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"Nannygate" is a popular term for the 1993 revelations that caused two of President Bill Clinton's choices for United States Attorney General to become derailed. In January 1993, Clinton's nomination of corporate lawyer Zoë Baird for the position came under attack after it became known that she and her husband had broken the law by employing two illegal aliens from Peru as a nanny and chauffeur for their young child. They had also failed to pay Social Security taxes for the workers until shortly before the disclosures. While the Clinton administration thought the matter was relatively unimportant, the news elicited a firestorm of public opinion, most of it against Baird. Within eight days, her nomination lost political support in the U.S. Congress and was withdrawn. The following month, Clinton's choice of federal judge Kimba Wood for the job was leaked to the press, but within a day it became known that she too had employed an undocumented immigrants to look after her child. Although Wood had done so at a time when this was legal, and had paid Social Security taxes for the worker, the disclosures were enough to cause the immediate withdrawal of Wood from consideration. The Clinton administration then said that the hiring practices for household help would be examined for all of the more than thousand presidential appointments under consideration, causing the whole process to slow down significantly. Determined to choose a woman for the Attorney General post, Clinton finally selected state prosecutor Janet Reno, who was confirmed and served through all eight years of the administration. The Nannygate matter caused wealthy Americans to ask each other if they too had a "Zoë Baird problem", as the hiring of undocumented workers and the paying of household help off the books were both commonplace. Two fault lines, gender and class, were exposed in the discussion over Nannygate: in the former, a double standard was seen wherein female appointees faced a greater risk of being questioned and disqualified based upon their childcare arrangements, while in the latter, affluent professional women who could afford live-in childcare arrangements were seen as trying to get away with an illegal act. Nannygate-type controversies have subsequently affected other political appointees both in the U.S. and in other countries. == The Baird nomination == President-elect Bill Clinton had vowed to assemble an administration that "looked like America", and it was widely assumed that one of the major cabinet posts would go to a woman.〔 In particular, he wanted to nominate one for the position of United States Attorney General, something women's political action groups were also requesting.〔〔〔 No woman had previously served in this post.〔 His choice, whose nomination was announced on December 24, 1992, was Zoë Baird, a 40-year-old senior vice president and general counsel at Aetna Life and Casualty Company who had previously worked in the Justice Department during the Carter administration. Little known before the nomination (Clinton had not met her until their interview),〔Clinton, ''My Life'', p. 456.〕 Baird was a skilled networker who had been the protégé of several powerful Washington insiders, including Clinton transition team leader Warren Christopher and once-and-future White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler.〔〔〔 Picking Baird gave Clinton the ability to satisfy the women's groups' desires while still showing independence by not choosing one of their preferred selections.〔 Despite the lack of familiarity and getting a lukewarm response from some Clinton backers – those in the legal public interest community said "Zoë who?"〔 and her corporate sympathies discouraged liberals〔 – Baird was expected to gain confirmation in the U.S. Senate.〔 Baird and her husband, Yale Law School professor Paul Gewirtz, had a three-year-old son.〔〔 On January 14, 1993, a page-one story in ''The New York Times'' broke the news〔 that Baird had hired a married pair of illegal aliens from Peru, Lillian and Victor Cordero, between 1990 and 1992.〔Sampson, "Rejecting Zoe Baird", p. 310.〕 The Peruvian woman served as the nanny for Baird's son and the Peruvian man as a part-time driver.〔 Furthermore, Baird had not paid Social Security taxes for the couple, until making a lump-sum payment earlier in January 1993.〔 Baird had brought forward this information willingly to transition officials and authorities performing background checks; she said that she had thought that the fact that they were sponsoring the couple for citizenship made the hiring acceptable, and that they could not pay the taxes for people who were not yet in the country legally.〔 (Baird's immigration lawyer would dispute some aspects of exactly when the sponsorship request took place.〔) This was the first time a presidential cabinet nominee had faced such an issue.〔 While the Clinton transition team had found out about the matter during their vetting of Baird, they had underestimated the seriousness of its impact.〔Clinton, ''My Life'', p. 467.〕 Their attitude about Baird's infraction was that it was a technical violation and that 'Everybody does it'. Clinton operatives initially thought the Baird revelation was no big deal and would quickly lose the attention of the media and public. Employment of illegal aliens was not uncommon at the time, but in Baird's case it was especially bad public relations, since the Attorney General was in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).〔Clinton, ''My Life'', p. 464.〕 Baird's wealth – she made $500,000 a year in her job and together with her husband had a combined income of $600,000 – made her, in the context of the early 1990s recession, an unsympathetic figure to not be paying taxes.〔〔 Moreover, Baird and Gewirtz had been wealthy enough to afford legal child care, but instead had paid the Corderos $250 a week plus board, well below minimum wage.〔Walker, ''The President We Deserve'', p. 179.〕 The news brought about an immediate and large-scale negative reaction.〔Burke, ''Presidential Transitions'', p. 303.〕 As ''Guardian'' U.S. correspondent Martin Walker later wrote, "(and Gewirtz ) were the overpaid yuppies and ubiquitous lawyers whom American voters had come to resent."〔 On January 16, Baird paid $2,900 in fines for the infractions to the INS. This was on top of the $8,000 in back Social Security taxes she had paid earlier.〔 George Stephanopoulos, the transition communications director, said that "President-elect Clinton has complete confidence in Zoë Baird."〔 Some in the Clinton inner circle persisted in believing that Baird's offense was akin to a traffic ticket in seriousness, but Democratic senators told them otherwise; Senate Judiciary Committee chair Joe Biden of Delaware likened it more to a "freeway crash."〔 Baird met with Biden twice, both times leaving his office in tears, although Biden publicly stated that he did not think the matter would prevent her nomination.〔 Baird actually had more immediate support from ranking member Orrin Hatch, who called it "no big deal."〔 This reflected a considerable degree of Republican support for Baird, as they decided she was more in tune with their stance on some issues than a replacement would likely be.〔〔 Appearing before the Judiciary Committee on January 19, Baird apologized for having knowingly broken the law: "In my hope to find appropriate child care for my son, I gave too little emphasis to what was described to me as a technical violation of law."〔 She added that, "People are fairly questioning if there are classes of individuals who hold themselves above the law. I do not." Baird's statement that her husband had handled many of the legal issues surrounding the Corderos' employment drew little support for her.〔 Overall, the questioning of Baird was tougher from Democrats on the committee than Republicans, again reflecting the latter's support for Baird.〔 At the close of the initial testimony, Baird's confirmation still seemed quite possible.〔 As the inauguration of Bill Clinton took place on January 20, the nomination crisis was reaching its final phase, with Biden telling Clinton at a luncheon following the ceremony that the next day or two would be crucial.〔 But political and public opposition continued to mount.〔 Calls opposing the nomination flooded the switchboards of members of Congress.〔〔〔Balakian, ''Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein'', p. 143.〕 Senator David Boren of Oklahoma reported getting a thousand calls to his office, with 80 percent of them against the nomination.〔 Senator Paul Simon of Illinois also received a thousand calls.〔 Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said, "In 18 years in the Senate, I had never seen so many telephone calls, spontaneously, in such a short period."〔 Television crews staked out the New Haven home of Baird.〔 As one top Senate official later stated, "There were phone calls to offices, local editorials. The people were just way ahead of us."〔 The issue created a firestorm on conservative talk radio,〔Stephanopoulos, ''All Too Human'', p. 119.〕 then emerging as a potent force in American politics. Talker Rush Limbaugh was especially involved in the issue, for instance weighing in to say that Baird's "blame-it-on-the-husband" defense was a "feminazi" ploy.〔Sampson, "Rejecting Zoe Baird", p. 311.〕 A ''USA Today''/CNN/Gallup poll showed that 63 percent of the American public did not think Baird should be confirmed; the reaction was broad, with majorities of Republicans and Democrats, men and women, and young and old all opposing it. Clinton faced a choice of either quickly jettisoning her, and risk appearing weak, or defiantly continuing to back her, and opposing a popular groundswell; he opted to wait and see a little more.〔 There was also much confusion about when exactly Clinton had learned of the Baird problem,〔 with Christopher saying he had informed Clinton of it in some manner during the transition and Clinton saying he had not.〔Harris, ''The Survivor'', p. 15.〕 This led to a "What did the President know and when did he know it" grilling of Stephanopoulos on January 21 during his first news conference as White House Communications Director.〔Harris, ''The Survivor'', p. 14.〕〔Stephanopoulos, ''All Too Human'', p. 111.〕 The treatment of Stephanopoulos got rough and his evasive answers bordered on nonsense.〔〔Stephanopoulos, ''All Too Human'', p. 108.〕 A second round of Judiciary Committee hearings were also taking place on January 21, and by then, Baird was politically isolated, with no major groups coming to her defense.〔 A growing number of senators came out in opposition to Baird during the day, including two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee and influential centrist Democrats John Breaux of Louisiana and David Boren of Oklahoma.〔 Baird gamely continued to smile and testify well into the evening, but as Stephanopoulos later wrote, "She didn't know it yet, but she was toast."〔 Biden called Clinton and told him the nomination was lost.〔 On January 22, 1993, two days after Clinton had assumed the presidency, the White House announced in the middle of the night the withdrawal of Baird's nomination.〔 Clinton now publicly stated that he had been informed of Baird's hiring of the illegal aliens after discussing the position with her but before actually nominating her.〔〔 He had not halted the process to gain all information but rather had erred by going through with the nomination in order to meet a self-imposed Christmas deadline for naming his cabinet. On January 23, Anna Quindlen used the term "Nannygate" in her syndicated column and it soon gained wide-scale use.〔 While Lillian and Victor Cordero had done their jobs well (before hiring them, Baird had made several attempts to employ U.S. citizens, but none had worked out),〔 on January 22 the INS said it sought to question them and very likely deport them. The couple had previously separated and were about to be divorced. Lillian Cordero agreed to leave the country and return to Peru, under a 30-day "voluntary departure" program.〔 Victor Cordero first went into hiding, hoping to stay in the country; his lawyer said he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that, "He doesn't understand why he's being singled out."〔〔 But by January 29, he too had voluntarily left the U.S. for Peru.〔 Neither of them ever appeared in the media.〔Romero, ''Maid in the U.S.A.'', p. 12.〕 Although illegal domestics were rarely deported unless they had been involved in crimes,〔 the INS maintained that the couple were treated no differently than any other illegal aliens who were brought to their attention.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nannygate」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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