Nearly all American presidents and their administrations have been rocked by scandals and hounded by controversies. Even if a president was not directly involved in misbehavior, government corruption reflects poorly on the person in charge and leaves a blemish on the legacy of whoever was leader of the country at the time. Here are some of the biggest controversies that affected presidents from Barack Obama to William McKinley.
Presidential scandals and controversies since 1900
32nd president, elected to four straight terms, died in office, former New York governor, Democratic Party.
Biggest controversies: Japanese internment, lack of response to Holocaust
Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which sent 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese expatriates to internment camps shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. An eventual commission during the Carter administration found little evidence of Japanese-American disloyalty and determined the internment was due to racism. The Holocaust also occurred entirely during FDR’s tenure, and he has in subsequent years been criticized over his failure to aid European Jews, as many historians argue his administration knew Nazis were systematically killing them. Another instance critics point to is the 1939 incident involving more than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis who were denied asylum and not allowed into the U.S. Historians estimate roughly a quarter of those refugees later died in Nazi death camps during WWII.
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