Corruption in Context
Ninety-six political-wrongdoing episodes across fifteen U.S. presidencies and four international calibration leaders, scored on ten axes and openly framed. Click any point below to see the scoring.
Where I sit, before where I stand
These scores reflect a constitutional-conservative frame. It is not a claim to objectivity — there is no such thing on questions like these, and pretending otherwise buries the editorial judgments a reader most needs to see. The frame is disclosed at the top so you can disagree with specific scores rather than dismiss the exercise.
- Structural principles are real principles. Separation of powers, federalism, checks and balances, and limits on federal power are things a president can violate structurally, not merely procedurally. A structural offense is a real offense even when no statute is broken.
- People's Law over Ruler's Law. Power belongs local and regional by default. Concentrating power at the top, or dissolving checks, scores as structural wrong regardless of the policy goal being served.
- Accountability without favoritism. Punishment fits the crime. Selective non-prosecution scores as high as selective prosecution — a system that refuses to charge powerful friends is as broken as one that reverse-engineers charges against powerful enemies.
- The attempt reveals the disposition. Structural offenses score high on Actor axes even when they fail. Court-packing failed because Congress refused. The 2020 electors gambit failed because Pence and state officials refused. The frame scores the attempt.
- Symmetric application. The frame is designed to sharpen scoring against structural assaults from any direction. When it hurts a figure the frame is sympathetic to, apply it anyway. When it hurts a figure the frame is unsympathetic to, apply it anyway.
What the frame does not do: decide which policies are good, which political program should win, or who is right on the merits of a given controversy. It scores how power was used, not what for. A reader operating from a different frame — progressive-institutionalist, legal-positivist, realist — would score some incidents differently. That is where honest disagreement belongs.
The scoring
Each point is one incident. Horizontal position is how much wrong the actor did. Vertical position is how dirty the surrounding legal-process environment was. Both axes are shown as percent of the maximum possible score for that incident, so opposition and deep-state wrongness carry the same visual weight as actor wrongness. Click a point for the full scoring and rationale. Filter and sort with the controls below the chart.
Ruler's law · lawfare
Both-and
Non-scandal
Genuine accountability
How to read the chart
Shape
- Circle — ruler-vs-subject: the actor moves against private targets.
- Square — ruler-vs-ruler: the actor moves against another officeholder.
- Diamond — citizen-vs-subject: private-status incident scored for context.
Size
- Small — evidence quality Low.
- Medium — evidence quality Medium.
- Large — evidence quality High.
Fill
- Filled — impunity: no institutional accountability followed.
- Hollow — some institutional accountability followed (impeachment, prosecution, resignation, court reversal).
Position
- X axis (5–25): Actor-side wrong — sum of Underlying Wrong, Enrichment, Malice, State-Power Abuse, Obstruction.
- Y axis (2–16): Process-side wrong — Selectivity + Regulatory Density + Opposition Malice + Opposition Power Abuse.
- Selective non-prosecution scores as high on Selectivity as selective prosecution.
Institutional exposure varies across presidencies — later administrations operated under broader statutory reach, more aggressive oversight, and denser press coverage than earlier ones. Raw incident count is not directly comparable across eras.