From Hungary, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American Scandal.

On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew stepped down as the vice president of the United States after pleading no contest to a charge of felony tax evasion.

Agnew's resignation was the centerpiece of a tense political compromise.

Federal prosecutors had a mass evidence showing that Agnew took kickbacks from government contractors while serving in elected office, stretching all the way back to his days as a politician in Baltimore County.

But as prosecutors were building their criminal case, the Nixon administration found itself gripped by a separate and unrelated crisis.

Watergate was growing into an unprecedented political scandal, and it appeared that President Nixon's days in office were numbered.

So with the possibility that vice president Agnew, an alleged criminal, could take over as president, officials at the Justice Department scrambled to strike a deal, one that would force Agnew out of office while allowing him to avoid any jail time.

Agnew's resignation came as a shock to the country, and his downfall was only magnified when less than a year later, President Nixon resigned from office himself in the fallout from Watergate.

Proof of corruption at the highest levels of government left many Americans feeling bitter and disillusioned with the political process.

And in the decade since, public trust in government has continued to erode, a trend that, according to my guest Richard Rafalt, may pose a threat to American democracy.

Rafalt is a professor at Columbia University Law School, and specializes in government ethics and campaign finance.

He's written extensively about political corruption, and is the author of Dollars and Democracy, which lays out a plan for large-scale reforms of campaign finance.

Our conversation touches on a wide array of issues surrounding political corruption, and Rafalt offers a compelling analysis of whether the system is as broken as most people think it is.

We'll also look at his plan to change the way we fund political campaigns, and see if these reforms have the potential to restore the public's trust in government if they're even possible.

Our conversation is next.

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