It’s been 20 years … or should I say it’s only been 20 years since President Bill Clinton faced impeachment for lying about an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern. Monica was quite a hit a few years ago with her TED Talk, proclaiming herself as Patient Zero in the internet world of constant shaming, ridicule, public scorn and privacy invasion. The whole sordid ordeal seems so very long ago that Clinton’s wife, Hillary, had the nerve to run for president twice. All is forgiven in the Clinton household, we are to assume.
Since the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the age-old sex and power story has never stopped in the political realm, now centering on our current president. Nevertheless, an affair, lying about it to the nation and the feds, and abusing power as U.S. president almost brought down the Comeback Kid. Yet Clinton survived it all, thus his nickname, one he earned as governor of Arkansas.
When Clinton became the Democrat nominee for president in 1992, I didn’t think he’d win. The Republicans had been in power so long, I was jaded. But the economy was awful. Millions were unemployed including me for awhile, and President George H. Bush did not have the charm or charisma that many saw in Clinton. I for one never saw that je ne sais quoi that made women swoon. He was no Paul McCartney. So certain was I Bush would win a second term, I went to bed early instead of watching election returns that November evening. When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised and pleased to learn history had changed, this time in my favor. “I guess a lot of people have been down on their luck the past few years,” was my response.
Coincidentally as the Clinton years began so did my newspaper career as a government reporter. Because I was reporting from a small-town perspective, I saw firsthand how Clinton’s pro-business policies were helping boost the economy. On his watch included welfare reform which locked in a lifetime limit for accepting federal assistance for people without children, meaning they had to find a job or go to school but get off the public dole. They had about a year to turn their lives around. Even the destitute with children had to get their act together job-wise, the deadline set by the age of their youngest child, usually 1 to 3 years old. But Clinton intended for there to be no more lifetime and generational welfare.
To build economies, Clinton released a lot of government money in loans to help small businesses and individuals. The chambers of commerce and banker types were kicking and screaming in protest. But I witnessed for eight years in various communities how loosening federal funds directly helped people. They could afford mortgage loans to own a home. They could return to college or trade or tech school to learn new skills in a fast-changing era. They were also learning to invest a portion of their income for a better retirement.
Clinton had many crowning achievements, one of which had to do with economic development. Using a lot of complex formulas (Bill is supposedly an honest-to-goodness genius), the Clinton Administration named about 20 small towns across the U.S. to give a sizable block grant specifically to build small businesses, education and training, and tourism. That’s right: Tourism should be a third of any healthy vibrant community’s income, the others being business and industry. One community in Oklahoma was awarded the grant, and the town happened to be within my beat. After writing about the community’s surprise and gratitude for the new innovative federal funding program, a year later I revisited folks to see how they were using the money. One individual created a small toy company in his home, using the area’s abundance of trees to produce unique all-wood products. He had an internet site to sell worldwide. Another family used their pond to harvest large soft-shell turtles, Japan their biggest client. Other individuals qualifying for the new federal fund simply completed their high school or college educations, many going to trade schools.
A soul whose intentions are good
But the Clintons—and Bill always told us Hillary was his partner as the nation had its first co-presidents—were peculiar to many American conservatives. The Clintons appeared to mix New Age philosophy with government action. In other words, they believed in prosperity teachings that promote letting money flow, giving it away, instead of sitting on a pile of taxpayer dough. Perhaps they got this idea from Deepak Chopra, who wrote a book about spiritual finance management, advising a change in personal perspective: One should be open to the universe to supply all needs including money. In other words, giving and sharing are better for the human spirit, which actually sounds Christian.
When Clinton created a federal loan program to help people, he realized about ten to twenty percent of recipients would run off with the money and never repay the government—despite the big trouble with which they would eventually have to deal. But he weighed the odds and followed his instincts. He believed most people are honest and repay their debts. Motivational speakers like Tony Robbins influenced the Clintons, too, and Bill and Hillary were regulars at the annual Renaissance Weekend—a gathering of leaders and innovators in science, medicine, politics, philosophy, religion, and technology. Then one day while sitting alone in her White House home, Hillary was overheard talking aloud to a dead American hero for advice—another New Age concept. She was crucified for believing or trying such nonsense.
I took up for the Clintons, even Hillary talking to real dead people to seek help and guidance. But the Bill Factor was always there: sex scandals covered by the media, mostly the sleazy tabloids. But the issue kept coming up. Hollywood produced two major movies loosely based on the Clintons. Any time I met someone from Arkansas, from a hair dresser to a fellow reporter, I’d ask: “Did Clinton really have affairs as governor?” “Oh, God, yes!” was the consistent reply. I could not believe the national media did not report this seriously. It was as if the media wanted Clinton to win. An Arkie friend, who did not want Clinton to be re-elected, warned me: “He will embarrass us.”
It took a couple more years during Clinton’s second term, but my friend was right. Clinton embarrassed us all. The truth about Monica Lewinsky and the president came crashing into all our TV sets: Oprah’s dedicated show “Our President has lied to us,” the Monica girls dancing to Addicted to Love on a late-night talk show, “Saturday Night Live” skits with the Monica character wearing her signature black beret. I had to get rid of mine because at the time people jokingly called me ‘Monica,’ though I looked nothing like her. George Stephanopoulos, who worked for Clinton in the White House and knew him well, wrote a book about him called All Too Human whereby he shares the Clinton method of lying: looking someone directly in the face, touching the person’s arm, and saying with great sincerity and a bit of tears “You gotta believe me.” In response, during a promotional TV book tour, George, exasperated, could make no comment other than hold out both hands, palms up, like “What’s wrong with this guy?”
Even with Clinton’s sexual inclination, maybe because of it—he seemed like someone who was a sex addict—as president, he was concerned with the nation’s epidemic levels of teen sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies. He told us the number one cause of poverty and generational poverty is teen pregnancy. He wanted sex education taught in the schools, but conservatives fought him. Together they agreed to an abstinence-based sex education curriculum. Again, in the small communities of Texas where I was a reporter, the federal program was implemented due to shockingly high numbers of teen STDs and pregnancies based on per capita statistics.
The Scarlet Letter
But Clinton’s Achilles heel was his way with women, his forbidden lustful desire, even if illegal. And he paid the ultimate price with impeachment. The nation had to deal with the long tedious ordeal with every single nightly newscast for a year and a half. In the end, he happened to get off relatively unharmed and did not have to resign. He was a pretty tough dude.
As for Monica, she left the country to polish her education in England. All along, Europeans loved Bill Clinton and saw nothing wrong with an affair or many affairs and felt Americans rather hypocritical—making a mountain out of a mole hill as it were. And it was. The economy was great, super-duper great. The Clinton years were one of America’s most prosperous and perhaps will be the most positive and progressive era of my lifetime. Even the conservatives, grinning and bearing, benefited immensely by Clinton financial policies, more than the little people. There were the occasional Middle Eastern military strikes—bombings with death and destruction—usually when Clinton was caught in an alleged scandal, sexual or otherwise. That was the only thing that bothered me, though previous presidents bombed the Middle East, too. I figured someday we’d have to pay for all of that.
And I was bothered by the constant rumors of sexual harassment by Clinton, our U.S. president.
Monica may have been 22 years old, but she didn’t come across as an innocent. She seemed older than her years, able to handle the dirt, play with the big boys. She was no victim, knew what she was doing, even encouraged the president into a little sexual dalliance. And that’s why she was treated the way she was: like she didn’t matter.
The public had no right to know every single detail from their sex life—and everything in great detail was made known to us. Why? Wasn’t it enough to say they had an affair? Wasn’t it enough to say they had a sexual relationship? The president, looking like a scolded school boy, admitted to the nation in an interruptive TV message from the Oval Office that he had lied and did have an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and that it was wrong. Nevertheless, he fought impeachment, wordsmith that he was, semantics twisting that he can play—because he’s so damn smart.
The lesson Americans learned from the Clinton-Lewinsky affair is that sex is none of our business, even if it involves the U.S. President—especially the President if the economy is doing great and the people have a sense of well being. So that is why, liberal or conservative, we put up with Trump and all the sex scandals that come to light. Who cares? We don’t have the stomach for a long drawn out impeachment. We’ve grown more European in accepting a leader’s extramarital sex life. Trump will have to do a lot more than sleep with and harass a bunch of women to embarrass 21st century Americans. Take that, American history.