Former President Barack Obama claimed Thursday that Washington runs cleaner now than through most of its past, pointing to a collapse in bribes, patronage, and favor-trading.
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The former president made the argument in the third episode of A Great Book with Barack Obama, a six-episode series that premiered Thursday on Amazon’s Audible, Axios reported. The episode pairs Obama with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore for a discussion of Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 novel All the King’s Men.
Obama suggested the assessment catches listeners off guard.
“People are always surprised when I tell them the federal government is so much less corrupt than probably it’s ever been, in terms of just pure bribes or patronage or favors,” he said.
The 44th president argued that the reforms behind that decline also stripped lawmakers of tools they once used to assemble coalitions. He pointed to the Lyndon B. Johnson era, claiming reforms passed on either side of Watergate wiped out most of what party bosses once used to swap favors for votes.
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