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this is just under an hour. >> good evening. thank you. welcome to the college of charleston. let me begin by asking our panelists and our audience, turn off phones and other electronic devices to the off or silent position. we're pleased to welcome you tonight to the college of charleston. on behalf of the department of communication, the school of humanities and social sciences and department of communication advisory council, i'm delighted to welcome you to a program on political scandals and crisis communication. let me begin with a short story. in 1832, what we might today call a political scandal erupted in south carolina. thomas smith grimke e., a

college graduate and trustee wrote u.s. senator john calhoun to shift positions and defend the union rather than persist in the defense of states' rights. when the letter became public, an angry mob appeared at his home, where he proclaimed his willingness to die for the union. fortunately the mob dispersed. the story ends badly as the pro-union grimke dies two years later and south carolina slipped toward the civil war a few decades later. nevertheless, this political scandal of 1832 might make some south carolinians proud today. we are not always so pleased with our more recent scandals. my name again is brian mcgee, chair of the department of communication and i have the distinct pleasure of introducing tucker eskew of the dment of communication advisory council. [applause] >> thank you, brian, thank you,

all, to my fellow council members. we are here for political scandal, a truly bipartisan activity. we are very pleased to have a truly bipartisan panel. tripartisan if you count the media because gena smith is with us. i'll introduce them after a few introductory comments. in which i want to stress we are here as council members, as friends of the college, and in some cases as south carolinians, as that applies to me, looking to help students at the college of charleston, especially those affiliated with and studying under the department of communication, prepare themselves for their internships, their careers, their lives in communication. and it is an honor to do so. even when talking about the dishonorable acts of political scandal. recently, the national spotlight has shown on the palmetto state as politico.com recently said, what's the

matter with south carolina? as a former governor's press secretary, secretary, i've -- at columbia and aide to a couple of presidents, and campaign advisor, i don't believe there's anything the matter with south carolina. but in a moment, i'll share with you my perspective on what is going on here. i think today, what's going on here is a distinct focus on scandal. as being separate and different perhaps from crises. there's a crisis going on everywhere right now. there's one happening. you know it. all the time we are in crisis. a little less frequently, a little more pungently, and a lot more impactfully, scandal hits us in the realm of politics. it's done that nationally in the person of senator john ensign. senator ted stevens, senator larry craig, former new york attorney general eliot spitzer,

former illinois governor robert blagojevich, and yes, in the current personage of south carolina governor mark sanford. now, the sanford matter brings to mind another south carolinian, congressman from the second congressional district, some of you have asked me going into today's presentation whether joe wilson's actions in the congress represent a scandal. i'll present to you today the idea that it does not. and leave open to our panelists and all of you questions and interaction that could further define that. in order to have a sense of where we're going, let me briefly state for you what wikipedia tells us a political scandal is. one in which a government official or politician is accused of various illegal, corrupt or unethical practices. it goes on but basically suggests pretty serious stuff. sometimes sex. sometimes money. abuse of power and often illegal acts.

in contemplating this, though, i went a little more old fashioned and looked at random thousands which indicated that a disgraceful act, a addition credited action, some other form of misdeed. that represents scandal. i'll leave it to each of you to decide where the line is, but i do believe in looking at what's the matter with south carolina to draw a distinction between scandal and abuse of power in one instance and gaffe, controversy, kerfuffle we called at the bush white house in the other case. by the way, i asked a friend of mine, what's the matter with south carolina? we're just ornery, aren't we? and he wrote back and said yeah, pretty ornery, proudly serving ornery since 1670. that's south carolina. and of course in one instance, it's not really orneryness but something that sounds like that. that is the problem. on that inauspicious note, i have the great honor of

presenting our first speaker, someone who can bring us into the here and now of political scandal. the reporter who drove to atlanta and enterprised her way into the first interview with a palmetto state governor returning from what many of us thought up until that moment had been the appalachian trail but was indeed argentina. a proud cougar, a graduate of the college of charleston, and a south carolinian we can be proud of and look forward to learning from, we have jeana smith with us. everyone please welcome jeana. [applause] jeana, all of us want to know what was it like sitting across from mark sanford that day? can you tell us and share some thoughts? >> sure. i have to hold my hand to keep the mic on and that will be difficult because he talk with my hands but thanks. mics help me out. yeah, i -- best way to start

this discussion off is to set that scene. i'll take you all back to june 24, just a few months ago. it was a little after 6:00 a.m. and i'm sleeply standing there in the atlanta airport, staring down thisesque lator. -- down thisesque lator. but there's a centralesque lator -- escalator and anyone has to come up this escalator to get to baggage claim to get out the door. i'm looking down this escalator to see if mark sanford, our governor, is going to pop up out of this escalator. i'm thinking there is no way. there is no way. it was already a national story at that point. the governor had been missing about five days. the lieutenant governor didn't know where he was. his fellow lawmakers didn't know. sled, which handles his security detail, didn't know where he was. his own wife didn't know where he was. his staff had been sort of coy

with the media saying well, maybe we know where he is but we don't have to tell you all. and i had finally reached the conclusion that he was hiking the appalachian trail. as a matter of fact, i picked up a "usa today" in the atlanta airport that talked about how mark sanford was hiking the appalachian trail, mystery solved and he's supposed to be at work today. but we at the state newspaper, we had some information. we had some tips. we had a hunch that he wasn't anywhere near the a.t. and that's what had led me to the airport that morning. but despite the information we had, i just naught it was so farfetched and there was no way that -- it's so contradictory to everything that the public and even the media thought about the governor. you know, this respectable, fiscal conservative, a libertarian, whatever you thought about his political views, if you were going to list his possible vices,

argentinian women wouldn't be on that list. so i was standing there saying yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a big waste of my time and boom, up he pops, the governor. and i'm like, and as he's coming up the escalator and making his way to the men's restroom i go running over to him with my little note pad and digital camera and my recorder and i'm like governor, hey, this is gina from the state, where have you been? and it was a career-changing moment for me. and i would like to think that i've learned a few things about reporting and a few things about scandal and how the media covers scandal. i would like to briefly go through three things that i think are important to sort of facilitate this discussion. and we have very different points of view. i'm speaking as a reporter on this topic. and hopefully some of you out there, communication majors, will consider a career in

journalism because it's absolutely the most fun, the greatest kind of work, the most rewarding kind of work you could ever do. it doesn't pay well. but it's a whole lot of fun. and it's something different every day. the first big theme that how scandal coverage is different from other forms of communication, different from other types of stories that we write, is the media's actually injected into the story. i write about the statehouse. i write about politicians. i write about issues. so very often the structure of my stories are here's these group of people who they have, want to see this one outcome on an issue. and this is why they think this. and that same story i lea out here's this other group of people. and they want a different outcome on this issue and that's what they say. i tell it almost as an observer watching from a distance. with scandals, the media becomes part of the story. we are the story. for example, with the sanford scandal, it is us, the state newspapers, saying no, he's not hiking the appalachian trail.

he's in argentina. no, he just didn't disappear so he could drive the coast alone like he told me that morning in the airport. he actually was there with a woman. and we have emails that can show this relationship. so it's an awkward position that the media is put in. and i find it to be very uncomfortable to be honest. i think that in this situation, we have to cling even more tightly to our urnlistic -- urnlistic values of objectivity, fairness and impartiality and our verification process has to be more stringent. our fact checking has to be ratcheted up several notches. so we are believable. so the public knows that this is not about the media. this is about providing information that the public needs. my second theme, i think, that i've come to appreciate, in the last few months, is when you're writing about scandals, you have to draw this fine line in

the sand that reporters usually don't have to worry about. you have to distinguish between titillating gossip that may be a whole lot of fun to read but doesn't serve much purpose beyond that. and information that serves the public good. that contributes to the public discourse, information that people need to know, to understand about how their government is working. and the most controversial example of where we as a media outlet drew that line and again, it's a very subjective line we draw, is whether or not the -- to publish the emails. we did decide to publish the emails between the governor and maria balishinpour, the name of the argentinian woman. we publish them online and in the next day's newspaper. and we got really mixed reactions from readers. some readers were very angry.

my ears are still hurting from all the phone calls we took. people canceled their newspaper. they said how dare you all do that? that is private information. private emails between a man and a woman. they're not meant for public consumption. how dare you all put them out there like that? you all were just interested in driving traffic to your website. you're just interested in selling more newspapers. but we also got a lot of phone calls from readers who said thank you, thank you a lot. now i really believe he was in argentina and understand how incredibly in love he was and how it would lead a man to secretly abandon his post for five days and not tell anybody. it added a layer of context to the scandal that i don't think anyone knew about. prior to those emails. and we also felt that in the name of transparency, we needed to show our readers all the information we had that led us to be there in the airport that

morning. we needed to show everything. and the emails were a key piece of the story and a key piece of our evidence. and it turned out the emails weren't even that scandalous long term because of our 48 hours later, the governor sat down with the associated press for a three plus hour interview that some of you may have heard about where he detailed in -- exhaustively his relationship with maria, how he was in love with her and how she was his soulmate and trying to fall back in love with his wife. how he had crossed the line with other unnamed women. so suddenly, those emails seem pretty tame, pretty fast. and the third and final theme i would like to make is -- and i know this is going to seem like a real "duh" moment for all of you but been reinforced the last few months is that often, politicians and elected officials are not interested in

telling us the whole truth. they're not so forthcoming with information that doesn't suit them or serve their purpose. and the media's job, particularly when you're talking about big stories like scandals, is to truth squad, to be the watchdog for the public. to be the watchdog for the public. i had an editor tell me years ago that among the many roles that the media serves, the most important thing we do is we serve as watchdogs because decision makers act differently when they're being watched. they're more likely to tell the truth. they're more likely to keep their promises. that are usually better stewards of taxpayers' money. and we've got to be there to do that. and there's always going to be a place for reporters to serve that basic function of democracy. and i'll never know, i hope one day i might know but i have a feeling that if we had not been at that airport on that june morning, that we would have never heard anything about in

secret trip to argentina. all these questions that have been raised since about his travel, about his use of state aircraft, about reimbursements to his campaign fund. all these questions that have now led to a state ethics panel investigation, an investigation by a senate subcommittee. i don't think -- we're going to get some serious answers out of that and i don't think the questions would have been raised if we weren't in the airport that morning. and i hope maybe -- in a few years, when this is all died over that i'll be able to sit down and have a beer with the governor and ask him. tell me the truth. would you come back and fess up or would we have heard about the glories of hikerring the appalachian trail? that's the one question i really want to know. thank you all. >> thank you, gina. well said. [applause] there really are several issues there and i hope some of you are thinking about questions you'll ask. maybe even from the perspective of future communicators who are

staffers, not politicians, how the staff was to interact with. and what sort of exchange the newsroom, not maybe just you, had with state officials in the runup to and after that. and what that was like. but that could be very relevant to students here who go on to careers as spokesmen or communicators in politics. speaking of which, we are very fortunate to have on the council and here with us today one of the nation's pre-eminent political communicators. former press secretary to president bill clinton, and having held spokesmen and communicator roles up and down the government, and the democratic political party, please join me in welcoming mike mccurry. [applause] mike, you've been on the other end of -- well, there have been allegations in the past surrounding some of your involvement. >> been there, done that. >> tell us what it was like to be on the receiving end. what lessons do you have for

these students about your experience? >> well, thanks, tucker. and i'll start pointing out that i was born here in charleston, south carolina. so i can refer to some of the things that have been said by south carolina outside this state. and one commentary after the governor sanford business, someone observed that south carolina is the state that's too small to be a nation but too large to be an insane asylum. [laughter] there are probably times when people felt they were proving that apmorism true. gina set the table very well and i'll offer thoughts. if you recall the clinton years, we invented a different scandal it seems like every month. the most famous one, the one that i probably got more prominence for was of course le faire monique. most of the students here are probably -- they were too young at the time to know the full glory and zesty quality of that

scandal. which i won't go into because that would turn this into an x-rated program. [laughter] but one thing about that matter, and one thing about the list, tucker, that you gave us, look how many of those things involve sex. human misbehavior. something that i think the press finds irresistible. the media as something as an incident or personal indiscretion or misbehavior boils into scandal, they find some justification to keep writing about it day in and day out. in the case of the governor sanford, obviously the use of taxpayer-financed things like planes and resources of the state for law enforcement and protection. in the case of president clinton, in the monica lewinsky matter, it was whether or not he had testified truthfully in a grand jury. and that is the justification for the press going on and on and on about the subject. but make no mistake. what they really love is the

sex. and that's what is intoxicating about it. and that's why they want to talk about it. think about this summer in the same sequence of time in which we followed day after day governor sanford's matter, there was another state that has an even worse reputation for scandal, new jersey. and there was a major investigation and a series of really stunning allegations of bribery and impropriety by a whole host of fairly senior ranking people in state government in new jersey. how many of you know about this? some. it's not how many of you know about mark sanford. everyone. so one of the arguments i make is what the press defines as scandal sometimes is the thing that suits their interest. as a commercial enterprise that are trying to hold an audience share. and what is truly scandalous because it really does represent really gross violations of appropriateness. or the things that become less interesting because they're more complicated.

that would be one observation. but tucker, to pick up on your point, what are the things that you do when you go through a crisis or if you're ever caught in a position where you're a spokesman for someone who's facing that kind of allegation, i'll give you my mike mccurry five c's that i learned from my experience. now, some of you pulling out pens, if you write these down you'll be qualified to be white house press secretary. and i don't know if you want to do that. but let me start with the first c and the most important one, credibility. remember, the reason people get in trouble is because they dissemble and don't offer up the truth. they don't get to the truth quickly. they try to obscure or cover up things. those are always the elements that make scandal worse. as in watergate, as in just about every other instance in which we have had major national political scandals, at the heart of it is the violation of a relationship of

trust that requires truthfulness. the second c is candor. people have a hard time acknowledging misbehavior. i've got kids, i come down in the morning and said who ate the cookies that we were going to have for lunch today? and my kids she did, he did, it's not far distance from that natural temptation to deny, to go to "i did not have --" no. won't go there. but candor and opening up yourself to scrutiny, because you have done something wrong, is something that's just not part of the human instinct. and i think that we have to recognize that. it's one of the reasons why these things become so painful. the third c is clarity. you have to know exactly what it is that you're trying to say, what your explanation is, i think so often people get caught because they're just not being precise and trying to acknowledge that they've done something wrong and they're

moving beyond that. in the case of governor sanford, it was just endless. this explanation. i kept thinking to myself, where on earth is the press secretary who's supposed to step in at some point and grab the politician by the collar and haul him away and said i think we need to go outside and have a little chat? but what people want are simple explanations and they can absorb that information. and most cases these scandals, people have owned up, had a very clear explanation of what they had done, had it made an apology quickly to those who had been injured, people would literally have moved on. and that leads to my fourth c which is compassion. i think the politician in trouble has to have genuine compassion for the people he or she has offended. and violated. i think there has to be some compassion for the turmoil that a public goes through when there's an instance in which leadership has gone short. you have to have some sympathy for the condition you put yourself in.

and so often, the mentality is to get into that bunker and feel like the whole world is against me rather than put yourself outside the bunker and imagine, what are the people that elected me, what are they going through because of what i have done? and that's usually a missing ingredient. and my last and final c is consistency. what happens so often is people embellish the story or the story kind of lingers on or they didn't quite tell you the whole thing, rather than having simple story and sticking with it. bill clinton i would aerring ue survived the monica lewinsky business in part because the media never found the off button and kept going on it long after the public had been interested in it. and quite literally a political movement called move on was -- was formed as a result. people want some way in which

the elected official gets back to the business that they're in charge of doing. and if you remember those of you remember the bill clinton business, he had one statement that he made early on in that matter, and then hover and over and own -- over and over again he said i've gone over that subject and have to do the job i was elected to do. most forgave clinton because he is trying to do his job and like the job he's doing so we'll give him a pass on this. and that's probably was the way he made it through that episode. >> thank you, mike. well put. and leads me to -- [applause] indeed. professor leonard steinhorn, proffer of communicationings at american university, said recently, we have a calvinnist framework. our society works better when you apologize, when you repent.

another commentator recently said we love resurrection stories more than destruction stories. that latter comment was about kanye west and takor swift. -- tailor swift. but it's usually aplied in a serious sense. our next speaker knows the state well as president of the south carolina new democrats. first off, please join me in welcoming an entrepreneur and someone i've worked alongside and other times against. phil noble, thank you for being here. [applause] phil, south carolina had a substantive scandal that had sex on the periphery. but some 18, 20 years ago, operation lost trust, famously known by the phrase of the protagonist at the center of that story, once said, it's -- the old phrase, it's a pleasure doing business with you.

he said it's a business doing pleasure with you. phil, you've watched scandal happen here in south carolina. and nationally. share with us, there's a conflict here, a little bit, folks, gina says we in the press believe in applying context. and we used a lot of restraint. and i don't know that i hear mike mccurry saying that he heard those things. so let's pick up on that. phil, is there context and restraint and how should political figures act when they're caught with their hand or something else in the cookie jar? >> thank you, tucker. i have been around south carolina a good while. and when they called me as a part of this advisory, they said we're going to do this on this little panel on scandal in south carolina. and i said oh, that's great. they said it's going to be on c-span and my first thought was c-span, they ought to get ken

burns and do a 12-part minute i series. -- 12-part miniseries. because there's so much there. throughout our history. and you bring up an interesting point. you talk about the calvinist perspective on this. my father's a presbyterian minister. so i'm a six-time, double dunked calvinist so forgive me if i appear self-righteous about some of this stuff. mike talked about this sort of five c's. i never got to be a press secretary. so i got four and they're not particularly -- they don't rhyme. so you'll have to forgive me. but if you look at the scandals in south carolina and national, and i'm talking about big ones, not just two or three-day press stories. i think there are four things that are common to most of them and there are two outcomes.

the first thing is the reason most of these scandals happen is just plain old everyday stupidity. just stupid. i mean, richard nixon was what, 142 points ahead of george mcgovern when watergate started. it's all about the human frailties and human stupidities of people doing things that they knew in kindergarten they weren't supposed to do. and most of those scandals are in my opinion just that simple. i mean, as soon as you see it on television, nobody has to say, well, boy, what a dumb alings. -- what a dumb ass. and there is that basic level. the second thing that usually happens is sort of a two-edged -- two sides of the coin.

they are usually all personal. you don't see people having scandals about substantive policy issues, about what we should do fixing the price of prescription drugs. it's about women and sex and it's personal scandals that drives so much of this. and not policy issues. and the flip side of that is one of the seven deadly since is hubris. the notion that somehow it doesn't apply to me, the rules. i can get by with this. i got 48 staff guys running around here all day telling me i'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. and standing in line to figure out ways to suck up to me and make me feel good. well, if you do x, it's stupid. i don't care how many staff you got.

i don't care how many people are sort of telling you you're a good guy. and i think that's -- that hubris and personal connectedness is the second piece. the third is they're almost all self-inflicted. they do it to themselves. they don't -- they allow themselves to get into a situation or they surround themselves with people who are going to get them in trouble. they do it to themselves in one sense. and i think the fourth point is they rarely, rarely, rarely ever say yep, i did it, i'm sorry. here's how i'm going to fix it. and that's it. they don't do that. it's a cover-up. well, i wasn't really on the appalachian trail. i was on the coast road but we

don't have -- i went back and forth several times. you know, the cover-up begins. the cover-up is not -- is always -- not always but usually worse than what actually happened. or often is actually happened. and so drag out that cover-up and the details, particularly if it's -- is the -- anything about sex, it's very quickly goes straight to the bottom line about sex. it gets really prurient. almost the politics of pornography. with bill clinton there was all these distinguished features that he had below the belt. remember that? >> nanks a lot, phil. >> and we had the same thing.

here was mark sanford. remember the tan lines and she holds herself in the moonlight. well, wait a minute. that's -- my kids say t.m.i., too much information. so i think you see that sort of pornographyivization of it. even if it isn't about sex it gets very quickly to these prurent -- to these prurient details. at the risk of sounding like a self-riches -- self-righteous calvinist, you should resign. go away. you have broken the fundamental bonds of trust between the electorate and the voter. if your wife can't trust you, why should the people trust you? it's really -- to me, it's really basic and it's real simple. and too often you see

politicians who just won't accept that. somehow i've got to hang on. i'm going to do something to redeem myself. i've got to come back. well, it ain't about you. because at that point, you have really begun to fundamentally damage the bonds of what makes democracy work. and if you do that, sure, you might survive. sure, you may end up doing something later. in your term that's laddable and good. but the bottom line is you have diminished and degraded the political environment and the political culture of your state and nation. and i think given all. forces of media and internet and everything else that's exerting such enormous downward pressure on our political culture, that i think the best thing to do is just resign. because you walk out the door.

you have at least honorably exited which is a whole lot more than you can say for most of these folks. so anyway, that's my story. and i'm sticking to it. [applause] >> we'll try to honorably exit the presentation portion and get to questions. i think it might be a point to note that there are some who are acquitted, either in the public -- court of public opinion, through their own redemption or sometimes literally. i named alaska's senator ted stevens. and federal courts have cleared him of some of the matters that he was charged with. having served in the reagan white house, i recall -- labor secretary raymond donovan went through years of trying to clear his name from some charges that turned out to have been trumped up. and he famously asked the question, where do i go now that i'm acquitted to get my reputation back?

so i think sometimes the lines are very bright and clear and other times we leave it to the courts. in the court of public opinion, we would like all of you to pass judgment on what's been said or ask your questions. our executive in residence and council chairman, tom martin, has the microphone. and we want to put it in front of you. so if any of you wish to come up to tom over here with a question, raise a hand, we'll wait for our first questioner while tom positions himself. gina, i tried to provoke a little conflict here. people thrive on it. it doesn't just sell newspapers. it fills auditoriums. so at some point we'll come to that question. i think tom is now positioned for our first question from the audience. please. >> thank you for being here. it's really interesting and informative. i have a question with maybe mr. noble wouldn't answer but it's what is the secret or key to a resurrection or a future in politics after a scandal?

>> number one is being innocent. [laughter] [applause] i think the cardinal sin, and i mean this quite seriously, i think the cardinal sin in american politics is -- or let me put it this way. the cardinal demand of citizenship is don't b.s. tell me the truth. if it's bad, i want to know it. if the economy is headed into the tubes, i want to know that. if something happened out there that you aren't ashamed of, tell me the truth. and i think it's that -- that fundamental acceptance by people that you don't have to be perfect. but if you -- but if you lie to

them and then you continue to lie to them, then, you know, how many teams you got to lie to me before i just say, that guy's lying? and i think it's -- the hope of resurrection is getting past sinfulness to getting back to truthfulness again. as mike says. if you got a credible -- if you're credible about it, that's what gets you back. but i think -- i think it's too much of the cookie jar, well, i didn't really take the last cookie. that's -- that's what -- that's what people hate. yeah, i screwed up. i screwed up big time and i'm really sorry. i really am and here's how i'm going to fix it. and if i screw up again, you probably won't have to yell at me because i'm gone. some sense of blatant fairness and acceptance. but getting back to telling the truth, pretty quickly helps.

>> tom, another question. >> my question is for you again, mr. noble. you said the best thing to do in a -- in the scandals is to just resign. i just wanted to -- did you mean that from a moral perspective or from a political perspective? because i guess with public officials, they have this -- they have more responsibility of let's just say -- cheats on his wife, he is not just going to resign his job because he cheated on his wife but a public official, you have an extra sense of responsibility. so i was wondering, did you say that from a moral perspective or tactful perspective? and are you saying that president clinton should have resigned amidst the monica lewinsky scandal. >> i think you have to begin really quite seriously. are you guilty? did you do it? and if you aren't guilty, if you didn't do it, then you ought to fight to the death.

and you ought to stay there. you fight for your name and reputation because that's all you got in politics or in life. and i do believe radon van, whether or not he was guilty or not, he is absolutely right. he fought all the way to the end. it tarnished, it was terrible. but in the end he was exonerated. so you make that basic difference between whether you -- whether he did it or not. i personally believe that what you did is of less importance of did you violate that base being trust. -- basic trust. and if you violated that basic trust then i think you should resign. i think clinton should have resigned. i don't think he should have been impeeved but he should have resigned. i think sanford should have resigned. i think he should have resigned a long time ago.

but it is not because politically it's smart. it's just you blew it. you were elected by the people. they placed their trust in you. you violated that trust. sorry. go. >> mike, do you want to add here? >> to hear from mike on that. >> if you read bill clinton's book, you get a very good explanation of what he believes. and he believes that he had given a technically correct answer. that was the hole business about -- depends on what the -- that was the whole business about -- depends on what the meaning of "is" is. what he apologized for eight months after sticking this with this story that what he had done did not constitute sexual relations, a -- relying on a definition that certainly mrs. mccurry wouldn't appreciate. [laughter]

but he survived through a legalism. he would take issue with what you said. he would probably agree if there had been a fundamental violation of the public trust. and he might agree with you. but he would deny that that is what happened. now, he also firmly believed that by the time he got later -- months later into that whole episode, that it had become a manner of political witch hunt. and he felt like the opposition party was deliberately chasing this issue and trying to make more of it for their own political reasons. and he was absolutely right about that. i think there was a difference in the situation. >> gina, you've said that you've had your year -- ear chewed out and do people in the administration believe the state newspaper was on a vendetta, out to get them? tem us about your interaction -- tell us about your ent action with the office of governor, the staff, the spokesmen which changed in

midstream here. but can you give us some insight? >> yeah. primarily two of us at the newspaper who have written most of these stories. and i think that phil and mike both point out really good things that the sanford administration did not do well. first, was to just fess up right from the beginning. like phil was saying. people hate the cover-up more than what you did wrong. i think right off the bat, if he had come out and said this is what i did, i'm only saying it one time. i'm going to give you a three-minute explanation what happened. and hey, ladies and gentlemen, i'm done. i'm going to buy a new suit. life would have been better. and mike makes the point, too, that once you make the admission, move on from there. go back to doing your job. he talked about how clinton kept making the point i'm not talking about this anymore. i'm back to working for the people. we felt -- failed to see sanford do that. we failed to see him get back to the business of running the

state. instead on an apology tour and said -- at every rotary club and lions club meeting in the state. giving sort of a canned speech about how he's sorry. but not really doing anything to solve the woes of this state in terms of unemployment, trying to attract new business. and i think that's what our readers and i think that's what offends the media, too. it's not so much the lie. it's what's happened since. we keep waiting, when are we going to start see him do something? and mike makes a good point. the media, we're humans. the sex, the sex, everybody plikes the gossip about -- likes the gossip about sex. the media is full of people and also our readers like to read about it. i think it's a natural part of being human. the natural part of the media. but a politician can shape his message and he can make it very clear, she can make it very

clear, i'm not talking about this anymore. you want to talk to me, these are the things i'm going to talk about and we haven't seen that. >> conversation is continued from both sanfords very publicly, hasn't it? right here. >> this question is for mr. mccurry. having been on the other side of the firing squad so to speak with the whole bin ton-monica lewinsky scandal, at what point did you know the truth of the matter? and did -- at that point you have any more dilemmas about what you all -- your stands were or did you see it as part of your job and how would you craft that message knowing full well what the details were? >> well, the story, to remind people a little bit of the chronology, the story that the independent counsel was broadening a very robust investigation of all kinds of things that were called the whitewater matter. the story that that was being brautened to examine -- was being broadened to whether

president clinton had testified in a separate matter about monica lewinsky happened in january of 1998. and none of us, this is just a quick summary of what we dealt -- how we dealt with this. i had -- this was my second political scandal. my first political scandal, after i got out of college, and the age of a lot of you in the room, was when i was working as a press secretary to the only united states senator who was caught up in a scandal called abs scam. an undercover f.b.i. investigation. and i made the investigation of talking to that senator about the allegations that were about to appear in "the new york times" before the f.b.i. did. that earned me a one-way trip to the federal district courthouse in brooklyn and i was in front of a grand jury for eight hours. and had all kinds of lawyers and other things. so when the monica lewinsky business laid down a very strict rule, we weren't going to go to the president and say what is the deal with you and this chick?

because why? because he was being aggressively pursued. by a prosecutor at that point. and anything that we had said to each other would have been discoverable and i would have had another lawyer and would have ended up testifying in front of judge starr. we worked at that point only through the intermediaries who could have a privileged conversation with the president, his lawyers, the white house counsel. and because of that, we lived with the same fiction you all did. for eight months. because we said well, there must be something to the denial that he gave us. because you can't be that clear about the denial. so we found out the truth when you did. when the president finally went on national television eight months later. and said, well, actually, what i did was inappropriate. he to in day and writes in his book, he did not lie. he believes, and i'm sure there are people that would contest this.

but he does not believe that he lied. he thought that he gave a very legally correct answer to the question he got asked when he was being deposed. but he then came to say, you know, look, the problem was i never, until eight months later, acknowledged that what i had done was totally inappropriate. and then we read all the gory details about it when the starr report came out. but by that point, i would say plenty of us were mad. and we appreciated and most us -- of us accepted the apology that the president gave to us and it was the same apology he gave to everyone here. because he went before the country and said i didn't measure up. and that's the way -- that should have been the end of it. but of course it became very political because the republicans in congress decided they wanted to impeach him. >> two questions. one is for mr. noble and one is for mr. mccurry.

they relate to the same thing. you're talking earlier about how if a politician is embroiled in scandal that they should step down because they violated the trust they built with the voters. what do you say then to politicians who already have a reputation for being sort of a playboy when they're elected? as president bill clinton was when he was elected. and then my question for mr. mccurry, was his previous reputation a factor when you thought about how to frame the message when the scandal broke? >> before i answer that, and i'm going to tell you something, and i'll tell you in all sincerity, if you go to the political and press and the media and pundit community in washington, today, and you talk to them about clinton and lewinsky scandal and all of the craziness that engendered and all the reputations that it

burned and all the people that it destroyed, what's interesting is the single one thing you hear over and over and over and over again. is that the one person who came out of that with his reputation, not tarnished, but enhanced, for being credible and honest and forthright was mccurry. and if you want to really understand how to do the job, the bottom line is you start with the sense of integrity and honesty that you don't violate. and any circumstances for anybody at any time. and the press knows that. and everybody else knows that. and that's -- that's why my -- why mike was such a great press secretary. he had those basic values that he did not violate, that he did not spend away on behalf of political expedience for some politician who got in trouble. and that i think is a really

important fundamental here. people can elect scandalous politicians. and if they want to elect a scandalous politician, so be it for the wisdom of the people. there was a great guy in alabama named jim folsom who said if you accuse me of being a womanizer, a drunk, irresponsible, and just plain carousing around, i plead guilty on every charge. now, let's talk about what alabama needs. and i think that there is a sense of that. big jim didn't b.s. you about who he was. he told you who he was. and i think it is that sense of not b.s.ing people. edwin edwards was elected three or four times in louisiana. everybody knew edwin edwards was a womanizer and a crook. when he ran against the head of the ku klux klan the bumper sticker was vote for edwards,

it's the moral thing to do. [laughter] >> vote for the crook. it's important. >> that's what it was. vote for the crook. it's important. >> phil, thank you. that was very -- >> but it's true. >> very generous. i wondered, i wondered at times, was he part -- explained how we ended up where we ended up. we didn't dig the hole any deeper. people get in trouble in places like the white house and the press briefing room when they start to fill in the gaps and they don't have the facts. and early on in that, we said look, we're not going to have the facts. in fact, in the early part of that whole matter, i got in a lot of hot water because i said well, i think if there was a simple explanation to this, we would have given it by now. and even that caused a big furor for a couple of days because i had said maybe there's some other explanation

than the one that the president has offered. but the important thing was that we didn't go out and try to defend the president without facts that would have, you know, been exculpatory. and i think that probably had some -- had something to do with the fact that i got out of there alive. but i'll tell you, there were plenty of people the white house who were my colleagues who said you aren't -- you aren't being aggressive enough in defending the president. you need to get out there and fight harder. and in retrospect, that would have been exactly the wrong thing to do. that's what got press secretaries and staffers throughout history in trouble. because they went out and they spoke without having a strong foundation of truth. but i appreciate what you said. >> we have time for one more question. tom. >> i have a question for gina smith. what exactly did you have to go through to get the emails and get them published? >> the emails were sent to us

anonymously. we still don't know who sent them to us. there's a lot of different theories. my editor thinks that it's, you know, her ex-husband, and someone else thinks it's one of her sons. and we don't know. i really don't know. but they were sent to us anonymously. and we had to verify them. the problem is in a newsroom, you get so much crazy stuff all the time. in your in box and people calling you and making all kinds of allegations. that even when you get something like that, you're sort of like oh, yeah, right, the governor, some woman in argentina. sure. so we weren't really -- to tell you the truth, we weren't really aggressive trying to prove it right from the beginning. and then it took a little while to verify how we ended up verifying it was we were able to prove that the governor's portion -- the governor's emails were coming from his personal email address. and to be abundantly fair, before we published them, we made it known to those close to

him that including his press secretary that we had those emails. that we had every intention of publishing them. and if he was going to refute them he better do it in the next couple of hours. because they were going to hit the internet. and he never -- he never called. he never in any way refuted them to this day. he's never refuted them and sometimes he jokes about, well, i've done enough writing recently or something like that. so i think it's safe for us to assume at this point in the game that those emails were valid. but you raised a good point. that i don't know 20 years ago if we would have done that. if any media outlet would have done that. i think the role of the media is changing. i think of what people expect of the media is changing. it will be really interesting now, you know, it's becoming so competitive now with blogs and so many other types of media that are not traditionally trained that just enjoy printing rumor.

they don't have any problem about putting stuff out there that is not in any way backed up. and they don't have any money so they're not worried about getting sued. so it's going to be real interesting to see in another 10 or 20 years what the landscape of media looks like in this country. and how they interact with politicians. and the quality of news we get. >> such are the foibles of men and women that we could go on for another hour easily and talk about the role of the media and scandal. but i think we have time to thank our panelists, phil, mike, gina, thank you. and thanks to all of you. [applause] and good evening. >> still to come on c-span remarks from the co-founder of the social media network twitter, and a look at legislation introduced in the senate that would provide new

funding for underperforming high schools. and then on "america and the courts," supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg on her early days as a law clerk and the importance of oral argument. >> remarks now from the co-founder of the social media network twitter. biz stone talks about the inspiration behind his company and how he realized the communication value early on. he recently spoke at a conference in los angeles for about 35 minutes. >> i can't help but call these -- i don't think he likes that very much. the search results are screwed

up now. not really a mystery. what it is is a couple of lessons learned, personal lessons learned and a whole bunch of little stories that i like to tell. because the real stories, each one of them opens our eyes a little bit to what twitter's potential was. we started out with one idea and then if we were smart at all, it was because we were paying attention and we were watching twitter teach us what it wanted to be. so i like to go through some of those stories by way of illustrating how twitter kind of grew up a little bit over the last two years. and then a little bit into where we -- we want to invest more in the future and where we're going.