When major scandals like Teapot Dome or Watergate shook the nation, Congress responded with sweeping structural reforms—from expanding investigative powers to creating independent ethics bodies and special counsels.
Those fixes worked because there was a broad, shared agreement across the public and political spectrum that a line had been crossed.
Today, with the state of our tribalism, we face a very different problem: We no longer have national consensus on what constitutes a crisis.
In this preview clip from tomorrow’s episode of Outrage Overload, historian Alex Lovit breaks down why the traditional playbooks for post-scandal reform may no longer hold up—and why that structural stalemate is a reason for concern.
Watch the preview above, and subscribe to catch the full conversation dropping tomorrow.
