What bothers me about this line of thinking is its suggestion that because corruption is common, observers and interested parties should do nothing about it and remain uncritical towards abuses of power.
In particular, it discourages criticism in partisan ways: "Your politicians did it so our politicians should be able to do it. Everyone is corrupt so what are you complaining about?" When partisan ideology normalizes corruption all you end up with is more corruption.
Is an implicit comparison between X & an unstated Y
1. Linguistically speaking, humans tend to save energy. Every utterance is designed to provide new information, to describe what is different from the norm. Going on a rant on how this administration suffers of problems a, b, and c, weakly implies that other administrations suffer much less of problems a, b, and c. Otherwise it would be common knowledge that all administrations suffers of problems a, b, and c roughly in the same degree, and why bother wasting time repeating common knowledge?
2. Arguments that focus specifically on one administration, carefully avoiding anything that could be construed as a negative reflecting onto opposing party administrations, come across as partisan. It is the hallmark of the USA media environment that most what we hear in the political news is technically true, but carefully curated to further one of the major two narratives. Also known as "information bubble". "Democrats: saviors, Republicans: evil" OR "Democrats: corrupt, Republicans: straightshooters".
If we truly are to move past partisan criticism, it is on us to fairly depict deplorable behavior on both side of the aisle, regardless of our own political leanings. Otherwise, we risk engaging in the usual half-blind partisan discourse that is tearing this country apart.
However, when you claim that your own party is the bastion of righteousness and the only possible solution because the other party does bad things that you do as well, it undermines your argument.
People fundamentally want government that's fair.
Corruption is bad, period. There's no "someone else did it" get-out-of-jail card.
Also, why didn't we hear all these accusations of corruption against Obama during this presidency? I heard tons about Benghazi, and Fast and Furious, both of which were epic screw-ups that deserved a strong response, but nothing about this supposed corruption. I find it hard to believe that the GOP Congress was willing to let a little corruption go during the Obama presidency.
I even agree with the assessment that GOP during Obama years would certainly cry foul if there was even a perception of inapproriety. Frankly, it kinda was their job to be a check ( though I would argue that they failed then as well ).
There is a but coming. But, Obama had a decent team, which kept unapproved leaks from surfacing, had a cover from friendly media so even if there was something there, it was tightly held under wraps.
Now compare it to current administration where everyone is out to leverage their current position for something better in the future ( book deal, friendly energy company or just extra business for your daughter ).
I guess what I am saying is, Obama, HRC, Biden et al are just waaaaay better at covering their tracks.
One problem with diminishing enforcement is that whenever you DO pursue enforcement action, it will inevitably look extremely political.
As an outsider (I'm Canadian), it seems to me that the left-wing of America invented "whataboutism" because their hypocrisy is off the charts.
>It is the type of excuse you expect from an elementary school child.
The idea that you criticize someone for something you yourself are doing is something I'd expect of a child.
Anyone crying "that's whataboutism!" in the face of their blatant hypocrisy.
I'm not talking about justifying corruption because the other guys do it. But I am talking about things like holding up bills, or filibusters, or whipping the vote, or leaking information, or any other of a multitude of things that one party always seems to lose their mind when it happens like it's never happened before.
One party uses something as a political strategy one year, then the next year cries foul like the Union is coming undone when the other side does the same thing. It's stupid.