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“I did not have sexual relations with that woman…”
Yeah. OK, Bill Clinton. I remember your televised remarks, twenty-seven years ago today, the ones you ended with, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”
I guess the dress, and the cigar, and maybe even the young woman, might choose to differ.
Although, perhaps, it all depends on what the definition of “sexual relations” is.
We used to think we knew. Then—a few decades before Clinton—came Jack. And then Martin. And Bobby. And Teddy.
And then Bill.
Over the decades, we became inured to the idea that politicians screwed around. In all the obvious and a few less obvious ways. We even learned that some of our national heroes had feet of clay. Eisenhower and Roosevelt, Kennedy and King, among them. But their sins were discreet and weren’t promoted by the press. And they won WWII and improved civil rights for all, for Pete’s sake. Much could be forgiven them, for that alone.
It wasn’t until the Clinton era that the idea that politicians screwed around with sex not because men are imperfect and susceptible, but for the sake of power and influence, prominently hit the national news, and the emerging Internet news, and when—because of the importance of maintaining the national narrative—the factual details ceased to matter all that much as the prurient details became national obsessions. The dress. The cigar. The stains. The questions. My God, even the deaths.
I’ll never forget driving from my home in Pennsylvania to Washington DC in July of 1993. I was on my way to attending a week-long advanced seminar sponsored by IBM on their “Token Ring” network. (If you don’t laugh at this, you should.)
I drove across a bridge, thinking, “I’m a bit early, and this is a pretty area; perhaps I’ll divert and drive into the park to view the scenery,” after I’d just seen a sign and an arrow pointing to “Fort Marcy Park.”
Because I was weary, I decided not to, and I drove on towards the hotel.
Once, not all that long thereafter, I was settled in my room, I switched on the television and saw the Vince Foster news.
Yikes. I’ve never forgotten the feeling. And every time I see a meme that was spawned by it, I remember, with a bit of a chill down my spine.
These days, though, as we enter the second term of a Trump administration, I’ve an additive thought. One which has its genesis in the last few Democrat administrations (Clinton, Obama, Biden) and which considers the lasting implications of each of them.
Frankly, I think Joe’s already toast. If we’re not already at a point where his legacy is considered “spent” by anyone responsible, we soon will be.
That leaves Obama and Clinton as potentially hagiographic legacies.
At this point, Obama’s failed twice over. He dissed Biden (his VP and natural successor) in 2016, in order to support Hillary, who lost to Trump that year. Obama supported Biden in 2020 so that Joe could “beat” Trump in a Potemkin Presidency, the depths of which we are only just now plumbing.
And—after being outwitted by his former mentee or his mouthpieces—Obama supported Kamala to a loss in 2024.
I don’t like the Democrat legacy. But if you were to ask me at this point which Democrat president of the last 30 years has had the most significant one, I’d have to respond that it’s Bill Clinton (whose news coverage convinced us that his commitment to his marriage, his sexual constancy, his personal steadfastness or the rather well-documented accusations of sexual misconduct against him might not matter much when it came to performance of his political duties).
In that respect alone, I think Bill Clinton has outperformed Barack Obama in the most persuasive and forward-looking way.
A nominee’s personal life—whether through truth or lies—no longer matters all that much.
Just ask Brett Kavanaugh. Or—more recently—Pete Hegseth.
And, for better or worse, it’s because of Bill Clinton.
Change my mind.
Published in General
Congress seems to agree – didn’t they have (or maybe still do) a slush fund to pay for sexual abuse “allegations” to the tune of around $20 million?
“Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”
Not sure Kavanaugh deserves that slam. And Hegseth claims to have repented, and may well have.
Hillary was the “brains” behind Bill’s defense.
I think the “Ms. Lewinsky” was a vocative in Clinton’s mind when he spoke it. In other words he was addressing what he was saying to Ms. Lewinsky, and the “that woman” referred to Hillary.
The more familiar we became with Hillary post White House years, the more I have a small understanding and mild sympathy with why Bill felt the need to cat around.
Mind you I’m not condoning his behavior, but perhaps presidential divorces (either during the term or after post term) is not a situation that the country has yet to sort out and Bill was not ready to test that as a favor to his “wife” in her pursuit of the “One Ring”.
Alongside the Rajin Cajin …
I took the references as trying to say “nothing, even wildly false claims, matters that much.” But that’s just me.
Certainly true of Republicans, sadly, who within a generation went from condemning a satyriatic president and his lies about his sexual misbehavior, to nominating for president a serial adulterer (he has betrayed all three of his wives but reserved for the current one—there will be more—the humiliation of a dalliance with a porn actress he later paid $130,000 to silence), adjudicated sexual abuser, and self-confessed sexual batterer (“You can do anything—grab ’em by the [pudenda]”) accused by 27 women of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.
Quite the reversal, especially by the so-called Christian right, once highly critical of Clinton’s morals or the lack thereof, but now some of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders. Pathetic.
You may be right.
Yes, It is a bit unclear, but I meant it more as remarking on the failure of the strategy to derail the confirmation, rather than as a commentary on the candidate’s personal life.
Many thanks for revising and extending my remarks.
Yes, what Bill Clinton, who was loved and hated in almost equal measure by many on both sides of the aisle, reminded us is that a man with a–what is that word?–yes, that’s right, deplorable personal life can still be a rather effective president. Even Republicans, it seems, grasped and learned from that message and took it to heart.
That’s why I believe, in the long run, that Clinton’s legacy will prove far more durable than that of “no drama Obama,” who–despite his sticking around and interfering in Washington politics ever since he left office is suffering these days and in the words of the old Country song, from a bit of the “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” syndrome. He’s run two failed presidential candidates he hoped would govern in his image, and barely succeeded with a third, a sad effigy of a President whose own legacy is already in ruins. Obama’s own remarks prior to the most recent election seem largely desperate and irrelevant, while many of Bill Clinton’s appear to have been spot on, if not prescient.
Go figure.
America has put up with more than its share of serial adulterers and actual sexual predators in its governing class over the past many decades. Many of them, whether on the Left or the Right, actually did a pretty decent turn at their day jobs, and often their personal peccadilloes were covered up by the great and the good, and–if some of them were known–people simply looked the other way. Pretending that Donald Trump is unique, or an order of magnitude worse than several others who’ve held office at one time or another is simply another example of what the Brits call overegging the pudding. All you have to do to find examples of “overegging the pudding” is look at the behavior of the prosecutors in the New York cases, and the absurd judicial contortions they put themselves through in order to cut the most serious and lurid charges possible out of the thinnest possible cloth.
People have caught on to the greatly exaggerated concern trolling and character assassination strategies of the Left when they are reduced to going after the personal lives of those whose political ambitions they are determined to thwart, just as people have caught on to the fact that all the shrieks of “Hitler!” “Mussolini!” “Dictator!” “Existential threat!” “The end of Our Democracy!” are just self-soothing, performative, and meaningless, drivel.
Like the little boy who cries “Wolf!” for the thousandth time, no-one with any sense is listening any more.
Kamala’s liaison with a married man (Willy Brown) certainly didn’t hurt her chances either.
Anyone we know?
not to mention “journalist” George Stephanopoulos – charter members of the “Bimbo Eruption” team
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/clinton/interviews/carville.html