What happened to shame in politics?

April 10, 2026·34 min·2 clips

After 34 felony convictions, Donald Trump told reporters he was 'honored'—a moment that boosted his popularity.

1. On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti examines the decline of political shame through a conversation with academic Carolyn Long. 2. Host Meghna Chakrabarti leads the interview; guest Carolyn Long is an associate professor at Washington State University Vancouver, School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, who ran for Congress in Washington's 3rd Congressional District in 2018 and 2020. 3. The episode asks why politicians face so few consequences for behavior that would once have ended careers, and whether shaming them is an effective corrective. 4. Chakrabarti opens with a detailed account of the June 9, 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, where lawyer Joseph Welch confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy with the line 'Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?' 5. She notes that McCarthy's chief counsel Roy Cohn later became a mob attorney who represented Donald Trump for years and considered Trump his best friend — establishing the episode's through-line from McCarthy to the present. 6. Long explains she first became interested in political shame after her own congressional campaigns, when her opponent repeatedly invoked her husband's pharmaceutical sales career and mentioned her eighth-grade daughter — behavior that violated what Long calls the traditional maxim of not attacking a candidate's family. 7. Long argues the political system now creates perverse incentives: acting shamefully generates massive media attention, which translates directly into fundraising dollars, citing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Congressman Joe Wilson's 'You lie' outburst at President Obama's 2009 State of the Union address. 8. On Trump's response to his 34 felony convictions in the 2024 hush money trial, Long notes Trump did not merely deny wrongdoing but claimed to be 'honored' by the conviction, framing himself as a martyr on behalf of supporters who feel left behind. 9. Long distinguishes guilt — a response to a specific act — from shame, citing Brene Brown's definition of shame as 'an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and unworthy of love or belonging,' with physical symptoms including slumped posture and facial redness. 10. She defines shamelessness as the absence of those emotional guardrails, whether from genuinely lacking the capacity for shame or from calculating that the advantages of the behavior outweigh the emotional costs. 11. Chakrabarti plays audio of President Bill Clinton's 1998 denial — 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky' — followed by his subsequent apology: 'Quite simply, I gave into my shame,' contrasting it with the near-total absence of political apology today. 12. She also plays audio of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's 2008 resignation after a prostitution scandal, in which Spitzer said 'The remorse I feel will always be with me,' noting that both resignation and genuine apology have become vanishingly rare in contemporary politics. 13. A Texas political scientist's study, cited by Long, found that politicians are approximately 25% more likely to survive a scandal today compared to a generation ago. 14. Cultural psychologist Shinobu Kitayama of the University of Michigan argues that American individualism — the belief that external social pressure is a weakness — structurally limits the effectiveness of shame as a behavioral check in ways it would not in Japan's more community-oriented culture. 15. Long adds that while early American colonial life did function more like a shame culture — because community survival depended on shared norms — that declined as classical liberalism and individual pursuit took hold, and today's political tribalism is producing a new, dysfunctional form of shame culture organized around partisan in-groups rather than shared civic values. 16. Long argues that shaming someone who is either genuinely shameless or strategically immune to it produces 'a tremendous backlash' — the shamed person digs in harder, becomes more unlikely to change, and the shaming group becomes more polarized in opposition. 17. She references Cathy McNeil's book The Shame Machine, which distinguishes between 'punching down' — shaming people for things outside their control, which is toxic — and 'punching up' — targeting institutions like Purdue Pharma or elected officials, which can be more effective. 18. The episode has a research-interview format; Chakrabarti draws on prepared historical audio clips and studies to structure each segment, and Long responds with academic framing drawn from her own candidacy experience and social psychology literature. 19. Listeners interested in political psychology, the history of congressional accountability, or the mechanics of polarization will find this episode substantive. 20. Listeners seeking partisan commentary, solutions to democratic dysfunction, or anything other than academic analysis may find the episode's conclusions frustratingly inconclusive.

As heard by us

A clear look at how political shamelessness lost its grip.

The piece follows a hard question in American politics: whether shame still matters, from Joseph McCarthy to the broader drift toward shamelessness that now feels ordinary.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want to see why shameless attacks keep winning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti