The trend toward ever-higher official conduct norms was best discussed in the 1964 essay, “The Purity Potlach”, by Bayless Manning, the Dean of Stanford Law School:

To the extent that our politics partake of the nature of a Morality Play, they have inevitably required, an generated, a set of theatrical conventions as arbitrary, and as acceptable, as thonse of any dramatic form. The vocabulary of our politics conforms to its role as a national Morality drama. That vocabulary of our politics conforms to its role as a national Morality drama. That vocabulary is formal, dogmatic, simplified, symbolic, repetitive and goal-setting; it is not descriptive and should not be thought of as being descriptive. And the actors in the political drama must, as in epic drama, appear as more than life-size, establishing, declaring, and appearing to live in accordance of standards that are not of this world. We therefore demand ultimate moral pronouncements from our parties and officials.