I often develop theories. Many of them are wildly off-base or miss some specific point which would completely undermine their validity. Or they're just very obvious but I'm so self-adoring that I believe I'm the first one to have come up with them. Anyway, thanks to the magic of crowdsourcing, I can test them out in public, right here on The Awl! Here's the latest:

If you are a politician whose career has been damaged or derailed by a sex scandal, the period of your rehabilitation is directly correlated to the popularity of your immediate successor.