The comparison is jarring but worth taking seriously: what once toppled a presidency now barely registers as news cycle noise.
When JD Vance suggested recently that Watergate would be treated as minor in today's political moment, he was describing a real shift in the landscape. Nixon's crimes were genuine and documented, not the work of some imaginary institutional conspiracy. But the context around how voters and media digest scandal has fundamentally changed.
The fractured information environment bears much of the blame. In the 1970s, most Americans watched the same three network newscasts and read newspapers with genuine reach. A scandal built momentum through shared reality. Now, voters inhabit separate media universes entirely. What constitutes a disqualifying revelation to one segment of the electorate barely penetrates another.
Trump's political durability despite a stream of controversies has also dulled the country's scandal reflexes. Repetition breeds numbness. Each new story competes with the last in an endless scroll, and voters have learned to absorb instability as simply part of the political baseline rather than an aberration demanding action.
Vance's observation, then, isn't necessarily wrong. It's a diagnosis of where we actually are, not an endorsement of where we should be. The machinery that once held presidents accountable has rusted. Whether that's cause for concern or resignation likely depends on which side of the current divide you occupy.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Vance identified a real problem, but naming the disease isn't the same as accepting it as inevitable."
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