The persistent dilemma of Bill Clinton

There is a particular hell in which we are all drawn into almost every thoughtful #MeToo conversation, and this hell is Bill Clinton. S? He was an abuser. If it was just a horndog. If women can still support it (Make they still support it? Which women? Support how?

On Sunday morning, these questions were again raised in the morning papers when CBS correspondent Tony Dokoupil asked Hillary Clinton if her husband should have resigned after the Lewinsky affair.

"Absolutely not," answered the former senator, presidential candidate and secretary of state.

"It's not an abuse of power?", Pressa Dokoupil.

"No, no," she said. And as Dokoupil raised a skeptical eyebrow at the notion of "President of the United States [having] a consensual relationship with a trainee, "she hastened to say that Lewinsky, then 22," was an adult. "

This, of course, is an absurd avoidance. Most of the major harassment cases in the past year have involved adult men and women. This is what an abuse of power looks like in the workplace. Ashley Judd was an adult woman; as well as all the alleged victims of Leslie Moonves and all the women Louis C.K. called in a room and whipped his penis for.

And if you read the previous paragraph and thought, "Bill Clinton is not a Moon, he looks more like a ____", and if you could not complete it, welcome Bill Clinton. Because understanding how to feel about Bill Clinton seems essential to understanding how to deal with the present moment, and discussions always get slippery.

In particular, I think, for supporters who looked with approval at the Family Medical Leave Act, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and other things that Clinton had done for women in general, and who then diverted politely their eyes about what he could have done. to women in the specific.

Bill Clinton's conversations become slippery because he is no longer in power, so if he was a monster, he was now disfigured (although he is a former president with a platform World).

Bill Clinton's conversations are slippery, because 20 years later, we still do not know how to judge the events of less enlightened times.

While Brett's Supreme Court confirmation Mr. Kavanaugh was dragging unsustainably last month, Bill Clinton's own misdeeds were what any conservative fanbite had said that wanted Kavanaugh to be elected.

It was an argument of bad faith. Indeed, since we had had fragmentary men in power in the past, we have committed ourselves to accept them forever. – but still: what sure Bill Clinton? What kind of psychic calculation are we late for confronting?

If man deserves redemption, he has not done much to help himself. In June, he told Craig Melvin of NBC that he had never apologized to Monica Lewinsky and that he was not going to approach the situation differently today. "I do not think that would be a problem," he said, more and more troubled by the fact that the subject was discussed: "Two-thirds of Americans in front of me," he insisted.

I do not know a single woman who has not spent the past year debating privately all the uncomfortable sexual experiences of her life – what she did or did not do, or should not have done or should not have. So, the fact that Clinton apparently did not give much importance to the American sex scandal made him look like an idiot or a liar.

Or, as if he was so desperately entitled to play, he ended up arguing the point # MeToo even better than his most virulent activists. Yes, Bill. Two-thirds of the American people would then have sided with you. This is because our problems of misogyny are systemic and not the fault of bad people. A high percentage of the American people have been cheated for a very long time.

In today's Democratic Party, Bill Clinton's past certainly certainly ruined it. Many allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct, including a charge of rape by Juanita Broaddrick – today, these would be investigated and would be taken seriously. We would talk about Monica Lewinsky as a human being and not as a big joke.

And many who voted for him in 1992 and 1996 would not have him today. It's the chorus I've heard from more and more Liberal friends and acquaintances, throughout the Kavanaugh audiences, the Donald Trump band's "Access Hollywood" saga and the wave of 39 powerful men revealed to be a series of attackers: If Bill Clinton showed up now, I would not vote for him.

Add JFK to this list. Add Thomas Jefferson. The list of men we would not vote for now is long.

But Bill Clinton's hell is that he will not leave. He will not account for his own actions, so we must be accountable to him.

Bill Clinton's conversations become slippery because at the end of the day, his feelings about his guilt or innocence, his kindness, or his wickedness, often led to the question of whether a person liked him or not. or not.

How much did it obscure our judgment and lower our standards? How has this paved the way for our current situation, where opinions about harassment cases live or die, depending on whether the accused had a D or an R after his name?

Bill Clinton's hell is the hell of all this moment: many Americans could make different choices now, but we are still paying for the choices we made at the time.

Monica Hesse is a columnist who writes about gender and its impact on society. For more information, visit www.wapo.st/hesse.