Bernard-Henri Lévy: How Monica Lewinsky Continues To Dominate American Politics
All the talk here is about the presidential election, along with the recession.
And within that election, clearly the only duel that matters, for the moment, is the one between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
I observe Clinton in her television appearances.
I see how hard she works at trying to prove that she is more experienced, more prepared than her opponent.
I can see where the spin doctors have been fine-tuning her speeches on Iraq and on domestic policy.
But the truth of the matter is that the voters are only interested in one thing: still, 10 years later, the famous Monica Lewinsky affair.
Did she know about it?
Did she tolerate it?
What was the extent of her complicity, and what is the nature of the pact that joined, and still joins, her and her husband?
And especially, in this context, what are the real wellsprings of her ambition--what is on this woman's mind when (because that is what this is really about) she imagines going every morning and every evening of her life to the very spot where she was humiliated?
Oh, the public good, sure.
For the sake of America, without a doubt.
But no matter what they say, the equation is so strange, and the tidal wave of 10 years ago left such an indelible mark, that one cannot help but wonder how such lofty matters will mix with other, less political, more epic events.
Is she running to get revenge--or to avenge him?
So that she can take the battlefield, declare her victory, show him and the world what an unstained Clinton presidency can be? Or, on the contrary, is she doing it to scrub out the dirt, allowing the page to finally be turned--will she be like a film noir heroine whose husband has committed a crime and who then, after she's hidden the body, goes back to the scene to get rid of all the evidence?
The truth is that there are no political questions more essential than these: first, what the senator is thinking as she imagines taking the office associated with the escapades of Clinton I; and second, what the voters are thinking as they watch the revival of the craziest vaudeville in contemporary history....
Read entire article at New Republic
And within that election, clearly the only duel that matters, for the moment, is the one between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
I observe Clinton in her television appearances.
I see how hard she works at trying to prove that she is more experienced, more prepared than her opponent.
I can see where the spin doctors have been fine-tuning her speeches on Iraq and on domestic policy.
But the truth of the matter is that the voters are only interested in one thing: still, 10 years later, the famous Monica Lewinsky affair.
Did she know about it?
Did she tolerate it?
What was the extent of her complicity, and what is the nature of the pact that joined, and still joins, her and her husband?
And especially, in this context, what are the real wellsprings of her ambition--what is on this woman's mind when (because that is what this is really about) she imagines going every morning and every evening of her life to the very spot where she was humiliated?
Oh, the public good, sure.
For the sake of America, without a doubt.
But no matter what they say, the equation is so strange, and the tidal wave of 10 years ago left such an indelible mark, that one cannot help but wonder how such lofty matters will mix with other, less political, more epic events.
Is she running to get revenge--or to avenge him?
So that she can take the battlefield, declare her victory, show him and the world what an unstained Clinton presidency can be? Or, on the contrary, is she doing it to scrub out the dirt, allowing the page to finally be turned--will she be like a film noir heroine whose husband has committed a crime and who then, after she's hidden the body, goes back to the scene to get rid of all the evidence?
The truth is that there are no political questions more essential than these: first, what the senator is thinking as she imagines taking the office associated with the escapades of Clinton I; and second, what the voters are thinking as they watch the revival of the craziest vaudeville in contemporary history....