Real scandal about political misdeeds is no one seems to care

Is the career-ending political scandal no longer a thing?

Increasingly, it seems that no scandal is big enough or ugly enough to end a politician’s career or permanently damage the brand of their party.

It was not always so. Does anyone remember Watergate, a political scandal of such enormous scope that it not only brought down a sitting president and a gaggle of his senior staff, but also led to the tradition of attaching the suffix “gate” to the first word of future scandals?

Today, we seem so far away from a time when journalists, and the citizenry cared about scandal.

The best example of this phenomenon is, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump.

Before he was elected for a second term in 2024, Trump was found civilly liable for sexual assault and criminally responsible for financial fraud. During his second term, he has done favours for business associates, exacted personal wealth from companies doing business with government and pardoned supporters guilty of crimes ranging from drug trafficking, fraud, and violent criminal offences including the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Has any of this illegal, immoral and unethical behaviour damaged the Trump brand? Not really.

It’s true Trump’s personal approval is historically low and recent electoral results suggest voters are turning on him. But legal and ethical transgressions do not seem to be an issue for voters.

A Yahoo/YouGov poll released Monday showed Trump’s net approval rating sits at minus-16 (56 per cent disapproval; 40 per cent approval). Respondents said they were unhappy with Trump because he had failed to keep his promise to bring down inflation and make life more affordable.

And what of his legal and ethical failings? It’s hard to say because almost no polling firms ask respondents about that kind of thing.

Most polls ask respondents about how Trump is doing on crime, immigration, health care, government finances, foreign relations and the economy. Remarkably, few questions ask for an opinion on his tendency to reward and forgive supporters, or his shameless attempts to build family wealth using the powers of the presidency.

The lone exception is Trump’s failure to release the FBI investigation files on sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. However, that issue is so unique, it does not fit well into the category of garden-variety ethical transgressions.

It seems as though polling firms have already determined the vast majority of Americans who support Trump have a flexible morality: they are willing to forgive transgressions by a man they believe represents other, more important values.

There are other complicating factors: media literacy and a reluctance to put any faith in legacy journalism; a general lack of awareness about scandals and their often complex narratives; the sense voters assume all politicians are morally and ethically impaired.

Canada has not yet seen a political leader demonstrate Trump’s unbridled unethical audacity. However, there are some recent controversies that raise concerns about whether — like Americans — anyone cares.

The first is the thunderous fall of former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau had more than a few ethical lapses, particularly when it came to accepting free hospitality from powerful people. But Trudeau’s downfall was largely triggered by affordability concerns.

How can we be sure Trudeau’s ethical missteps didn’t play a role? Just a few months after Trudeau stepped down, Canadians elected another Liberal government led by Mark Carney.

In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith is under scrutiny for her personal relationship with an Alberta businessman who has received hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to provide health supplies. A former senior bureaucrat filed a wrongful dismissal suit, claiming she was terminated for raising concerns about the contracts, alleging that officials from the premier’s office pressured her to approve deals she believed were skeevy.

Smith’s popularity has declined but commentators almost universally believe most of the bad vibes are due to her mishandling of the recent provincewide teacher’s strike, where Albertans were way more supportive of the teachers than of government.

In Manitoba, we’ve had our own recent political scandal when former Tory premier Heather Stefanson and two of her ministers were found to have acted unethically in trying to get an environmental licence for an Alberta company’s sand mining operation. Stefanson and her ministers were fined for their misdeeds.

Will there be lasting damage to the Progressive Conservative brand from the Sio Silica scandal? It’s hard to tell right now given the sorry state of that party, its mistakes while governing and because — you guessed it — the sand mine scandal has not warranted a question on an omnibus poll.

Are we numb to allegations against politicians of ethical transgressions? Have we simply stopped reading news about political scandals because we assume that all politicians are scandalous? Do political scandals have narratives that are too complex and arcane to warrant widespread public attention?

Whatever the reason, the disinterest in scandalous behavior of political leaders is, in and of itself, rather scandalous. Call it “couldn’t-care-less-gate.”

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com