Lepore on the Clintons

 Jill Lepore does a good job of summarizing Bill Clinton's Presidency (and political skills) on pages 709 - 13 of These Truths: a History of the United States (W.W. Norton, 2018): 

...Clinton engaged in an affair with Lewinsky at a time when exposing politicians' affairs was the favored weapon of political battle. Not only that, but the nation was in the midst of a campaign against sexual harassment in the workplace. Clinton's foolishness, irresponsibility, and recklessness in this affair was difficult to fathom....

p. 709

We should admire Lepore's honesty.  My own feelings towards Bill Clinton have changed over the past twenty years. What I may like about Lepore is how she explains my own feelings for me.

The Lewinsky scandal indelibly left something else in its aftermath. It diminished liberalism. Liberals defended Clinton almost at all cost, depicting him as a victim. Steinem and other prominent feminists who had crusaded against Clarence Thomas as a perpetrator of sexual harassment waved aside Clinton's dalliances, often with young women, including women in his employ, at some cost to the cause of feminism. Thomas had at one point suggested he was being subjected to "a high-tech lynching." Writing about the Lewinsky investigation in The New Yorker, Toni Morrison said that, "White skin not withstanding, this is our first black President" - he was so cool, so hip, so long-suffering - and compared the investigation to a lynching. "Serious as adultery is, it is not a national catastrophe," Morrison said. Adultery is not a national catastrophe, but Bill Clinton was no more subject to a lynching than was Clarence Thomas.

Chapter Fifteen: Battle Lines; p. 712

Why then did we think Clinton such a political wizard? Yes, his handling of the Republican shutdown of the government comes to mind. I admit he was not my first choice in 1992 and I thought he was unfairly attacked by the Republicans so I voted for  him in 1996. Better him than them. Now... well, I'd have to think about it.

sch

3/18/2020