>Why did we have to go through all this pain. Was that really necessary?

Because the United States government is so grossly dysfunctional that a blatant real world re-enactment of Wag the Dog[1] has gone off without a hitch. "Without a hitch" in the "distract from the President's rape of a child" sense of the original film, of course.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog