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Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator –Thursday January 29, 2026

Published at Politico. Counterpoint on Substack. 

Scandal Carousel: The Teflon Politics of Forgetfulness

From afar, the United States can look less like a steady republic and more like an endless reality show: scandal, spectacle, outrage — then forgetfulness. What appears as chaotic domestic politics is not merely dysfunction; it increasingly reads as a deliberate modus operandi. The recent Minneapolis ICE debacle — two people shot dead on American streets, captured on phones and broadcast across the globe — should be a turning point. Yet from this distance it risks joining a long parade of outrages that flare briefly before being eclipsed by the next provocation.

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Call it “Teflon” politics: a leadership style in which controversy sticks only long enough to dominate headlines, rarely long enough to produce durable consequences. The pattern repeats: escalate to seize attention, then retreat or repackage when accountability looms, while a steady stream of fresh provocations prevents public focus from concentrating long enough for institutions to act. The consequence is cumulative impunity — a mounting ledger of offences that exhausts both critics and the mechanisms meant to constrain power.

Seen internationally, the pattern is both striking and concerning. Reports of clandestine plots involving Nicolás Maduro, theatrical maneuvers over Greenland and trade, repeated criticisms of NATO allies, speeches alienating international partners, hostility toward Canada, and inconsistent dealings with Iran highlight a troubling trajectory. Coupled with the earlier mishandling of a pandemic that, above all other outrages, should have barred Trump from power — each episode is distinct yet follows the same arc. Despite extensive global coverage, these issues are often overshadowed by new controversies before thorough investigations can occur.

That makes Minnesota different in degree, not destiny. This was not an overseas misstep or an abstract policy failure; it was the killing of residents on U.S. soil, witnessed and recorded by neighbours. The immediacy of those images should make them harder to dismiss. Yet the same playbook applies: officials step back from the spotlight, enforcement disperses to less visible places, and global attention inevitably drifts elsewhere. The tactic is clear — move coercion into the margins where it can continue to operate with minimal scrutiny.

If outsiders are to draw any lessons, three are essential.

First, public memory is not a substitute for institutional action. International outrage or headline shock does not translate into accountability; that requires courts, legislatures, investigators, and durable civic pressure.

Second, documentation and transparency are crucial. When enforcement happens in view — filmed, named, litigated — the world notices and pressure builds. When it is diffuse and concealed, abuses persist.

Third, democratic resilience is procedural as well as moral. Elections matter, but so do the institutions that enforce limits: independent judiciaries, a free press with capacity to follow through, and local authorities empowered to resist unlawful federal overreach.

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From abroad, the risk is not merely that Americans forget. It is that the United States normalizes a politics in which spectacle substitutes for governance and evasion replaces accountability — and that normalization reverberates globally. Democracies elsewhere should watch closely: the erosion of constraint in a country as consequential as the U.S. is not merely a domestic tragedy; it is an international one.

Weariness is part of the method. But exhaustion cannot be allowed to be the final outcome when government violence kills its own people. The images from Minneapolis demand more than passing indignation; they demand institutions that remember and act. If the world’s democracies fail to insist on that same standard, the lesson will be stark: spectacle can trump accountability everywhere.