By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Hillary Clinton won the political battle over Bill
Clinton’s sexual misadventures in the 1990s, at the cost of having to litigate
them forevermore.
In the era of #MeToo, her defenses and rationalizations
for Bill are especially tinny and embarrassing. But she can’t show any weakness
— any more than she could in 1998, when she helped rally the White House — lest
she implicitly admit that providing cover for her husband’s misconduct for
years was a mistake, or at least a significant compromise of her feminism.
Advocating for “believing women” when your husband and
political partner has had so many accusers is a test of audacity that Hillary
remains determined to pass, as she demonstrated when two recent interviewers
brought up the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil wanted to know if a
49-year-old President Clinton carrying on with a 22-year-old intern was an
abuse of power. Hillary rejected the notion out of hand. How, Dokoupil followed
up, could an intern really consent, given the vast power dynamic? She was an
adult, Hillary shot back.
About this she is obviously correct. Monica Lewinsky may
have acted immaturely and foolishly, but there’s no doubt that she acted
willingly, no matter how much she may — understandably — regret it now.
Bill Clinton’s role was blameworthy nonetheless. It
doesn’t take a fourth-wave feminist to realize that a president of the United
States having an intern he barely knows perform oral sex on him while he talks
on the phone in the Oval Office is grossly exploitative. If this had been a
movie director or a media executive, everyone would recognize it as an
appalling abuse of power, even Hillary Clinton.
When Christiane Amanpour also asked Hillary about 1998
and what the difference is between what Clinton did and Donald Trump is accused
of, Hillary replied, “the intense, long-lasting, partisan investigation in the
’90s.”
The investigation doesn’t make the underlying conduct any
better, though. Clinton should have been fully aware of the potential political
and legal consequences of his actions. That he initiated a sexual relationship
with a White House intern while former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones
pursued a sexual-harassment lawsuit was practically an invitation to get asked
about Lewinsky under oath. Of course, when he did, he lied, and the rest is
history.
Beneath Hillary’s answers in both interviews — and
whenever Bill is asked about the scandal — there’s clearly a simmering anger.
Both of them are still infuriated that he got caught and paid a price, and that
it keeps coming up.
Usually, they are only asked about Lewinsky. But
Clinton’s White House misadventure wasn’t a one-time lapse. In keeping with the
most compelling #MeToo cases, there was a pattern of conduct going back
decades. Clinton used Arkansas state troopers to procure women for him. Most troubling,
Juanita Broaddrick accuses Clinton of raping her in the 1970s, an allegation
that liberal journalists Chris Hayes, Michelle Goldberg, and Ezra Klein now say
they find credible.
If Hillary doesn’t want to spend her time re-litigating
20-year-old scandals — as well as her loss in 2016 — she could simply step out
of the public eye. It’s not as though her own side gains anything from her
constant presence. Nor will the 2020 Democratic field lack for women
candidates. All of those candidates will presumably be less conflicted talking
about #MeToo, because they’ve never mounted bare-knuckled political defenses of
their powerful, scandal-plagued husbands.
But Hillary isn’t going anywhere. She and Bill are about
to embark on a nationwide speaking tour. Their prominence will serve as a
reminder that no matter what progressives say now, when push came to shove and
they had to decide between protecting one of their own in high office and their
feminist principles, it wasn’t even a close call.
This is a public service of a sort, although one that no
Democrat should welcome.
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