A generation ago, as the 1992 presidential campaign heated up, The Wall Street Journal asked: “Who Is Bill Clinton?” The country “will get to know, or try to get to know, Bill Clinton and Hillary,” the Journal noted. “The Gennifer Flowers tank has already rumbled by. But where’s the rest of them?”
Not far behind, as it turned out. Eight years of scandal and suspicion followed: Whitewater, Travelgate, the firing of all U.S. attorneys, the death of a White House deputy counsel and the jailing of a Justice Department associate attorney general, vanishing documents, congressional hearings, independent counsels, lurid allegations from Arkansas, 1996 campaign-finance misdeeds, Paula Jones, Monica, impeachment, the Marc Rich pardon.
The most successful of these opposition efforts—if “success” is measured by impact on the presidency and corruption convictions—focused on matters of law and evidence of criminal behavior. The Whitewater investigation netted 15 corruption convictions, including that of the sitting governor of Arkansas. Four senior Clinton-connected fundraisers went to jail in the campaign-finance scandal, which exposed Chinese attempts to influence the election. Paula Jones’s sexual-harassment lawsuit led to White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to President Clinton’s impeachment in the House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Now we have Pay-to-Play, enormous number of lies, destruction of evidence, etc.
