A Sea Change In Political Scandals

Anyone else notice that the world of political scandals has reversed course?

It used to be that you could count on the nature of scandals in politics falling along party lines.

For most of my life, if a Republican was caught in a scandal it almost always had to do with corruption and/or money. Watergate, Iran Contra and all of that were about corruption and money.

The flip side was that the Democrats were all caught with their pants down…literally. From John Kennedy to Gary Hart to Bill Clinton, for years sexual affairs were the order of the day for Democrat scandals.

Now things are different. There has been a sea change in political scandals. A Scandal Paradigm Shift going on for a while now.

For Democrats I cannot pinpoint exactly when the shift began, but it may have started with the whole “Webster Hubbell” deal in the mid 90’s.

Then there was the whole “Illegal Campaign Contributions” from China supporting Al Gore and Bill Clinton.

Then there was Jim Trafficant (financial corruption), Robert Toricelli (illegal campaign contributions), Sandy Berger (removing classified documents), and my personal favorite William Jefferson of Louisiana who had $90,000 in bribe money stashed in his freezer.

For Republicans, I think the shift started after the whole “Lewinsky” deal. It’s almost as if there became a drive by the left to catch Republicans doing the kinds of things they had accused “Slick Willie” of doing.

Newt Gingrich was the first to fall. He was caught having an affair with the girl he eventually married (his 3rd wife, Calista).

Then Strom Thurmond (who was dead) was accused of having an illegitimate child with an African American maid.

And we can’t forget about Mark Foley and his hitting on a congressional page boy.
And now the Governor of South Carolina, who disappeared for a week and thought no one would notice, has been caught. He was busy getting his freak on in Argentina.

I have said repeatedly that now it seems like things have been turned upside down in the past 10-15 years. Like maybe the sun got too hot in the early 90’s or something and we lost our minds. This country is weird and getting weirder by the day and sometimes I don’t even recognize it anymore. For Pete’s sake you can’t even count on politicians to have the same scandals anymore!