There was a time when scandals were the death knell for political careers. But today, they’re far from being career enders. Do scandals really not hold any power anymore?
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
In the upcoming midterms, neither party is untouched by scandal. Texas GOP Senate hopeful Ken Paxton was impeached by the Texas House and endured allegations of infidelity. In Maine, Democrat Graham Platner reportedly sent sexually explicit messages to women while married. So are scandals as powerful as they once were? Here’s NPR’s Barbara Sprunt.
BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: Political scandals are nothing new.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Richard Milhous Nixon resigned…
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Former Senator Gary Hart has quit the race…
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: President Clinton denies allegations…
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: Spitzer is resigning after a federal investigation…
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #5: A scandal on Capitol Hill involving Congressman Mark Foley.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #6: A scandal in the Interior Department. The details are juicy.
SPRUNT: There was a time when scandal was a death knell for a political career. Take Gary Hart in 1988, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. After news broke of an affair, he dropped out of the race. Or in 2011, when Chris Lee, a New York Republican congressman, resigned immediately after a story published of him sending a shirtless photo to someone on Craigslist. But increasingly, politicians aren’t running away when faced with scandal.
EBEN BURNHAM-SNYDER: A disqualifying political scandal is not dead, but it is on life support.
SPRUNT: That’s Eben Burnham-Snyder, former aide on the Hill and in the Obama administration. As an example of just how much things have changed, he points to the pressure former Senator Al Franken faced from fellow Democrats to resign after allegations of sexual misconduct.
BURNHAM-SNYDER: If Democrats could go back in time, would they act differently? And I think what you’re seeing playing out with Platner is yes.
SPRUNT: He says the calculus has shifted.
BURNHAM-SNYDER: The electorate is more willing to forgive as long as they can ultimately reach heaven, which is electoral victory.
SPRUNT: That doesn’t mean, he says, there aren’t outliers. And there are still some scandals that the public won’t accept. Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican political strategist, says this hyperpartisan environment means it’s not always a question of right versus wrong, but us versus them.
KEVIN MADDEN: If you are on the left, you see it through the lens of somebody on the left. And if you’re on the right, you see it through the lens of somebody on the right. And that’s where you decide whether or not it’s something to either be outraged about or if it’s something that you now want to defend or dismiss.
SPRUNT: He says the potency of scandals has weakened because of a hypercharged, fragmented media landscape.
MADDEN: If Nixon had a Fox News or he had a social media army of Nixon devotees to mobilize in his behalf, it could’ve been a much different outcome.
SPRUNT: And he says the reaction from politicians facing scandal has changed dramatically.
MADDEN: If you wait long enough, there’ll be a new shift of attention elsewhere in the news cycle. You can ultimately not necessarily flourish, but you will survive.
SPRUNT: Brandon Rottinghaus is a professor of political science at the University of Houston. He says, these days, some politicians facing scandal are actually leaning in.
BRANDON ROTTINGHAUS: A lot of politicians will simply frame a scandal as a partisan attack or as misinformation or as a witch hunt that helps rally their base.
SPRUNT: The new strategy?
ROTTINGHAUS: Dig in, blame your opponents and hold on tight.
SPRUNT: It’s a playbook he says was perfected by President Trump.
ROTTINGHAUS: He took advantage of the fact that we see this partisan schism, that we have this fragmentation in the media and that people have very strong opinions politically about their team and about the other team. He didn’t invent these things, but he did to some degree perfect them.
SPRUNT: He says scandals often serve an important role. Think of them like canaries in the coal mine.
ROTTINGHAUS: They tell us there’s something wrong with a politician, with a rule, with a system. Those are things we can fix.
SPRUNT: But now?
ROTTINGHAUS: The canaries have flown away and the cage is open.
SPRUNT: It’s up to the public to decide whether to keep it that way.
Barbara Sprunt, NPR News, Washington.
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