Bill Clinton’s #MeToo reckoning

NationalReview.com

Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct finally appears to be catching up with him, said Jim Geraghty, but the damage to America’s political culture is already done. The former president was widely condemned for a recent interview in which he portrayed himself as the victim of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, despite the change in attitudes toward such behavior in the #MeToo era. If Clinton won’t accept full responsibility for his actions in the ’90s, Democrats should: Blinded by partisanship, feminists and liberals decided the Lewinsky scandal was about consensual sex between consenting adults, and let Clinton trick them “into defending the indefensible.” As we now recognize, sex between a 22-year-old unpaid intern and the president of the U.S. is an abuse of power. Democrats would have lost virtually nothing by pushing Clinton to resign in 1998. Al Gore would have become president and a heavy favorite for reelection, likely presiding over an identical agenda. But the Left defended Clinton to the hilt, proving that “you could get caught red-handed and survive if enough people deemed you politically irreplaceable.” That’s a lesson President Trump’s defenders learned well: “When your guy is caught with his pants down or hand in the cookie jar, don’t hold him accountable, but turn the tables and attack, attack, attack.”