Beyond Scandal

The 2024 presidential campaign invites a sense of realism.

Every presidential campaign opens with a controversy and closes with a scandal. Faced with this prospect, some observers feel disgust, others stoically accept it as the way of the world, and still others approach it with a Machiavellian delight. They see mudslinging and coarseness as the substance that drives great political drama. 

The 2024 presidential election, between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, is no different. Vice President Harris began her political career through a high-profile affair with the powerful San Francisco politico Willie Brown. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, cheated on his first wife with their children’s nanny, whom he subsequently impregnated. Harris’s running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, has embellished his military service to the point that some critics have accused him of “stolen valor.” And since becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Harris has changed her positions on multiple issues. 

These scandal archetypes were once enough to torpedo, or at least damage, presidential campaigns of men like Gary Hart and John Kerry. No longer.

Former president Trump, too, has survived a protracted sequence of personal scandals. His romantic life has splashed through the tabloids for decades, with multiple marriages, accusations of infidelity and womanizing, and an alleged tryst with a pornographic actress. His political scandals as president included impeachment; after leaving the White House, they have included indictment, arrest, and conviction—incidents with no historical precedent.

And yet, Trump endures. He has refashioned his criminal conviction, even his scowling mugshot, as the inciting incident for a comeback narrative. Likewise, Harris has trampled the negative stories beneath her feet and presented herself as a defender of democracy. Trump surpassed his scandals through strength of personality; Harris, through the power of the national media. 

What is the significance of this shift in political life? A moralist might argue that we have entered a period of ethical collapse. The old Christian standard no longer holds, it would seem. There is another possibility, however: maybe we have abandoned moralistic pretense and entered a period of greater realism. 

This might not be such a discontinuity. As a class, politicians have never been moral paragons. They have always used scandal as a tool. The presidential campaign between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams was among the most sordid in American history. Even Cicero, in his campaign for consul, solicited advice from his brother, who advised him to tarnish his opponents with sex scandals.

In other words, maybe we have simply stopped pretending. Perhaps this campaign points to an alternative method of evaluation, in which political candidates are judged according to a calculation of public interests, rather than personal ethics. After all, some recent presidents who demonstrated a commitment to personal ethics—say, Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush—did not preside over notably successful administrations. 

It should surprise no one that the lives of men and women who desire political power do not always conform to the dictates of private morality. We might expect them to be discreet, but we cannot expect them to be angels.

In this election, no one should expect innocence. Partisans will stir outrage against the opposition and gently absolve their own. This is the essence of political theater. But once the actors have taken their bows and the spotlights have cooled, the public will have to make a judgment based on issues of enormous magnitude: economics, migration, crime, trade, and war. Viewed in this light, a payment to a smut star or an affair in San Francisco seem less significant.

I can’t tell anyone the precise formula for making this choice. When Americans cast their ballots, they will find themselves alone with their consciences. But I might suggest that the scandals of this campaign do not indicate a clear moral choice. Partisans might rationalize it as such, but dispassionate voters will see the election as one that invites a sense of realism.

Fortune often leaves us in a bind, offering us four possibilities: a good man who does good; a good man who does evil; a bad man who does good; a bad man who does evil. The first and the last offer an easy, black-and-white choice. The second and third are much more difficult—and much more common. They are almost always the reality from which we must make our choice.  

The only imperative is to assess honestly—and choose accordingly.

This article was originally published in City Journal.