I think Cuomo is maybe a bad example of why you shouldn't care. The Cuomo affair should hold a lot of interest because it was a true test of the health of public institutions.

Here is a powerful public official who was lauded by the media for his response to COVID, while simultaneously implementing terrible public health policies in old age homes that led to thousands of deaths, who then fudged his COVID reports to the CDC, and passed legislation that shielded executives that managed old age homes from liability for following those terrible public health policies. Other representatives tried to draw attention to these problems but couldn't get traction because Cuomo was a media darling in how he stood up to Trump.

Cuomo's public image was further bolstered by his brother at CNN, and with all this free publicity Andrew signed a multimillion dollar deal to write a book about his career.

But his incompetence and fraud wasn't enough to trigger a fall from grace, it took several sexual harassment complaints.

So as a health check on your democratic republic, I'd be a little worried given the multiple failures up and down the line: failure of the executive to implement sensible policies and report data accurately, failure of the press to check their claims, provide coverage free of conflicts of interest and otherwise keep them executive branches in line, failure of the justice department to prosecute blatant misconduct.