From Watergate to White Noise

Each revelation is serious on its own. Taken together, they are staggering. What is more unsettling than the stories themselves is how little reaction they produce. They land on the front pages of the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, or Reuters. They spark outrage for a few hours on cable news or social media. And then they vanish. No special prosecutors, no bipartisan inquiries, no resignations. The system absorbs them and moves on.

This is the deeper scandal. The allegations matter, of course, but the absence of appetite to investigate them matters even more. In a functioning democracy, credible stories of billion-dollar conflicts of interest or policy-driven profiteering would automatically trigger hearings. Regulators would be under pressure to act. Courts would reaffirm their independence. Instead, in today’s America, institutions that once defined accountability seem paralyzed.

Congress has become more theatre than oversight. Hearings are stage-managed for partisan soundbites rather than for fact-finding. Regulators hesitate or retreat. The Justice Department disbanded its crypto enforcement team [5]. Enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was paused [6]. Watchdogs that once embodied America’s global leadership on anti-corruption now look toothless. The press still does its job, publishing story after story, but even the White House press room feels quieter, with fewer opportunities for journalists to press for answers. And the judiciary, reshaped by political appointments, is perceived as partisan, which undermines the credibility of its rulings whether fair or not.

The danger is normalization. A scandal that is punished is a scandal that reaffirms democratic values. A scandal that is tolerated, explained away, or simply ignored ceases to be a scandal at all. It becomes part of the background noise. And when that happens repeatedly, as it has in recent years, corruption stops being an aberration. It becomes expected.

The consequences reach far beyond Washington. The world watches closely. Allies who once treated the United States as a model of transparency now see tariffs and sanctions wielded like bargaining chips. They watch U.S. presidents post comments that swing stock prices and wonder whether the markets are still fair. They read about family members monetizing diplomatic connections into billion-dollar funds and conclude that access, not rules, is what matters. Adversaries gloat that the U.S. has lost the moral authority to lecture others about corruption or the rule of law. And they have a point.

This is not without precedent. History shows that corruption scandals can shake democracies to their core. Watergate revealed how far a president was willing to go to protect his power, and it also proved that institutions could rise to the occasion. The system did not collapse. Congress investigated. Courts enforced subpoenas. A president resigned. The lesson of Watergate was not simply that corruption existed, but that the United States still had the capacity to police itself. That capacity was what set it apart from many other nations.

The current pattern tells a different story. The scandals are bigger in scale—billions rather than millions, global policy rather than wiretaps—but the system’s reflex to respond is weaker. Instead of investigations, there are counter-shouts. Instead of bipartisan outrage, there is partisan paralysis. Instead of accountability, there is silence.

This silence has costs. It erodes trust inside the United States, where citizens conclude that the rules are different for the powerful. It erodes credibility abroad, where allies and investors begin to see America as just another transactional power. And it erodes the foundations of democracy itself, which depends not on perfect leaders but on institutions that react when leaders abuse their office.

It is tempting to dismiss each revelation as just another headline in a noisy media environment. But that is precisely how normalization works. One scandal is shocking. Ten scandals create fatigue. A hundred scandals become the wallpaper of political life. Citizens turn the page, not because they no longer care about corruption, but because they no longer believe anything will be done about it.

The question now is not whether every story is true in its every detail. Some may be exaggerated. Others may fall apart under scrutiny. But many are credible, documented by the most cautious and respected outlets in the world. The deeper question is why such stories, when they pile up in such volume, no longer automatically trigger the machinery of accountability. Why Congress does not insist on hearings. Why regulators do not enforce. Why courts do not reassert their independence. Why the instinct to investigate has gone missing.

A democracy cannot survive on elections alone. It needs the immune system of checks and balances, the reflex to defend its own integrity. If that reflex is gone, then the United States is not only at risk of corruption. It is at risk of something worse: the normalization of impunity. Once impunity is normal, the difference between a democracy and a kleptocracy is not as large as Americans might wish to believe.

The world’s perception of America is changing fast. The corruption index will eventually record the slide, but the index is only a symptom. The real story is unfolding in plain sight: a country where the press keeps uncovering scandals, but where institutions no longer react to them. A country that once set the standard for accountability but now looks unable, or unwilling, to hold power to account. The lesson of this moment is stark. The problem is not only what is happening. The problem is that nothing happens after.