"}Another great SSC comment:
From Dan Simon this time.
\u201cThere is a common misunderstanding that politicians get embroiled in \u201cscandals\u201d when they say or do embarrassing or appalling things, which result in \u201cpolitical damage\u201d, or even their \u201cpolitical demise\u201d. In reality, the cause-and-effect relationship is the opposite: a politician\u2019s opponents are constantly trying to characterize what he or she says or does as embarrassing or appalling, and the politician\u2019s friends and allies are constantly dismissing these accusations as minor and irrelevant. If the politician is politically strong\u2013that is, if his or her friends and allies are more numerous and powerful than his or her opponents\u2013then the friends\u2019 and allies\u2019 dismissals work, and the accusations don\u2019t stick. Conversely, if the opponents are more numerous and more powerful, then their characterizations win out, and the politician is embroiled in a \u201cscandal\u201d with potentially serious consequences.
Note that the actual nature of the allegedly embarrassing or appalling words or deeds is scarcely relevant\u2013a politician with sufficiently numerous and powerful friends and allies can, say, drive a woman off a bridge to her death and flee the scene without reporting it, without significantly damaging his career, while a sufficiently embattled politician can be utterly destroyed by, say, repeating a sentence too many times in succession during a debate.\u201d