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Why does `distutils` seem to be missing or broken? Isn't it part of the standard library?

Sometimes when I try to install a third-party library for Python, I get an error saying that either `distutils`, or some part of it like `distutils.core` or `distutils.util`, could not be found. It's shown as a `ModuleNotFoundError`, so presumably it's coming from Python when it tries to run a `setup.py` script for installation.

I've also seen similar messages when using libraries that were already installed. For example, if I try installing the popular [SpeechRecognition third-party library](https://pypi.org/project/SpeechRecognition/) in Python 3.12, I can [reproduce this bug report](https://github.com/Uberi/speech_recognition/issues/732):

```
Python 3.12.2 (main, Mar 29 2024, 00:26:08) [GCC 9.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import speech_recognition as sr
>>> sr.Microphone()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/path/to/lib/python3.12/site-packages/speech_recognition/__init__.py", line 80, in __init__
    self.pyaudio_module = self.get_pyaudio()
                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/path/to/lib/python3.12/site-packages/speech_recognition/__init__.py", line 111, in get_pyaudio
    from distutils.version import LooseVersion
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'
```

Why do problems like this occur? Isn't `distutils` part of the standard library?

I've heard some suggestions that installing `setuptools` can fix the problem. Why and how does this work?