PETER HITCHENS

One rule for Bill Clinton, another for Trump’s judge

THE biggest t hing t hat didn’t happen this year was the final collapse of Bill Clinton’s reputation. The former US President, and his warmongering and strangely supportive wife Hillary, have somehow managed to escape the great ultra-feminist frenzy that has brought down so many men from their pedestals of power and reputation.

Personally, I’m not especially troubled by Bill’s survival. Against my own will, I almost like the terrible old monster. I was once bathed in his chicken-fried charm for a delightful, unforgettable minute when I slipped uninvited into a White House event and asked him an awkward question about Ireland. Ah, I thought, so this is what they mean by charisma. He may have helped the IRA to win, but he didn’t invade Iraq. There are worse men, and worse women.

In any case, I’m not in favour of ruining people’s lives on the basis of ancient, uncorroborated claims. And I’m less and less interested in other people’s sexual doings.

Morals are about what we do when we think nobody is looking. They are not about denouncing other people for doing things that we wouldn’t do ourselves.

But the current attempt to destroy Judge Brett Kavanaugh, nominated for the US Supreme Court, raises a huge question of hypocrisy and inconsistency. None of us, it seems to me, can ever know what happened, i f anything happened, between him and his accuser all those years ago.

We have to accept that the charges may be true. Equally we have to accept that they may not be. But once made, such charges can ruin the lives of those against whom they are made, whether they are true or not, let alone whether they are proved or not.

I have no idea how such things can be fairly resolved. It has to rest with the consciences of those who make the accusations. Some of them have genuinely suffered and rightly thirst for justice. Others may be confused and unhappy. Others, just possibly, may be making it up. But how can we know which is which? These accusers know what will happen when they speak. Are they sure they want it to happen? Are they sure they are right? Memory being what it is, I’d hesitate greatly about raking up anything from ten years ago, let alone 36 years ago.

BUT here is the inconsistency. Why is Mr Kavanaugh being barbecued by the US Senate, while Bill Clinton goes unscathed? Well, yes, they did try and fail to convict Mr Clinton at his impeachment, but it was the very people who voted against the charges who are now trying to unhorse Mr Kavanaugh. It is plainly about politics, not personal morals.

Also, in those days, sexual scandal had a different point to it. In the 1990s, marital fidelity was still, just, a big issue, and those who breached it were seen as unreliable in all things. Now, marriage is a foible of the privileged, and the scandals are all about men’s attitudes towards women, and feminism. Well, why isn’t Bill Clinton back in trouble in that case? If his accusers told the truth, he broke the #MeToo code just as much as he betrayed his marriage.

I know more than I ought to about one of the allegations against Mr Clinton. By a series of accidents, I came to have some long conversations with Paula Jones, one of his accusers. She made a persuasive case, not least because she didn’t try to make out that her own behaviour had been totally saintly.

What she told me was in some ways very funny, a comedy of misunderstandings and disappointment. The details are far too rude to recount here. I’ll just say that what she says he wanted to do didn’t appeal to her. And that, by her account, he took her refusal badly. He was a powerful man. And she was a powerless woman from a poor background.

But nobody wants to revisit this because, really, this issue is about politics, not about principle. The outrage, as so often, is selective and so not real. I am, above all, sorriest for the families of those accused, and of their accusers.

And I wish it wasn’t futile to suggest that a return to the stricter sexual morals of the pre-Pill years would make relations between men and women a lot kinder and more civilised than they seem to be now.