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SOURCE https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/09/opinion/sunday/bills-belated-metoo-moment.html

During President Bill Clinton’s cascading scandals with women, some political analysts on the left suggested that Americans should look at a commander in chief in terms of private character and public character, disregarding personal peccadilloes and giving weight only to policy decisions.

But with the Clintons, the public and private were always intertwined in an inextricable and unappetizing way.
The desire among his supporters for a liberal agenda was held hostage to Bill Clinton’s libertine appetites. You want enlightened policies for women and a record number of women in exalted posts? Then you must endure — and cover up for — “Saturday Night Bill,” as the dark side of the president was dubbed.

On his recent book tour when Craig Melvin asked Bill on the “Today” show whether his actions in the ’90s would fly in the 2018 #MeToo era. Bill went to his usual go-to: “his excellent record on appointing women.” But that Faustian deal of doing good for all women while being bad with a few was no longer on the table.“How would you have approached the accusations differently, or would you have?” Melvin asked. “Well,” Bill replied, “I don’t think it would be an issue because people would be using the facts, instead of the imagined facts.”

So then, here are the facts, as clear 20 years ago as they are now. When Monica Lewinsky came into the Oval Office and flashed her thong, Bill Clinton should have said: “Young lady, go back to your office. I am the president of the United States.” Like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” Bill should have been doing the thinking for both of them.

Gloria Steinem tried to bolster BJ’ed Clinton in a Times op-ed as the scandal unspooled, writing that “welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.”

And it was his narcissism and selfishness on Bill Clinton’s part to force his appointees-—high-ranking women in his inner circle — Hillary, Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala — to vouch for him when he knew the truth and could simply have admitted it, rather than lying, parsing and besmirching.

Feminists also lost their way as Bill’s human shields, demonizing the women in Bill’s life, treating them as collateral damage, human sacrifices to the sisterhood’ s dream of a feminist president and first lady.

Hillary and other prominent feminists backed BJ’ed Bill; his and Hillary’s henchmen were willing to smear Bill’s girlfriends and victims, calling the women trailer trash, cash-for-trash, nutty and slutty.
So then, here are the facts, as clear 20 years ago as they are now. When Monica Lewinsky came into the Oval Office and flashed her thong, Bill Clinton should have said: “Young lady, go back to your office. I am the president of the United States.” Like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” Bill should have been doing the thinking for both of them.

The power differential between a 22-year-old intern and a 49-year-old boss makes any sexual interaction wrong. And if you throw in the fact that he was president — it’s an inexcusable abuse of power. Gloria Steinem tried to bolster BJ’ed Clinton in a Times op-ed as the scandal unspooled, writing that “welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.”
And it was his narcissism and selfishness on Bill Clinton’s part to force his appointees-—high-ranking women in his inner circle — Hillary, Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala — to vouch for him when he knew the truth and could simply have admitted it, rather than lying, parsing and besmirching.

Feminists looked the other way when Hillary’s Bimbo Eruption Squad went on the attack-—to paint Lewinsky as a malicious stalker or a friendly fantasist — they looked the other way in 1992 when Betsey Wright called Bill’s women “bimbos” and “gold diggers” in Arkansas with the help of intimidating private investigators poking around in the lives of Bill’s women. (Ironic, given the righteous anger of the Clintons about Anita Hill during the H. W. Bush era, when Republicans slimed Anita Hill as “a little nutty and a little slutty.”)

Bill Clinton tried his usual trick of scapegoating, evoking J.F.K. and L.B.J. to newsman Melvin——an unpleasant echo of Clinton aides calling around to reporters during the 1998 spiral to say that J.F.K. had fooled around with young women at the White House. But by 1998, feminism had been flowering for 30 years. And J.F.K. was no role model in that regard.

......after the capricious behavior of Bill Clinton and the smearing of Clintonworld…...Bill Clinton has learned that his threadbare routine of maudlin self-pity and casting blame on everyone but himself doesn’t work anymore. The definition of “is” doesn’t depend on anything. It just is.