For much of the modern era, political scandal operated like a force of gravity: If you broke the rules—if you lied, cheated, self-dealt, or abused your office—the weight of your misconduct would eventually pull you down. Watergate cemented that belief. Iran-Contra reinforced it. The Lewinsky saga—no matter how much Americans disagreed about its meaning—still adhered to the norm that scandal brought consequences.

But today, that sense of moral physics feels increasingly obsolete. The question that once seemed unthinkable—Do scandals still matter?—is now a serious inquiry for scholars, journalists, and voters alike. In the findings of his book Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era, Brandon Rottinghaus suggests a sobering conclusion: Scandal hasn’t died, but its political power has eroded, reshaped by forces that would have been almost unimaginable a generation ago.

Q: Do scandals still matter?

Brandon Rottinghaus: The short answer is yes—just much less than before. Scandals can still end careers, but only under increasingly narrow conditions. Ralph Northam survived photos of himself in blackface. George Santos survived a carnival of lies and a list of criminal allegations long enough to imagine reelection. Donald Trump survived two impeachments, four indictments, and a criminal conviction—and still won his party’s nomination and then the presidency again. These are not anomalies; they are products of a political system in which scandal has become only one ingredient in a far larger partisan stew.

Scandals used to operate on shared cultural assumptions about shame, responsibility, and public trust. They unfolded in a media environment where most Americans saw the same facts and the public that could separate partisanship from wrongdoing. Today, scandals collide with voters who consume different realities, respond to elite cues rather than evidence, and often treat politics as a proxy battle in a larger culture war.

Scandal has not vanished. Rather, it has been absorbed into a landscape where outrage is constant, stakes feel existential, and loyalty to one’s political tribe often overrides concerns about misconduct.

Q: How have scandals changed over time?

Rottinghaus: In earlier eras, a scandal felt like an event. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end—an allegation, an investigation, a reckoning. But the speed of today’s information cycle has turned scandal into something more like background noise. I describe this in my book? as “white noise,” an endless hum of accusations, leaks, and revelations that blur into each other. In such an environment, even serious misconduct competes with a dozen other stories in the same newsfeed.

The rise of partisan media has also rewritten the script. A scandal is no longer simply a breach of trust; it is a narrative weapon. One media ecosystem inflates it into a crisis; another dismisses it as a political hit job. The meaning of the scandal depends less on the misconduct than on who is telling the story.

Even the categories of scandal have shifted. Personal moral scandals—sex, drugs, personal indiscretions—once toppled politicians quickly. Today, they often barely make a dent unless they involve significant hypocrisy or abuse of power. Corruption scandals still carry weight, but not as uniformly as before. And political scandals tied to institutional wrongdoing—Watergate, Iran-Contra, illegal foreign interference, etc.—are now refracted in the public consciousness through partisan filters that determine whether they are viewed as serious misconduct or partisan theater.

Q: What determines whether a scandal actually hurts a politician?

Rottinghaus: It turns out that the decisive factor is not the scandal itself but instead the world around it. A politician’s fate increasingly depends on whether party leaders close ranks or peel away. My book calls this the “partisan shield,” and it has become the most reliable predictor of political survival. If the party stands firm, voters usually do too. If party leaders signal abandonment, the collapse can be swift and terminal.

Timing also matters. A scandal in the heart of an election year, when voters are paying attention, is far more dangerous than one that occurs early in a term. A scandal involving financial corruption tends to stick more firmly compared to one involving personal behavior, unless the personal behavior violates deeply held gender or racial norms. Even the attractiveness of the accused can matter, especially in stories that blend politics with celebrity culture.

And then there is the question of memory. In my book, I highlight an astonishing reality: Americans often forget scandals quickly—and often recall scandals inaccurately. In one national survey, partisans widely misremembered the details of both famous and recent scandals, often in ways that favored their own political side. Scandal is filtered not just through partisanship but also through a kind of political amnesia reinforced by the sheer velocity of modern news.

Q: Why are voters so willing to overlook scandals?

Rottinghaus: In the post-Watergate era, scandals were usually framed as moral breaches. They violated shared expectations about public integrity. But we now live in an age where political identity has taken precedence over moral judgment. Many voters no longer see scandals as statements about character; they instead see them as attacks on their own political communities.

If a scandal harms the other party, it reinforces beliefs about corruption and incompetence. If it harms one’s own party, voters instinctively reach for explanations that absolve the accused: The media is biased, the attack is out of context, the system is rigged.

This is not hypocrisy—it’s psychology. Motivated reasoning shapes how people interpret information; affective polarization shapes how they interpret each other.

Outrage itself has become a political currency. Politicians learned that scandals do not need to be survived quietly. They can be monetized, weaponized, spun into proof that the politician is being targeted for daring to challenge powerful interests. Some of the most successful fundraising days for scandal-plagued politicians occur immediately after indictments or damaging revelations. In today’s politics, scandal can be fuel, not fire.

Q: Can scandals matter again?

Rottinghaus: They can, but not automatically. For scandals to function as genuine accountability tools, three things must change.

First, we need stronger institutions capable of investigating and sanctioning wrongdoing without fear of partisan reprisal. Ethics committees, inspectors general, and independent oversight bodies matter more when partisanship threatens to shield misconduct.

Second, we need a healthier information ecosystem. Local journalism must be revived, media literacy must be strengthened, and voters must have more access to shared facts and fewer incentives to retreat into partisan echo chambers.

Finally, party leaders themselves must reestablish norms that hold their own accountable. Voters oten take their cues from elites. When party leaders defend indefensible behavior, they train their supporters to do the same. When they refuse to tolerate misconduct, they reset expectations for the whole system.

Scandal is not the problem; scandal is the symptom. It reveals where institutions are weak, where norms have decayed, where accountability has frayed. Scandals still hold a mirror up to democracy, and what we see in that mirror tells us more about ourselves than about the politician in question.

The truth is sobering: Scandals will matter again only when we decide they should. Only when we revive shared standards of public integrity. Only when we recognize that accountability is not a partisan weapon but a democratic necessity.

Until then, scandal will remain what it has increasingly become—a spark in a storm, briefly visible, quickly extinguished, and too easily forgotten.