Ted Lowi once wrote that scandals are a proper subject for the political scientist because the observer is catching the country in the act of being itself (Theodore J. Lowi, "Fore- word," in Andrei S. Markovits and Mark Silverstein, eds., The Politics of Scandal: Power and Process in Liberal Democracies, 1988, p. xii). Lowi's remark seems particularly apt when applied to the study of politics in the United States. At the heart of the American political tradition lies an acute ambiv- alence concerning the nature and uses of political power.