political chaos
It’s pretty unusual to see even one seat being contested in the Senate. Now there are two:
And of course the WSJ opinion page is the place to say it plainly:
The Journal is basically right, though. I’ve been watching the recount, if not as closely as I’d like, and it’s been odd how Franken manages to scrape together a few more votes every step of the way. Not to say that the Republicans wouldn’t do such a thing, of course. There’s no mechanism to declare an election to be within the margin of error, so close races like this go to whoever controls the election machinery. Or the Supreme Court, as the case may be.
In addition to two Senate fights, there’s a governor who’s been arrested for selling influence (and earlier trying to sell one of the Senate seats now at stake), and another governor just withdrew from consideration for a cabinet position because of a similar corruption probe:
And of course we can all remember the laundry list of politicos who have gone down over the last couple of years, mainly for sex scandals but also for old-fashioned corruption. So are there more of these cases lately, at least at the higher level? Could increased public scrutiny or an increased propensity for dirty tricks be bringing more such stories to light? Or am I noticing them more because I’m fixated on political strife and discord these days?
If any of you know a good resource for tracking and comparing past political scandals, I’d love to know about it.
Comments
I think whenever there is an increased level of public dissatisfaction with the government, the public tends to scrutinize their dear leaders a little more. But I don’t think there is ever really any more or less nastiness going on, (politicians are perennial douchebags) just varying levels of complacency about it. Most of the time senators are doing shady deals with lobbyists/hookers while the economy is good, so no one really cares. But now, people are looking for reasons why things are so horrible, so they blame the politicians for their woes, rather than the social/political/economic systems that caused said woes in the first place. I could probably ramble on about this for way too long, but I’ll stop now.
As far as resources for tracking political scandals, my answer is: google that shit. Also, books.
[...] (via Dysnomia) [...]