Don’t Hold Your Breath Waiting for New AG to “Drain the Swamp”
Every election cycle, the promise resurfaces: this time will be different. This time, corruption in Washington will finally be rooted out. This time, a new Attorney General will “drain the swamp.”
It’s a compelling idea. It’s also one that consistently collides with how power actually works.
The uncomfortable truth is that anyone expecting a newly appointed Attorney General to aggressively dismantle systemic government corruption is likely setting themselves up for disappointment—not because corruption doesn’t exist, but because the system itself has little incentive to truly confront it.
Before any Attorney General can take office, they must be confirmed by Congress. That means approval from the very institution that would be most affected by any serious anti-corruption campaign.
This is the core contradiction:
the people who would be investigated must first approve the investigator.
Members of Congress—Democrats and Republicans alike—may disagree on policy, ideology, and messaging. But when it comes to preserving institutional power, influence, and the unwritten rules that keep Washington functioning, and the grift flowing.
No serious governing body willingly installs a watchdog that could dismantle its own influence networks.
Publicly, politics is theater—loud, polarized, and constant. Privately, it is often more cooperative, especially when it comes to maintaining the structures that benefit those inside the system.
Lobbying pipelines, revolving-door employment, campaign financing dependencies, and grift are not owned by one party. They are shared features of the system.
That doesn’t mean every politician is corrupt. It does mean that the incentives to not disrupt the system too aggressivelyare bipartisan.
An Attorney General perceived as a true threat to those structures would face enormous resistance during confirmation—quietly, procedurally, and effectively.
The Limits of the Office Itself
Even if a reform-minded Attorney General were confirmed, the job comes with constraints:
Investigations depend on existing laws, which Congress writes
Funding and oversight come from the same political branches
Aggressive action risks political backlash that can weaken or remove leadership
In other words, the role is not designed to operate as an independent crusader. It exists within a web of political accountability that naturally tempers how far it can go.
Hoping for a government insider, approved by other insiders, to fundamentally dismantle the system that elevated them and they profit from is not a strategy—it’s a contradiction.
If history is any guide, the swamp doesn’t get drained from within. It gets managed, reshaped, and occasionally trimmed—but rarely, if ever, uprooted.
So by all means, pay attention to who becomes Attorney General. But don’t expect that appointment alone to change the nature of Washington.
That’s not how the system is built.