[MUSIC] Welcome to Party Politics where we prepare for your next political conversation.

Im Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking some politics.

We normally, of course, cover the issues of the week and talk about all things current, but this week we're going to take a step back and talk about a broad issue that is definitely importan to politics in a modern sense.

That is not just a U.S. phenomenon, but an international phenomenon and that's political scandals.

There is this line of thinking that suggests that scandals simply don't matter anymore.

I'm working on a book project that basically documents much of this.

But look at the evidence, Jeronimo!

We have effectively, many members of Congress who have survived scandals, some of them have retired or resigned, but they've held off in office for longer than we expected.

We have people like Donald Trump serving as president, who has 34 indictment counts against him, still reelected president.

The public totally knew this.

It's not like a surprise.

Lauren Boebert is still in Congress despite many scandals.

Andrew Cuomo running for governor, running for mayor of New York after being disgraced as governor.

Bill Clinton, right.

A former president also survived history.

So I guess my kind of firs pitch question to you is like, do scandals still matter?

No.

Next question please, dear sir.

Oh, and they don't matter because I think it has to do with the phenomenon given the 24/7 news cycle.

Yeah, yeah, that it gets old, right.

I and then something else comes up.

Yeah.

So the lifespan of a scandal is very, very limited.

Very short.

Yeah.

The why question is the one that's the most pertinent.

Right.

There is sort of a lot of cases that one could make that suggests that these scandals are not as impactful as they used to be.

And in my work, I don't make the case that scandals don't matter because they still do.

There are still serious consequences to them, but there aren't as many consequences as there used to be.

So, for instance, looking at the survival rates of politicians from the 70s to the present about the best time to be in office for a member of Congress was in the 1980s.

Your survival rates were much higher than they were before that, during the Watergate era.

They're going to voters are going to kick you out or you're going to resign.

Beginning in the 90s, really people who are in the executive branch, especially presidents, were surviving mor than they were in prior years.

So there's a lot of kind of institutional differences.

There's a lot of sort of time differences.

One time difference people point to is the question about shame.

And so there's this kind of idea that basically politicians don't have the same rights that they used to that back in the day, in order to avoid embarrassment to you and to your family, you would like resign if something awful happened in your professional life.

But now people don't.

They stay in, like, you know, George Santos is a great example of this, right?

Like, you know, he, of course, resigned from Congress, but he held in for a much longer period than you would have ever expected.

[Oh, yeah.]

And there were, like hundreds of things that he did wrong.

Lies you told in half, truths that were, apparent and so he was able to kind of just work through all these things in a way that, like most politician in the prior era, wouldn't be.

So what give is like, why what happened to shame is the nature of political, kind of elements.

When you contrast that, for example, with the political scandals in Europe.

Right.

There there is a clear separation between engaging in a scandalous act.

Right.

While you're in office with government.

Business.

Yes.

And then kind of personal life scandals.

Yes.

Okay.]

Like the French don't give a damn if you know the minister of whatever has three lovers.

[Right.]

They don't care.

Yeah, right.

So, like, Okay, that wouldn't fly here, though.

Probably.

Although it's unclear actually.

Right.

There's different measurements for shame and there's also different measurements in terms of how people may have that quantum called empathy for the person that is, doing the, you know, the scandalous act.

Interesting.

And obviously the fact that we have social media, the fact that we have that, I think that it adds a little bit more context to this, to the to the situation giving or allowing people to be closer to the context and say, well, you know, that could happen to me as well.

So yeah, it's fine.

It's a lot of second chances.

Sure.

That's fascinating.

Yeah.

There is this sort of question about, yeah, with like apologies, work.

And do people believe in, If so, then redemption is a key part of how politicians are able to kind of wiggle out of some of these scandals.

That's really interestin for a fairly religious nation.

You know, the public is willing to put up with a lot.

Right?

It seems, although, of course, a lot of this is shaped by, you guessed it, Partisanship.

Right?

[Yeah.]

Partisan politics basically has been the shield for a lot of politicians who have been able to protect themselves against these kinds of moments.

Politicians are likely to survive in office when they've got more of support in the institution that they're in.

So for members of Congress, if they've got more of their fellow compatriot partisans in office with them, they won't vote to get rid of them, right?

Right.

To expel them.

If you're a president or if you're somebody who can be impeached, if you've got more partisans in that chamber that would otherwise impeach you, then you're not likely to be impeached.

[Right.]

So your survival is directly dependent on partisanship.

But it's not just about the institutions, it's also about the voters.

Right?

Because they don't hold the politicians accountable, that the way that they used to.

And a lot of scholarship suggests basically that scandals simply aren't deal breakers anymore.

People don't care as much about the scandal as they care about how ideologically proximate a person is to that individual.

So that is another kind of major problem that Partisanship creates.

And, you know, in a few minutes, I'll talk abou the implications, the scandals not mattering, because if we lose those, then there's serious accountability problems.

But for sure, you know, one of the big drawbacks, one of the big implications to partisanship and rising polarization is that you simply have a moment where people don't hold their own politicians accountable, but they're very likely to hold the opposition parties accountable.

And that's a major flaw right in the system.

So how do voters think about this and a scandal, just like one more kind of negotiable, one more element of how people think about voting, like, how do you stand on abortion?

Where are you on health care issues and whether or not you've had, you know, the sort of, you know, kind of some kind of scandalous dealings in your past?

Well, I think, you know the fact of the matter is that Partisanship has become a mega identity.

Yeah.

It's not just an a date.

It's a a mega identity that you filter everything, you know, through that, you know, I guess, yeah.

That lens.

Yeah.

That lens.

Right.

So what you want to do is to avoid this cognitive dissonance.

Right now, what do you want to avoid is like, whoa.

Okay, so Republic girl, he's a Democrat.

They did X, Y, or Z, but I'm also a Democrat.

I'm also a Republican.

So I have to side and stayed with the team.

[Yeah.

So that fact that partisanship given polarization has become these mega identity is extremely dangerous because objectivity in terms of these things, what constitutes a good public servant or a good politician or whatnot?

A why are the I guess, as Speaker Johnson said, the other week, the president's I guess, speech to the joint session.

[Yeah.]

Is there is no decorum anymore.

Right So whatever that means, we're.

All just yelling at each other.

Exactly.

It's just government.

By sniping.

Yeah.

So when you have that lens.

Right.

The “kaleid”... Yeah.

Kaleidoscope.

Yes.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that.

It's very illustrative.

Yes.

You shift it, right?

And you see a different picture, different colors.

So Partisanship is doing that.

Well.

And I think you make a great point about the way that people see things and the lens through which they see it.

And that really connects to the how people consume media.

Most people are consuming a fairly partisan media.

Right.

And or if they're not consuming a very strictly Partisan media, they really don't have a varied media diet.

So they're looking at kind of 1 or 2 things that pretty much are telling in the same kind of thing.

If you look at a different media source, you could get a totally different impression about what's happening.

So just in terms of like people remembering scandals, one of the things I find is that there's a lot of people who forget about scandals, period.

I think, like you said earlier, you know, there's so much going on, right?

It's just impossible to keep track of it.

All right.

One strategy for politicians is just like flood the zone with stuff.

And the more stuff that's happening, the more things you're going to miss just by nature.

But that's one problem.

The other problem is that even if you could see it all, it's framed for you in such a way that gives you the details about one particular scandal that involves an opponent, right.

That could sort of highlight the things that you think are bad about that, and minimize the things about the politicians who are in your corner politically.

So that difference in terms of how people consume the media is a big factor.

But I also wanna talk about the way that politicians deal with this.

Right.

So apologies is one thing.

I don't see as many apologies as we used to.

I have to say we certainly have tracked this over time, but the other is that they like it.

This is good for them in two ways.

Number one, anger sells.

[Oh yeah.]

We know that there's a lot of scholarship that suggests that if you rile up the base, people are more likely to split in a Partisan fashion, which for elections is good and they're more likely to vote with if you're elected official is perfect because now they're going to come vote for you.

So keeping the base mad, keeping them angry is a good way to base get reelected.

So the way politicians do this is that they're confronted by scandal.

They'll say something like, well, look, they're out to get me, or really, they're out to get you.

But what happens is that I'm in the way.

I'm protecting you from this.

[Yeah.]

Keeps the base [right], keeps that divide clear, and it basically gets you out of a scandal and get you reelected.

So the mechanism is pretty clear.

The other i that anger leads to donations.

And this is the oddest thing, is that we've seen the spike in donations from politicians who were involved in scandals because it's something that riles up the small dollar base.

Democrats have been challenged because they're spending too much time trying to get $5 donations.

Right.

Like this is sort of the joke, like they want these small dollar donations, but this really does work.

Those are the people who are consistent givers.

And it's not like a lot every time, but it's little bit over a long period.

It really adds up.

So what we've seen is that when there is this moment of the politician getting caught in scandal, they'll use this literally as a rallying moment.

They'll use this as a fundraising opportunity.

So that is another way that it creates this sort of perverse incentives for politicians to, frankly, get involved i scandal and to fight their way out of it by saying, look, you know, Partisan wise, they're the problem.

They're fighting me.

They're out to get me.

And I'm the one who's standing up for you, sticking up for you, you know, in office.

Well, yeah.

And clearly, President Trump did that in a masterful way.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, truly.

Because every time that he got indicted, the flood of donations came in just like that.

[Yeah.

Yeah.]

Right.

[Yeah.]

So yes, of course.

So what you're saying is that, as a rule of thumb, if you want to be a successful politician, get yourself a scandal.

Find a scandal, find one that lets you be, a champion, a fighter.

People want to see that.

And in the scandal, if you can make the case that you're the one who's basically protecting the system, then people, especially your base, likes that.

Now, the other side, of course, hate it, right?

They're not going to vote for you.

But honestly, in a Partisan world, the likelihood of that happening is pretty low.

So there are just fewer of these sort of institutional guardrails that kind of limit what a politician might do or say.

And so as a result, if the goal is really just to get reelected, the only thing that they can do the smartest play is just to kind of prime the base and they come at you.

So let me ask you a question.

Yeah.

Okay.

From a machiavellian perspective, [yes, yes.]

Does that mean justify the end?

And especially thinking about what's going to be the outcome, in terms of public policy.

[Yeah.]

Is it igoing to be better if it's going to be worse, if it's going to be non-existent.

[Yeah.]

So what is the trade off of not holding politicians or whatever it is to kind of given a scandal.

Yeah.

What is it going to happen in terms of public policy outcomes?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Of course.

And it's a you know, I would expect nothing less.

Thank you, Sir... Boom.

Strong questions, big questions, important questions.

And I think that it's funny because it's I think it's just the way that people are wired.

It's a kind of, tribalism that exists in politics.

Clearly we see that.

Lord of the flies.

Yeah.

Truly.

Yeah.

And so like th the implications are just that we're going to likely see this continued split.

Right.

So people who are against a politician who's been involved in a scandal say, like, how on earth could somebody support that person?

Well, this is why.

Because people divide int these kind of partizan tribes.

What's funny is that it's not just politics.

Actually, there is a great piece that of some some colleagues of ours did on deflate gate, remember deflate gate.

[Right.]

When Tom Brady was in the Patriots.

[Yeah.

Yeah yeah.]

Inflating the footballs so that you could grip it better.

In theory, you're able to pass it more effectively.

And it just was by NFL rules, illegal.

And so the question was, you know, what effect did this have on people's perceptions of the Patriots in a football?

What the scholars who investigators found was exactly like political scandals, that this was something that was totally divided by Partisanship and Partisanship here isn't about Republican Democrat, it's about Patriots fans, Steelers fans, Cowboys fans.

If you're a Patriots fan, who cares, right?

They didn't mind if you're a Steelers fan, it was the worst thing to happen to pro football, right?

And you know, since the laces out a certain scandal.

So this is definitely, a, like something that people are used to.

What the scholars also found was that education mattered, that information matters, right?

People had more information generally about the scandal, were more likely to think it was a problem.

So again, that's another sort of solution to this.

But to answer your question more directly, the real implication to scandals not mattering is that you essentially have less accountability, right?

People are not willing to hold politicians accountable for the kind of actions that they take.

So, for instance, person who gets accused of a certain kind of wrongdoing, maybe it's a mal- appropriation, maybe it' kind of fiscal responsibility, maybe it's just a personal issue.

And, granted there are differences in terms of how we treat these things, but if we don't use that as something that helps to inform our understanding of what that politician is doing and who they are as a person, then it ceases to be an effective way for us to hold them accountable.

Right.

But but then you have another effect.

And that effect is how does it work internally in the policymaking process.

Right.

So once you are tainted by a scandal, yes, you might get reelected and your constituency constituencies one thing.

Yeah but that affects your internal working relationship with others in terms of you need to pas this legislation.

That's true.

And we have seen it in other places in, for example, the Texas House, given current example is like you become toxic.

[Yes.]

And and again, it depends on the, on the scandal.

But also on the other hand, it depends on the person that is committing the scandal.

So, you know, if you're Donald Trump.

[Yeah.

], You can get away, as he has said it, right?

[Yeah.]

With murder in middle of Manhattan.

[Right.]

And nothing would happen.

No one.

No one is going to hold you accountable.

Right.

But if you are, I don't know, another average legislator.

[Yeah.]

You might get it.

So, there is a lot of caveats and a lot of potential interactions.

[Yeah.]

That create these thing even more and more complicated.

Yeah.

I am actually have mind to say that scandal are good.

Like we need these things to tell us about the way that the kind of world works, right?

They should b this accountability mechanism.

And I think you're right that, you know, we can, hold politicians accountabl for the actions that they take and the way that they act and operate is probably a reflection of the way that they're making policy and how they're negotiating with colleagues to reach across the aisle or not.

Right.

If you're someone who's not willing to, you know, be, kind of sympathetic if you're not willing to, you know, be expressive and to be apologetic, then, the likelihood is that you're probably in a great partner for like, a legislative outcome.

So that definitely is a sort of signal that we should use.

And as you know, citizens, we should understand what that means.

So I think scandal are actually good in that way.

And the question is, you know, can we remedy this?

Is there any way in which we can sort of see that, you know, people can be convinced that a scandal is a problem and that a politician caught in these kinds of episodes need to be held accountable.

Is there any way that that can work?

Can we bring shame back?

I guess maybe isn't one different way of putting it.

I don't know.

I mean, I think the genie is out of the bottle, and it's very difficult to put it back.

[Yeah.]

And I think that generational speaking also, you know, the kind of, of, of what matters to different generations is also important for how you define it.

[Yeah.]

So for, you know, young people, X, Y, or Z may be like a non-issue.

[Yes.]

For older folks like you, might be, another important issue.

If I wasn't so frail, I would shake my cane at you.

From old age.

But I see what you mean, actually is a great point, because, look, you know, scandals are, you know, culturally determined in some ways.

I mean, you make a great point about the way that other countries handle these things, like that's something that, you know, is on a scale, right?

Like some things maybe culturally aren't as problematic as they are here.

People are more permissive about certain kinds of things than we are here, but you certainly are going to see a new brand of scandal come out.

Right.

So, for instance, the digital world now has, footprint of a person that is Brian, just kind of where things were like, for instance, you know, the governor of Virginia got, kind of ensnared in a scandal where he survived, but he had basically donned blackfac when he was in medical school.

[Right.]

It's in a yearbook.

Right.

And yearbooks, like, you know, are just really sort of minimal, right?

It's not like just pictures of everything that happened.

But now people have pictures of everything that happened.

[Right.]

And there's a digital marker of, like, you making comments on social media.

Right.

So for the kind of next generation of scandals, do you think that those are going to be things that people are more or less permissive of?

So in the past, people forgive these scandals where they say, well, yeah, okay.

That's something that, you know, is no longer complicated, no longer problematic.

But in the future, you have a tattoo on your face, or you used illegal drugs i a place that was at that point not illegal, but now is legal.

So how do you see the way that the kind of cultural shift is going to change the scandals?

I think it's going to be very fluid and it's going to be given, you know, the flavor of the day.

Yeah.

And and that's going to depend on what is trending on social media, what is not trending on, you know, who's running for office, who's not running for office, and the overall context and the overall environment.

Yeah, I think that depends also on how people interpret it in, in terms of personal conditions.

Right.

Yeah.

If a scandal is something that aligns with something that you are suffering, experiencing or whatnot, or you feel, you know, basically grief, about that scandal, then your reaction is going to be something.

[Interesting.]

And if you're saying like, whatever, I don't care.

[Yeah, yeah.]

Like, like fly out, whatever.

I have all the things to worry about.

Yeah.

Then whatever personal situation of this individual, you know, mingling with these X, Y or Z.

That's a great point.

And as people become more kind of culturally attuned to what's going on, they may kind of minimized, the way that that is problematic.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

One of the things I also find in my work is that that, you know, civic education matters.

The people who have more education, people who have more information about politics, those two things separate, does tend to minimize the, people's desire for scandal.

So it's called like Schadenfreude.

It's a German term that basically means taking pride and pleasure in other people's misery.

Right.

So like, you want people to suffer because I like to see that.

[Yeah, yeah, yeah.]

This i like all of reality TV, right?

Right.

Do you think, like, this is basically the reason people are watching this?

Because they love to watch other people, like, squirm.

They love to watch them in misery.

And so the one kind of common question that people ask on this is like, you know, do you like it when opponents are caught in these kinds of scandals?

And so people who are more likely to answer that or less likely to have a formal, more formal education and less likely to have more information, the people who have more information and more education are less likely to say they want that to happen.

So in a way, we can kind of fix that, right?

Civic education is something that we're woefully bad at in this country.

We have to do better.

[Yeah,.]

Right.

The amount of time that we spend on STEM and on, you know, physical education is really important, but we cannot limit and we cannot look over the importance of having civic education as part of it.

So that's one thing we can do.

Another is have more friends.

What I ask people is whether or not they have friends of the opposition party, right.

How many friends of Democrats, are Republicans.

[Right.

Right.]

And the more friends that a person has, the more likely they are to say that scandals are bad.

They're problematic, so they don't want to see their kind of punitive political opponents caught in these scandals.

If they have people who they know who.

Like, you know, kind of friendly with these politicians.

So, yeah, that can matter to.

Yeah.

And the common denominator those two potential solutions, my dear sir, is that they establish a threshold, right?

They establish a societal threshold, whether it's through personal relationships or through education that allows people to have a floor.

[Yeah.]

Of saying this is good.

This is bad.

[Yeah.]

That, you know, with social media or lack of civic education, we don't have.

Social media is a big factor to people who are more likely to use social media, are more likely to say they want to see politicians [Absolutely.]

And there is a kind of, there is a kind of, you know, selection effect there, right, where people who are trolling social media all the time, like, want to see that fight.

They want to see, like the memes where, you know, JD Vance, his head is really big and looks like a big Garbage Pail kid.

You know what I mean?

But that's a problem, right?

The good news is, like I said, yeah, that can be kind of minimized at least.

The other is that, you know, the it's certainly the case that the parties can serve as guardrails for this.

They do a lot of the kind of culling of the candidates.

And so they could do a much better job at basically making sure that the politicians they put up are less likely to have these kinds of scandalous issues.

If that's possible, then they can at least weed out some opportunities for people to, you know, present their mischief as being a plus, which only erodes people's faith in democracy.

The other is that we know, too, that certain kinds of laws will limit scandal.

So disclosure laws are a big factor at the state level in terms of limiting the amount of scandals that happen.

The more of those there are like disclosing gifts, disclosing how much like, you have spouse income, like there's a range of these different laws.

The more of these there are at the local level, the more likely it is that scandals are reduced.

So good government matters here.

And I think that's another kind of factor we can use to basically try to limit when these things pop up.

Yeah.

For example the Texas Legislature has been very concerne about that.

Some of the bills, that we discuss, last week where these, Make Texas Great and Healthy Again and Senator Kolkhorst has in, in, in the her bill, you know, has implicated that if you want to be membe of these nutrition commission, you cannot own more than 3% of that stake on things related to nutrition.

Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, exactly.

That's perfect.

This is the very own definition of avoiding conflict of interest and therefore avoiding scandals.

So true.

Yeah.

At the end of the day, honestly, it's still the people that have to be the voice that is reasonable on this.

And that's hard because.

Yeah okay.

Yeah I mean sure, they're the ones who are the ultimate arbiters of this right now.

Politicians won't step aside, parties won't police them.

The media can only cover so much like we've left all of the institutional capacity that we have.

And now to the voters choice, they have to make a choice like, do I trust this person to do a job?

[Exactly] And I'm not saying that, you know, a person who's involved in scandal can't do a good job, but the fact is that we are the last line of defense here.

So people have to be aware and cognizant of just what that means.

Like, what does this actually mean in a in the context of how people govern.

So a careful, I think, sober assessment of that is really what people should be.

Well, not only that, an assessment, but also taking it seriously is our civic responsibility to help politicians, kind of, because that is the basis of a, represented, democracy to hold these politicians accountable.

So true.

Yeah.

But that's going to be something that we're definitely going to discuss in the next couple of weeks.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And, Im Brandon Rottinghaus.

Thanks for joining us.

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