[Steve_Seattle]

"I've been ignoring this whole Plame/Wilson thing up to now, simply because it's so silly and unbelievable."

"Silly and unbelievable" are precisely the reasons this has intrigued (and enraged) me from the outset. I'm finally beginning to understand why the Clinton's were so outraged by the Lewinsky affair. In both cases, something that was really very small potatoes to begin with was fueled by political passions until it morphed into something that threatened a presidency. But in the Lewinsky case, Clinton was personally responsible for dragging out the whole thing, and Starr got trapped by Clinton's tar baby. Every little trick that Clinton pulled, every little game he played, only made Starr look bad because he had to respond in kind, and as it dragged on for months, Starr was cast in the public eye as obsessive. But if Clinton had simply fessed up at the beginning and said, "Yeah, we had an affair, I'm very sorry," it would have soon blown over.

[dirtboy]

I'm finally beginning to understand why the Clinton's were so outraged by the Lewinsky affair. In both cases, something that was really very small potatoes to begin with was fueled by political passions until it morphed into something that threatened a presidency.

Monicagate was a proxy for all of Clinton's other, far more serious wrongdoing. But the reason Clinton wasn't attacked for such is that other players in Washington were doing much of the same. Take Chinagate. Dems and Pubbies alike sold out to foreign interests, such as Bob Dole and the Albanian lobby. To go after Clinton for his blatant sell-out to Chicom interests might draw attention to others. But viola, a sex scandal with false statements comes along, and that scandal only implicats Slick! And Slick couldn't unleash his scorched-earth approach for this one, because no other major players were implicated.