In 1997 I lacked interest in things that did not exist beyond the distance you could drive while listening to the excruciatingly-long live version of “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel, which was 9.45 miles.  I knew it was exactly 9.45 miles because my girlfriend had once started the song while pulling out of my driveway and realized she was still listening to it when she arrived at her house.  Immediately upon entering her house she called me to tell me about this experience, from which she had deduced that the song had special significance for our relationship and that in 1986, Peter Gabriel or God must have specifically recorded the song with our eventual high school romance in mind.  Shortly thereafter she presented me with a mixed tape containing the song and I could not deny the eerie coincidence that if I drove somewhere between slightly over the speed limit and way over the speed limit, and hit all of the lights correctly, I too could make the song last from her house to mine. 

With my mind focused mostly on issues like that it’s hard to imagine why the relationship failed, but less difficult to understand why I wasn’t paying much attention to world affairs.  And it was too bad that I wasn’t paying attention to world affairs because the biggest affair going on at the time was the affair going on at the White House between President Clinton and his Rebenesque plaything, Monica Lewinsky.

At the time I was vaguely aware of what was going on, but either because there was no internet, or because my parents didn’t want to talk about it, my understanding of the President’s misconduct was very basic.  I knew he had been unfaithful, and that his misdeeds had involved a lot of one-way romance on the part of a younger woman who worked in the government, and that he had lied about it, more than once, including under oath.  Like most people of the liberal persuasion I stuck to the “his bedroom, (office/hallway/bathroom) his business” mantra and have carried it, along with a woefully insufficient understanding of the facts and a fondness for the President to the present day.

A few days ago I read an article which mentioned the scandal and since the most important thing I had to do was ask my dog if he was a good boy for the 1,000^th time of the day, I decided it was time to revisit the case as an adult and a lawyer and by the end I needed a bath of calcium oxide.  The facts are disgusting, and when one finishes reading it’s impossible to fathom how the president wasn’t removed from office.  For starters, Clinton comes through the record like a first-rate sociopath and the world’s only person who had “talk with Fritz Hollings on the telephone while receiving oral sex” on his bucket list.  It is clear from word one that he is a master manipulator and that his dalliances with Lewinsky were not something that “just happened”, or something that “grew from a friendship” as he suggested under oath, but rather the clear and intended result of his deliberate targeting of a chubby attention-starved girl who lacked the self-respect to resist his advances and was pathetic enough to facilitate his self-serving puppetry.

Beyond the manipulative aspects of the thing, the point that stood out most from all of the depositions was the sheer amount of time our president spent performing the acrobatics needed to carry on his relationship while being a) the most important person in the world b) obsessed with conforming his extra-marital inappropriate manipulative sexual conduct in the Oval Office to a set of definitions set forth in pleadings from a different civil suit in which a woman alleged extra-marital inappropriate and manipulative sexual conduct, instead of doing Presidential Things.  In fairness, the late 1990’s were a pretty good time for the country so there’s a chance we’d have been worse off if he’d been paying attention to his job.

Beyond all of his lies and manipulations his sickest were the great lengths he went to maintain Monica’s attention, lest she pause long enough to realize he was married, and President, and mostly liked her because she would pleasure him without any expectation of reciprocation.  Bill’s preferred method of exploiting her insecurities was to wear the various ties she’d given to him as gifts and then call or email her to see if she’d been watching his speech, so as to give the impression that he cared about her.  But Slick Willy saved his most calculating move for the one time Lewinsky had the stones to ask why he treated her like an object.  His response was to call her and make her cry by explaining that she “treated him worse than anyone ever had” which to me falls somewhere above Watergate and landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier to announce “Mission Accomplished” on the all-time list of un-presidential behavior.

On its face it’s easy to understand why Lewinsky was swept up in the situation but difficult to understand why she allowed it go on for as long as it did.  But it’s hard for me to judge a 22 year-old who overestimated the value of 18 personal gifts from her sketch ball boyfriend – hell – about the time she was beginning her romps in the West Wing I was running lights to substantiate the significance of 11-year old Peter Gabriel songs in my high school romance.