Why Corruption Doesn’t Always End Political Careers
Surviving scandal
A quick note before today’s piece:
We’re getting ready to kick off Season 2 of my private book club and community, Governerds Insider, and we’re almost at capacity. Over the next few months, we’ll read two books together — The View from the East Wing by Jill Biden, and The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali — and talk live with the authors. If you join, you’ll also get access to expert workshops, weekly historical deep dives, and our private Instagram community.
The doors will close as soon as all seats are filled, so sign up now to make sure your spot is secured.
Now, on to today’s piece.
—Sharon
For generations, political corruption followed a familiar script.
A scandal would break. Evidence would emerge. Public outrage would build. And eventually the politician at the center of it would fall — through resignation, pressure from colleagues, or defeat at the hands of voters.
From Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal to the criminal prosecution of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for trying to sell the open Senate seat after Barack Obama’s election to the White House to former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez’s conviction for accepting bribes — including gold bars stashed in his home — in exchange for selling political influence, corruption was treated as unacceptable and disqualifying. A violation of the rules. A reason to remove someone from power and bar them from holding public office again.
That script still exists. But it no longer explains what we’re seeing in all cases of lawmaker wrongdoing.
In today’s politics, scandal, corruption, or wrongdoing doesn’t always end careers. Sometimes, it doesn’t even weaken them. And in certain cases, it can do the exact opposite — reinforcing a politician’s image, strengthening their connection with supporters, and even becoming part of the appeal.
Which raises a deeper question: If corruption is supposed to be politically damaging and potentially disqualifying, why does it sometimes work?
Here, “corruption” isn’t just bribery or envelopes of cash. It’s broader and includes any abuse of public office for personal or political gain. That can mean financial self-dealing, using insider information, sexual scandals, or leveraging power to shield misconduct or avoid consequences. In other words, the kinds of behavior voters are routinely asked to judge, even when they don’t all fit neatly into criminal statutes.
The assumption that no longer holds
The traditional view of corruption rests on a simple assumption: voters won’t tolerate it and will punish it.
For that to happen, voters have to learn about the misconduct, agree that it matters, and conclude that it disqualifies the politician. Only then does accountability follow.
But in the last few decades, each link in that chain has weakened.
Information about corruption (and everything else under the sun) is no longer scarce — it’s constant. Allegations, investigations, and reports of questionable ethics now circulate nonstop, particularly in our social media algorithms. Rather than shocking the system, they often blend together. It becomes harder to distinguish between serious misconduct and routine political attack.
At the same time, partisanship filters how that information is received — much more than in the past. As voters have sorted into more ideologically consistent camps, politics has taken on a sharper us-versus-them dynamic that shapes how people interpret political news. Voters are less likely to accept damaging information about politicians they support and more likely to dismiss it as exaggerated or politically motivated. What once might have produced consensus outrage now produces disagreement over whether there’s anything to be outraged about.
And, perhaps most important, many voters no longer begin from the assumption that the system is clean. If politics is already viewed as rigged, transactional, or corrupt beneath the surface, then individual acts of corruption don’t necessarily stand out as exceptional. They can feel expected, par for the course.
Once that expectation sets in, the political meaning and consequences of corruption begin to change.
When breaking the rules signals competence
In a system perceived as unfair, rule-following can look naïve. Rule-breaking, by contrast, can look like skill.
That inversion helps explain the political resilience of figures like Donald Trump. Across multiple investigations, lawsuits, and controversies, Trump has not simply survived — he has, at times, used those challenges to reinforce his political identity and energize his followers around the idea that he’s being unfairly targeted by “hoaxes” and “witchhunts.”
What’s more, rather than treating legal scrutiny as a liability, Trump has framed it as evidence of effectiveness. Whether the investigations focus on financial crimes, political misconduct, or even sexual assault, the message is the same. The system is corrupt; the fact that it’s targeting him is proof that he’s fighting it successfully, and doing so on behalf of all law-abiding citizens who may soon find themselves wrongfully accused and investigated. “They’re not after me, they’re after you” reframes investigations as a kind of political validation.
For supporters who already trust Trump and distrust institutions, that argument resonates. The scrutiny doesn’t disqualify the politician — it confirms their role as someone willing and able to navigate, and even exploit, a broken system. Donald Trump leaned into this logic as early as the 2016 campaign, arguing that not paying more in federal income taxes simply meant he was “smart,” a reframing that turned what critics saw as avoidance — despite being a billionaire, he only paid $750 in 2016 and 2017 — into proof of competence.
Closer to home, Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, DC, was reelected after serving prison time for possession of crack cocaine. He was buoyed by a coalition of voters who saw him as both effective and unfairly targeted, and his famous line “I may not be perfect, but I’m perfect for Washington” captured something deeper than forgiveness. It reflected identification.
In each case, the alleged or proven misconduct didn’t erase political support. It coexisted with it, and in some cases reinforced it.
The “Catch Me If You Can” effect
Corruption has traditionally been something politicians try to hide. But, increasingly, the boundary between concealment and performance is blurring.
When politicians push against ethical or legal limits and survive, the survival itself becomes part of the message.
It signals power: I can do this, and I’m still here.
It signals resilience: they tried to take me down, and they failed.
It signals insider knowledge: I understand how the system works better than the people trying to enforce it.
That dynamic turns accountability into a kind of test. The question becomes not whether a politician crossed a line, but whether the system can enforce consequences. If the answer is no — or even a yes delayed long enough for the news (and people) to move on — it can strengthen the perception that the politician is operating at a level beyond ordinary constraints.
You can see a version of this dynamic in the ongoing debates over congressional stock trading. Members of Congress from both parties, including high-profile figures like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have faced scrutiny over whether lawmakers should be allowed to trade individual stocks while having access to nonpublic information.
The issue led to the passage of the STOCK Act of 2012, which was designed to limit insider trading by members of Congress. But the persistence of perceptions that lawmakers continue to benefit from informational advantages has fed the broader narrative that the system is rigged.
Even when no law is clearly broken, that perception reinforces cynicism. And in a cynical environment, exploiting the advantages of holding office can look less like corruption and more like competence. Or at the very least, it reinforces the already assumed stance that “everyone is doing it,” so it’s just another day in politics.
The takeaway isn’t that voters approve of corruption. It’s that surviving it — especially in visible ways — can carry its own political and economic value.
Why outrage doesn’t always translate into consequences
If corruption can sometimes help rather than hurt, part of the explanation lies not just with politicians but with the public.
Four dynamics, in particular, help explain why outrage often stalls before it becomes true accountability:
First, partisan filtering. Information about corruption doesn’t land on neutral ground. It is interpreted through political identity. Allegations against one side are more likely to be dismissed as overblown or politically motivated, while similar behavior on the other side is treated as clear evidence of wrongdoing. The result is not shared outrage but competing narratives.
Second, diffuse harm. Most corruption doesn’t produce a single, visible victim. Its costs are spread across taxpayers, institutions, or future policy outcomes. That makes it harder to generate the kind of focused anger that demands political consequences.
Third, information overload. The volume of political information — scandals included — has increased dramatically. New revelations quickly displace old ones. Voters are asked to process more than they can reasonably keep track of, which reduces the staying power of any single controversy.
Fourth, whataboutism. In an environment where both parties can point to examples of misconduct, the conversation often shifts from “Is this wrong?” to “What about [fill in blank with someone on the other side]?” That comparison doesn’t resolve the issue — it neutralizes it.
The result is a kind of equilibrium. Corruption generates attention, but not always consensus. And without broad agreement, the political consequences become less predictable and less achievable.
Corruption as political utility
Taken together, these dynamics help explain a shift that would have been harder to imagine in earlier eras: corruption can have political utility.
It can mobilize supporters, reinforcing a narrative that a politician is being targeted by a hostile system.
It can differentiate candidates, allowing them to present themselves as more aggressive, more effective, or more willing to do what others won’t. And in an environment where all politicians are fighting for attention, focusing on them — even for the wrong reasons — raises their name recognition and pumps up their national brands. This is why you’ve heard of relatively junior lawmakers like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). She didn’t get her huge following because of her legislative accomplishments; it was because of a steady stream of high-profile disruptive confrontations, conspiracy theorizing, and public incidents — including video of her and her date groping each other at a very public performance of Beetlejuice — that raised questions about judgment and conduct. In a crowded political environment, that kind of boundary-pushing can be politically valuable.
And finally, it can build credibility within a cynical electorate, where acknowledging, even embodying, the system’s flaws can feel more honest than pretending they don’t exist.
This doesn’t mean that voters are embracing corruption as a value. It means that, under certain conditions, the signals attached to corruption — power, defiance, insider knowledge — can outweigh the traditional costs.
In that sense, corruption is not just a legal or ethical issue. It’s a political one. Its impact depends on how it is interpreted, framed, and incorporated into a broader narrative about what politics is and how it works.
When corruption still backfires
None of this means corruption or wrongdoing no longer matters. It does, as we’ve seen with recent resignations of lawmakers Eric Swalwell (allegations of sexual assault), Tony Gonzales (affair with a staffer who later committed suicide), and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (under criminal indictment for financial crimes).
But the effects of the misdeeds are at least conditional.
Corruption is still politically damaging when it clearly contradicts a politician’s image, when it produces direct and visible harm, or when the evidence is both overwhelming and widely accepted.
The case of Richard Nixon remains instructive not just because of the wrongdoing itself, but because of the collapse of support that followed. As evidence mounted during Watergate, political allies withdrew, public opinion shifted, and the cost of staying in power exceeded the benefits. (But, don’t forget, Nixon’s resignation didn’t come until August of 1974, over two years after the Watergate break-in occurred. Oh, and he also won reelection in a landslide after the public knew about the break-in.)
Similarly, the prosecution of Rod Blagojevich involved a form of corruption — attempting to sell a Senate seat — that was concrete, easy to understand, and undeniably illegal. The clarity of the misconduct and the irrefutable evidence, including hours of FBI tapes showing Blagojevich was shopping the seat, made it impossible for him to deny or reframe his intent.
These cases highlight important distinctions: not all corruption is equal in political terms, nor does accountability come as quickly as we may wish. The severity of the act matters, but so does its visibility, its simplicity, and its compatibility with the politician’s image.
The system that rewards it
It’s tempting to treat corruption as a problem of individual behavior; a matter of ethics, character, or personal decision-making.
But the patterns suggest something more structural.
Political corruption and wrongdoing are nothing new. They persist because some politicians believe they are above the law and are willing to risk breaking it, calculating that the odds of getting caught aren’t high enough to stop them. But more bluntly, corruption persists because the system doesn’t punish it consistently enough or hard enough.
And in some cases, it does the opposite.
When voters are divided over what counts as corruption, when information is filtered through partisan lenses, and when surviving scrutiny can enhance a politician’s image, the incentives begin to shift.
The question, then, is not simply why politicians are corrupt. At least some of them always have been and always will be. No, the scarier question is why the political system increasingly makes that behavior rational or beneficial.
Until corruption reliably costs politicians power — until it consistently weakens rather than occasionally strengthens them — it won’t disappear. It will evolve, adapt to the incentives around it, and, in certain moments, become something more than a liability. It will become part of the pitch.
 | A guest post by
|