Photo of Brandon Rottinghaus — Brandon Rottinghaus(brandonrottinghaus.com)

Politics has become more partisan and aggressive in recent years, but has that had an effect on how political scandals play out? This week, Grant Reeher talks with Brandon Rottinghaus, who says that it has. Rottinghaus is a political science professor at the University of Houston, the host of "Party Politics" on Houston Public Media, and the author of "Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era."

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Brandon Rottinghaus. He's a political science professor at the University of Houston and the co-host of "Party Politics" on Houston Public Media. He's with me today because he has a new and timely book out. It's titled "Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era." Professor Rottinghaus, welcome to the program.

Brandon Rottinghaus: Hey, thank you for having me.

GR: Well, we really appreciate you making the time, so let me just start with a question that gets at your title there. Basic question about the book. Obviously, political scandals have been around as long as politics has been around. But has there been some kind of historic, recent historical inflection point in scandals, in how they play out? Where things began to turn that caught your eye?

BR: Scandals are definitely an indicator of our politics, in some ways a lagging indicator. The kind of things that are affecting American politics also affect scandals. So to answer your question very bluntly, polarization is really the biggest driving factor in terms of changing the way that we see scandals and the less impact that they have over time. So the premise of the book is, in part, that scandals appear less damaging in a polarized era. Politicians ranging from Trump to Santos, who survive these kinds of behaviors that would have basically ended careers years ago, the partisan identity that people have basically shields politicians, even amid very serious criminal indictments or wrongdoing that's been discussed. So really it's about polarization. But it of course, is got tendrils around all kinds of other related incidents and things that are affecting our politics, like our siloed media environment or, just a kind of new age of politician who doesn't have the same degree of shame because they've seen lots of scandals come and go and understand that surviving them is a mix of, guile and media strategies, and a lot of other things. So in a nutshell, basically, the thing that's affecting politics more broadly is also affecting the lessened impact of scandals.

GR: Remember, in the McCarthy era, there was, I forget which senator or other political figure, put this question to McCarthy. “Have you no shame, sir?” I guess I guess the answer now is no, I don't. Well, you've brought into the conversation here a bunch of things that I wanted to follow up with you on. So you've kind of set the terms for how we're going to talk here. But we have talked about political polarization on this program many different times with different authors. It always helps, I think, though, just give a super quick thumbnail description of what we mean when we say political polarization.

BR: Yeah. There are really two things I think at work. And these are kind of political sciencey explanations, but they've got roots in the way that people think about each other and how they interact with the bigger political system. One is motivated reasoning, where people effectively believe what they want to believe, and even if they are convinced of something by someone else, or they have alternative information, they still believe what they believe. So that's where partisanship thrives. It's like a germ that, if you cover it and keep it warm, it will continue to grow. And so people, once they believe something, it's hard to get them to unbelieve it, or they're willing to find things in the world in news, in the conversations with people that basically already support what they believe. So that's one.

GR: Confirmation bias.

BR: Yeah, precisely. And the other is just a kind of sense of tribalism in politics. And people call it in the field affective polarization, that I don't like you because you're of a different political party from me. There are actually lots of real-world examples of this that aren't about politics. It works for sports. It works for race and ethnicity kind of bias. So there are a lot of ways that this kind of motivated reasoning, and and this of affective polarization will work together to reinforce partisanship, but effectively, people are retreating to their own camps, and that hyper partisanship is creating a moment where politicians can retreat to their base and basically survive a scandal they didn't years ago or wouldn't have years ago.

GR: I was thinking of this topic in part, more as it's sort of a general cultural thing, and we'll come back to the polarization lens and the other specific political factors for this. But I was thinking, as I was reading through your book, is there a particular moment in time where, at least in my lifetime, it felt like something changed, and I wanted to run this by you. The one that I came up with was Bill Clinton's scandal during the primaries in 1992 with the Gennifer Flowers affair. And I remember at the time, the expectation among my colleagues was that Clinton would back out of the race. He’d drop out. He didn't. He ultimately survived at a very famous, thing he said to the New Hampshire primary voters. He'd be “with them till the last dog died.” Would you pick that, or is there other, is there one moment that kind of stands out to you where it begins to feel like something shifts?

BR: That's a really great point. And I think that's a moment that you're certainly seeing a lot of that change in the book and in other scholarship. I use the 90s as a kind of cut point for a politician, so it makes sense to basically have it as the pre- and post-moment. I do think that the moment that preceded it is as important as the moment you describe. The moment that preceded it was Gary Hart being essentially be in the middle of a scandal where he was reported to have an affair, and as a married man, and it was a media feeding frenzy. It ultimately didn't show anything definitive, but it definitely suggested that the scandals that are affecting people are now really killing careers. But a short four years later, you have Bill Clinton surviving what was more or less the same kind of scandal. Part of it was about his own initiative. Part of it was the politics of that moment allowed it to happen. But I think you're exactly right to pinpoint that as one of those pivot points. And, to be able to see what that transition looked like from a prior scandal, to me, also was telling, because these scandals aren't isolated, they don't exist in a vacuum. They're all building on each other. And so politicians recognize that other people have been in similar situations, and they've used a certain kind of playbook to get out of it. And that really is, I think, the tale of the tape you're seeing scandals really unfold in ways that we hadn't before. And even though the kinds of things politicians do to embarrass themselves, their families tend to be kind of similar. It's still the case that now that they're able to wiggle out of them in ways that they weren't before.

GR: You know, they've you mentioned Gary Hart. This was a situation where the truth is stranger than fiction. On the boat was "Monkey Business" where this supposed to have taken place. And then, as I recall, the woman involved, Donna Rice, went on to make quite a bit of money selling jeans on television. I'm Grant Reeher.

BR: Yes, all about recovery.

GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, somebody was the better for it, I suppose. I'm Grant Reeher, and you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, and my guest is political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. He's published a new book titled "Scandal: Why Politicians Survive Controversy in a Partisan Era." So, just to think about the current era we're in and, basic question on this. If you're a politician, you get caught in one of these. What kinds of responses are currently the most effective? Is it just digging in? Is it ignoring it? Is it attacking your attacker or what? What what do you what do you see people doing?

BR: That's a it's a really good question, and definitely one that gets to the heart of how politicians' strategies have changed. Part of the reason they're able to solve these things and to, to be able to survive these things is that they are effectively using this new playbook. A lot of people look at Donald Trump as being the architect of this playbook, but he is not the only one. There are a lot of authors on this kind of playbook, but in a nutshell, a lot of what happens is that you do see the kind of retreating to the base where politicians will say things like, this other great political force, the opposite of us, the others are trying to get you, but I'm in the way. So a lot of politicians like Matt Gaetz, for instance, use a...