A
Archangel
Guest
By JAMES TARANTO
The Lewinsky Decade
Sometime in 1997, a friend signed us up for the Drudge Report's email
updates. We didn't quite understand what the Drudge Report was, but into
our email box at irregular intervals would pop often-interesting news and
gossip bulletins, written in a breathless, tabloidy style. (One of them,
dated Nov. 9, 1997, declares, "WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE TOPS 150,000
PAID!")
Ten years ago today came the most interesting Drudge missive:
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX
RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
World Exclusive
Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed
a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A
White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the
United States!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the
story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours
before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of
her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old
intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just
off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's
sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House
quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until
last month.
The following day, Drudge named the intern as Monica Lewinsky, and a few
days after that, the story was all over the mainstream media. It looked for
a while as if President Clinton might not serve out his term. Even his
dutiful wife commented on the "Today" show that if true, "that would be a
very serious offense." But, insisted Hillary Clinton, it was not true. The
real story "is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring
against my husband since the day he announced for president."
One participant in that "conspiracy" was Attorney General Janet Reno, who
had petitioned to expand Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's
mandate to include the investigation of possible obstruction of justice in
a sexual-harassment suit filed by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas employee
who alleged that then-Gov. Clinton had dropped his pants and issued a
demand that she "kiss it."
Clinton's denials were politically expedient. By the time he owned up to
his shenanigans with the youthful Miss Lewinsky, his supporters had
accustomed themselves to the idea of presidential droit de seigneur, and
they defended Clinton's conduct as being "only about sex." Because Clinton
had issued false denials under oath, however, as a legal matter it no
longer was only about sex but about perjury and obstruction of justice.
Starr presented a report to Congress, which impeached him. In February 1999
the Senate found him not guilty.
Clinton survived the scandal by brazenly lying. Had he acknowledged the
affair at the outset, he surely would have been forced to resign. This
centrist president became the hero of the left, which actually believed
that "right-wing conspiracy" talk. The impending impeachment produced a
backlash against Republicans, who lost House seats in 1998, countering a
historic trend in which the president's party almost always suffers big
congressional losses in the sixth year of his term (cf 1986 and 2006).
The effects of the Lewinsky scandal continue to be felt. By some accounts
it launched Mrs. Clinton's political career. The notion of a first lady
seeking a Senate seat in a state to which she had no real connection was
preposterous--yet she carried it off, in part by affording liberal New
Yorkers an opportunity to poke the eye of the vast-right conspirators. Now
she is a viable candidate for president. Who'd have expected that back in
1998?
Organized feminism lost much of its moral authority, as no less a personage
than Gloria Steinem--in a famous op-ed that is mysteriously missing from
the New York Times archives but we found here--explained away treatment of
women that she never would have tolerated from a Republican or a
private-sector boss.
The independent counsel statute, a post-Watergate abomination that no one
thinks made government cleaner, finally went by the boards when Congress in
2000 declined to renew it. (The impulse behind the independent counsel,
however, remains alive, as shown by the witch hunt in the Valerie Plame
kerfuffle.)
The paranoid style of politics took hold on the left, which blamed
right-wing conspiracies for George W. Bush's victory in the disputed
election of 2000, the liberation of Iraq, George W. Bush's victory in the
undisputed election of 2004, Hurricane Katrina and, on the furthest
fringes, the attacks of 9/11. A far-left subculture harbors fantasies of
impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney as revenge, even though
they haven't committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.
In reality, far from being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy,"
Clinton was caught in a trap set for him unwittingly by the political left,
which made sexual harassment both a legal offense and a political outrage,
and which hatched the independent-counsel scheme. He was saved only by an
exercise of raw, partisan political power in the Senate, where not a single
Democrat voted for conviction.
Mrs. Clinton, facing a strong challenge from Barack Obama for the
Democratic presidential nomination, finds herself in a weirdly parallel
position. Once again, as we noted last week, Gloria Steinem has produced a
risible op-ed for the Times, this time defending Mrs. Clinton as a feminist
icon, even though she owes her political power to her husband, and even
though she seems to have saved her chance at the nomination by coming close
to tears.
Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun, in a report on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,
Barack Obama's controversial Afrocentric "spiritual mentor," notes that
"that woman" has come up this year, in a new context:
On Sunday morning--amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential
campaign--Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful
style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary
political message.
Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always
do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed
thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past--from Nat
Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But,
Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for [Mrs.] Clinton "because her husband
was good to us," he continued.
"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did
to Monica Lewinsky."
Feminism, the independent counsel, now racial identity politics: Before the
Clintons have passed from the stage, maybe they will have been hoist by
every liberal petard.
Archangel
The Lewinsky Decade
Sometime in 1997, a friend signed us up for the Drudge Report's email
updates. We didn't quite understand what the Drudge Report was, but into
our email box at irregular intervals would pop often-interesting news and
gossip bulletins, written in a breathless, tabloidy style. (One of them,
dated Nov. 9, 1997, declares, "WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE TOPS 150,000
PAID!")
Ten years ago today came the most interesting Drudge missive:
BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX
RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT
World Exclusive
Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT
At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed
a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A
White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the
United States!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the
story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours
before publication. A young woman, 23, sexually involved with the love of
her life, the President of the United States, since she was a 21-year-old
intern at the White House. She was a frequent visitor to a small study just
off the Oval Office where she claims to have indulged the president's
sexual preference. Reports of the relationship spread in White House
quarters and she was moved to a job at the Pentagon, where she worked until
last month.
The following day, Drudge named the intern as Monica Lewinsky, and a few
days after that, the story was all over the mainstream media. It looked for
a while as if President Clinton might not serve out his term. Even his
dutiful wife commented on the "Today" show that if true, "that would be a
very serious offense." But, insisted Hillary Clinton, it was not true. The
real story "is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring
against my husband since the day he announced for president."
One participant in that "conspiracy" was Attorney General Janet Reno, who
had petitioned to expand Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr's
mandate to include the investigation of possible obstruction of justice in
a sexual-harassment suit filed by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas employee
who alleged that then-Gov. Clinton had dropped his pants and issued a
demand that she "kiss it."
Clinton's denials were politically expedient. By the time he owned up to
his shenanigans with the youthful Miss Lewinsky, his supporters had
accustomed themselves to the idea of presidential droit de seigneur, and
they defended Clinton's conduct as being "only about sex." Because Clinton
had issued false denials under oath, however, as a legal matter it no
longer was only about sex but about perjury and obstruction of justice.
Starr presented a report to Congress, which impeached him. In February 1999
the Senate found him not guilty.
Clinton survived the scandal by brazenly lying. Had he acknowledged the
affair at the outset, he surely would have been forced to resign. This
centrist president became the hero of the left, which actually believed
that "right-wing conspiracy" talk. The impending impeachment produced a
backlash against Republicans, who lost House seats in 1998, countering a
historic trend in which the president's party almost always suffers big
congressional losses in the sixth year of his term (cf 1986 and 2006).
The effects of the Lewinsky scandal continue to be felt. By some accounts
it launched Mrs. Clinton's political career. The notion of a first lady
seeking a Senate seat in a state to which she had no real connection was
preposterous--yet she carried it off, in part by affording liberal New
Yorkers an opportunity to poke the eye of the vast-right conspirators. Now
she is a viable candidate for president. Who'd have expected that back in
1998?
Organized feminism lost much of its moral authority, as no less a personage
than Gloria Steinem--in a famous op-ed that is mysteriously missing from
the New York Times archives but we found here--explained away treatment of
women that she never would have tolerated from a Republican or a
private-sector boss.
The independent counsel statute, a post-Watergate abomination that no one
thinks made government cleaner, finally went by the boards when Congress in
2000 declined to renew it. (The impulse behind the independent counsel,
however, remains alive, as shown by the witch hunt in the Valerie Plame
kerfuffle.)
The paranoid style of politics took hold on the left, which blamed
right-wing conspiracies for George W. Bush's victory in the disputed
election of 2000, the liberation of Iraq, George W. Bush's victory in the
undisputed election of 2004, Hurricane Katrina and, on the furthest
fringes, the attacks of 9/11. A far-left subculture harbors fantasies of
impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney as revenge, even though
they haven't committed any high crimes or misdemeanors.
In reality, far from being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy,"
Clinton was caught in a trap set for him unwittingly by the political left,
which made sexual harassment both a legal offense and a political outrage,
and which hatched the independent-counsel scheme. He was saved only by an
exercise of raw, partisan political power in the Senate, where not a single
Democrat voted for conviction.
Mrs. Clinton, facing a strong challenge from Barack Obama for the
Democratic presidential nomination, finds herself in a weirdly parallel
position. Once again, as we noted last week, Gloria Steinem has produced a
risible op-ed for the Times, this time defending Mrs. Clinton as a feminist
icon, even though she owes her political power to her husband, and even
though she seems to have saved her chance at the nomination by coming close
to tears.
Meanwhile, the Baltimore Sun, in a report on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright,
Barack Obama's controversial Afrocentric "spiritual mentor," notes that
"that woman" has come up this year, in a new context:
On Sunday morning--amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential
campaign--Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful
style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary
political message.
Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always
do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed
thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past--from Nat
Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But,
Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for [Mrs.] Clinton "because her husband
was good to us," he continued.
"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did
to Monica Lewinsky."
Feminism, the independent counsel, now racial identity politics: Before the
Clintons have passed from the stage, maybe they will have been hoist by
every liberal petard.
Archangel