Remembering Bill Clinton And The Politics Of Personal Destruction
When did the 'post-shame era' truly begin?
Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has an undeniably sketchy past that suggests his present and future are possibly even sketchier. His critics insist that Democrats supporting him despite his many flaws offers Republicans a “permission structure” to back their own lousy candidates, such as Ken Paxton in Texas. Whenever a Democrat says “permission structure,” you know they read too much of The Bulwark. Republicans don’t need permission for their terrible actions. It’s their entire raison d’être. They elected a governor in Montana who’d previously assaulted a journalist.
Many Democrats insist that when the party pushed Al Franken out of the Senate, that provided the “permission structure” for decent Republicans to vote against mall-cruising pervert Roy Moore in Alabama. While a popular theory, it’s unproven and a classic example of the fallacy President Jed Bartlet called “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (“one thing follows the other therefore it was caused by the other”). It also presumes a level of intellectual and moral fairness among Republicans that remains unproven.
Platner’s apparent scandal endurance has caused some pundits with short-term memories to suggest that we now exist in “post-shame” political reality. Although Donald Trump is directly to blame for most of the country’s current woes, this is actually a situation that predates him. Trump is the beneficiary of post-shame politics, not it creator. After all, he truly never built anything.
Well before Graham Platner, Al Franken, Roy Moore and Donald Trump, there was Bill Clinton. I would never blame Clinton for Trump, but it’s been said that Democrats conceded decades ago that character ultimately didn’t matter in the presidency when defending him, especially after the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to his 1998 impeachment for fellatio-related felonies.
Having lived through the 1990s, I can attest that the liberal reaction to Clinton’s womanizing was very different. I recall liberals comparing Clinton’s serial infidelity to President John F. Kennedy’s Bond-level bedding of women. The Clinton years are when I first learned President Franklin D. Roosevelt had at least five extramarital affairs — one of which was with his wife Eleanor’s social secretary, Lucy Mercer, which was probably more “social” than appropriate.
Although one indiscreet photo ended Gary Hart’s presidential ambitions, once Clinton came along, the press was chastised for even covering a politician’s personal affairs (in every sense of the word). Nick Bryant at the Independent wrote in 1994 that back in the 1960s, “journalists acknowledged the separateness of a politician’s private and public life.”
Few in the Washington press corps questioned the role of Martin Luther King in spearheading the struggle for black equality, for example, yet rumours of his promiscuity were widespread long before his death in 1968. Towards Kennedy the press were even more forgiving. For them, Kennedy - whose lofty rhetoric inspired a nation used to the soporific leadership of Dwight Eisenhower - was proof that being a lousy husband did not necessarily make you a lousy president. That helps to explain why Bill Clinton tries hard to invoke Kennedy’s memory.
“It’s the economy, stupid” was the Clinton campaign’s potent response to the GOP’s fixation on “family values.” When Platner’s wife released a video defending his extramarital “sexting,” it recalled the famous 1992 60 Minutes interview when Bill Clinton admits to causing “pain” in his marriage. Hillary nods approvingly when Clinton suggests the worst allegations about his conduct are the result of tabloids paying desperate women for phony stories. This is also when Hillary insisted, “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” An offended Wynette later released the pointed follow-up song, “At Least My Man Won’t Fool Around With Some Intern In My Own House,” which felt cryptic at the time. (Yes, I made that up.)
Back then, the Clintons had to play a transparently evasive game. Now, the Platners just admit flat-out that Graham fucked up. One might lament the lack of any pretense of shame, but we can clearly trace that back to the collective Democratic response when Monica Lewinsky’s curious dry-cleaning practices forced Clinton to own up to their sexual relationship in the Oval Office.
There was some moral scolding from Joe Lieberman on the Senate floor, but Democrats mostly rallied behind Clinton and denounced Republican efforts to remove him from office. Public support for Clinton only increased during the impeachment crisis, and this was not a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. The data was clear. Republicans actually lost seats in the 1998 midterm, a shocking setback when Clinton was entering his lame duck period. House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced his resignation from Congress, and his supposed replacement Bob Livingston would also step down when it was revealed that he’d had his share of middle-aged “youthful indiscretions.”
Democratic House Leader Richard Gephardt demanded that his colleagues reject the “politics of personal destruction.” His speech on the House floor is quite a contrast to where many liberals currently stand:
“Our founding fathers created a system of government of men, not of angels. No one standing in this House today can pass a Puritanical test of purity that some are demanding that our elected leaders take.
If we demand that mere mortals live up to this standard, we will see our seats of government lay empty, and we will see the best, most able people unfairly cast out of public service.
We need to stop destroying imperfect people at the altar of an unobtainable morality.”
I would quibble with Gephardt’s assertion that not cheating on your wife with a 21-year-old intern is “unobtainable morality.” It wasn’t like we were asking the president to always “be kind and rewind” his video tape rentals. Still, almost 30 years ago, Democrats were affirmatively opposed to “cancel culture.” Feminist icon Gloria Steinem defended Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky in a New York Times op-ed that today would probably get her called a “rape apologist.”
As reported, Monica Lewinsky's case illustrates the rest of the equation: ''Yes means yes.'' Whatever it was, her relationship with President Clinton has never been called unwelcome, coerced or other than something she sought. The power imbalance between them increased the index of suspicion, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ms. Lewinsky's will was violated; quite the contrary. In fact, her subpoena in the Paula Jones case should have been quashed. Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.
The progressive PAC Move On got its start in 1998 by demanding that Congress “censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the nation.” Although Clinton was impeached and easily acquitted in the Senate, the public did in fact “move on.”
However, I did notice something interesting once Clinton left office. The idealized version of himself on the West Wing, President Bartlet, was in a stable, faithful marriage. His shady vice president, John Hoynes, was the philanderer, and it did negatively impact his job. (He’d eventually resign in the fourth season.) When a disgraced Hoynes attempts a comeback, White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg — a former lover — confronts him. (Watch below.)
“When you run, the press will find some of those women,” C.J. warns Hoynes. “And if you try to attack them, if you get your opposition research team on them, if you try to destroy them, say they’re bimbos and liars, I’ll be standing with them and I’ll be ready to take anything you or your people throw.” This line felt like a stinging rebuke of how the 1992 Clinton campaign squashed so-called “bimbo eruptions.”
In the 2003 movie Love Actually, Clinton’s womanizing was projected onto Billy Bob Thornton’s strawman Bush president, except of course Bush didn’t have a sexual history like Clinton’s. Yet, Hugh Grant’s Slick Willy-style flirtation with a much younger woman on his staff is presented as romantic. (As Tom Servo would say, “There are certain flaws in this film.”) Of course, now modern audiences are more likely to read the villain U.S. president as an obvious Trump parody. (Watch below.)
Of course, after eight years of Barack Obama, who was squeaky clean and didn’t require much defending on moral grounds, liberals perhaps found it easier to abandon their previous, practically French position that a politician’s personal flaws and foibles were a private issue unrelated to their job.
When Trump launched his first presidential campaign, liberals condemned him (rightly) as both a political buffoon but also an adulterous sleaze who preyed on women. There was no romanticizing his behavior, like JFK back in the Connery Bond era. In fact, when JFK (Michael C. Hall) appeared in a 2017 episode of The Crown, he is depicted in a very Trump-like fashion — no James Bond rizz is present, just ick. (Watch below.)
Trump’s candidacy might’ve compelled Democrats to start prioritizing personal character to almost puritanical levels, but what’s ironic is that no one could seriously argue that he’s personally flawed but otherwise good at his job. Trump’s all-around garbage, and those of us who remember the dream of the 1990s might only wish his only problem was inappropriate cigar placement.
Count me as one lifelong Democrat who wanted Bill Clinton to resign. I found both his willingness to betray his wife, as well as his willingness to abuse his position of power, as disqualifying. As Stephen accurately describes, it was part of the long slide toward total partisanship in national politics, where character became subordinated to winning.
As much as I would like to see Susan Collins driven from office, and to see the Democrats resume control of the senate, Platner has shown himself for what he is, and I would find it impossible to vote for him. His errors of judgement portend even more to come.
I get the argument that Democrats holding their candidates to higher standards while Republicans ignore the personal failures of theirs is a losing proposition. But I hate hypocrisy more than I despise the current GOP. To be clear, I thought that driving Al Franken from office for some silly jokes was crazy, and it only reinforced the whole purity pony concept for Democrats. But some behavior is not acceptable, and Platner's behavior that indicates a lack of consistent character is the deal killer for me.
One irony is that Democrats largely internalized the lesson of the Clinton years: what a politician can accomplish for “your side” is often more important than what they do or say in their personal life. That's easy to forget because the Clinton scandals are now more than 30 years in the past, (even if many of the people who still dominate American politics in 2026 remember them vividly).
The bigger story IMO is that the rest of American politics moved in the same direction on both sides. Politics is coarser, partisanship is stronger, and voters are generally more willing to overlook personal flaws if they believe a politician is effective. What seemed like a controversial lesson in the 1990s now looks more like a test run.