The other side is that black elected officials realize this stuff and they start claiming harassment. Claims of harassment range from a sober, clear-eyed realization … to wild-eyed conspiracy theories. Q. To what extent is the ramp-up in the 1980s a function of post-Watergate exhaustion with public corruption? A. The odd thing about the 1980s is that all this stuff is created after Watergate. The Department of Justice’s public integrity section is created post-Watergate. But [investigations] explode after the 1980s. … Reagan comes in and he’s fed up with what he sees as the corruption of the liberal welfare state. … And that means the Democratic machine. Q. Whatever the ideology or partisanship, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t corruption, right? A. No, not in the least. You just go after your opponents’ soft spot. You go after the low-hanging fruit. I’m arguing that the Reagan administration … went in with the supposition that the liberal welfare state was corrupt. And they found corruption, because it’s there in both parties. Q. To what extent does the backlash against harassment allow corrupt politicians to be even more corrupt? A. You know, I don’t think it does. When it comes down to it, the opportunities for corruption are pretty much constant. Even among black elected officials, like Marion Barry, who know they’re being watched, they don’t change their behavior. – Bill Myers
