Scandals are useful because they focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could.

Indeed scandals can show us the weak points of our society, as the statement above asserts, but at what price? I believe that scandals without the assist of other factors cannot be effective. Furthermore, we should preclude any scandal in the first place rather than using one scandal to preclude the other ones.

To begin with, political scandals come in handy to reveal the problems and loopholes of a society. It acts like a disease, which after rehabilitation, the body of the society gets familiar with the ailment and would be more defensive toward that in the future. Consider Watergate for instance. After President Nixon achieved notoriety, precautionary movements begun to prevent such shameful acts from happening in the future. Afterwards, a modern and more democratic version of the United States of America emerged; Congress passed a series of laws, limiting the power of the president, so that there will be no remaining loophole to abuse by the authorities in the future.

However, In spite of the fact that scandals may possibly result in being useful, yet they are not sufficient enough to reach the conclusion solely; it is only at the moment that some other factors are associated with it that the result will take place. In the case of Watergate scandal, it was a combination of the media, public, legislative system, and the government that altogether used such a scandal as a sign to make a more balanced political system. Media told the people what is going on in their nation. Public pressured the government to be answerable to what it did. Legislative system made the changes to restrict the president, and the President Nixon resigned from the presidency. The positive changes would have not happened by the scandal alone if the other factors were absent.

Finally, scandals are not always useful in making us aware of our problems. There are inherent drawbacks of a scandal, rendering it more damaging than helpful. The main repercussion of scandals is that trust in governments takes a heavy hit. Public disillusion even can get worse to public alienation. In the scandalous manipulation of the statistics by President Ahmadi Nejad, to cover his inaptitude and defects of his four-year presidency, we see that the Iranian people vent their alienation by violent protestations. This event pushes the Iranian government to the brink of collapse and makes many problems for the nation. Therefore, we should preclude any scandalous act to happen in the first place, rather than seeking a solution in the wake of it.

In short, indeed scandals are useful in making us aware of our problems. However, scandals alone cannot be effective unless other factors of a society, as discussed, assist it. Furthermore, scandals have negative impacts which we should preclude them from happening in the first place, not to use them as a lesson not to repeat it.