This argument is often brought up when a politician is caught in a sex scandal. While it’s true that the sex act itself is not relevant to his job, the deception and moral failing is. If your mailman is having an affair, it doesn’t affect his ability to deliver the mail. But when a politician is unable to control his urges, it calls into doubt his ability to do what’s right when it conflicts with his desires.
A married politician boinking an intern is putting himself at great risk for scandal and blackmail. It’s not just going to be a harmless bit of fun. If he still proceeds, you have to wonder about his judgment. Will he be able to resist a bribe from a lobbyist? Will he support policies that benefit his constituents even though they may cause him personal hardship? If he’s that sexually frustrated, he should spend a few minutes in the bathroom with some lotion. If instead he has an affair or has an online relationship, that is very bad judgment which should call into question his ability to lead. So it’s not the sex act which is so bad. It’s the lack of judgment which made him think it was okay.
If they had a tape with Bill’s voice on it, that would be something. The fact that Monica Lewinski made a tape and wrote letters fits right in with what we already knew - she was a lovestruck intern. If the tape is released this story will last for two days simply because every news channel will play excerpts until they bore themselves. Without the tape, there’s nothing.
Bullshit. Clinton hasn’t held office for thirteen years. The affair we’re talking about happened longer ago than that and has been public knowledge all this time.
This “report” could serve as the textbook example of something that isn’t newsworthy.
Ad hominem (I think). Besides, Despite his personal moral shortcomings, I seem to recall Bill handing over a fiscally & diplomatically healthy nation to his successor who, apart from being a bit of a ditz seems to have had no recent skeletons in his closet. And we all know how that turned out. But that whole debate aside–Bill getting a blowjob means Hillary is vulnerable…how?
And yeah, sorry ElvisL1ves, the whole Vince Foster conspiracy thing is my dirty little pleasure. Makes Hillary more interesting.
Walk me through this thought process. Weiner gets nailed again, so… it matters for Hillary’s potential presidential campaign that hasn’t even started that there is new evidence of something that everyone already knows happened 15 years ago?
This makes zero sense. It’s like saying, “If Arnold Schwarzenegger were caught doing cocaine, Jeb Bush’s presidential hopes would be over because we all know that George W. Bush tried cocaine in college.”
The National Enquirer has reported some relevant stuff, but let’s not pretend something is relevant just because it’s in the Enquirer. Spoiler alert: if Hillary runs for president in 2 1/2 to 3 years, nobody’s going to care about this.
I doubt this story will last very long even if the audio tape gets released. At most it will be an annoyance for the Clintons for a week or two. It depends on how much other unreleased material is out there.
This is actually a good time for this crap to come out. Get it talked about and out of the way before Hillary steps back into politics.
One tangential area where all this may get stirred up has to do with the interns or other volunteers surrounding Anthony Weiner. According to that article by ex-intern Olivia Nuzzi that’s been all the buzz for the last day or so, Weiner is surrounded by relatively inexperienced political intern wanna-bees who [del]are[/del] were hoping that, through their association with Weiner, they can get connected to Huma Abedin, through whom they can get connected to Hillary, thus to have an inside track to get involved in her campaign in 2016.
For them, Weiner’s spectacle has trashed all those (no doubt hypothetical) possibilities.
ETA: The point here being, if Hillary finds it advisable to sever all ties with Ms. Abedin (as some are suggesting now), those poor interns’ fantasies, such as they were, are more trashed now than ever!
Since 100% of everything in The Enquire is fiction, and everyone knows it’s fiction, and they seem to be making enough money to pay their lawyers, that’s all that counts.
Well, I seriously doubt any wife wants details of her husband’s infidelity rehashed in the Internet world. Bill was lucky that social media was in its infancy in the 90’s.
It’s just another typical Clinton story just like the hundreds of other ones that I’ve seen since high school. He was my governor and I’ve been a Clinton watcher my entire adult life. The Clintons are a lightening rod for both good and bad news stories. That will never change.
If the Monica story gets rehashed then a new generation of 20 year olds can laugh about horny Bill and his diddling cigar. The stained dress. This stuff is new information for a 20 year old. A few days later the next cycle of news rolls by and its over.
It wasnt a ‘moral failing’. It was blatant and stupid sexual harassment. Lewinsky worked under him. He also did this in the house where his wife and daughter wwere living. It was an act of monumental stupidity and immaturity.
I once saved a front-page story about dinosaurs living in contemporary Lake Michigan, written as an apparently serious article. After that, it’s hard to take any of their “news” seriously.
Although the Notional Inquirer is worse than the Daily Mail :smack: , even a blind pig can find an acorn.
It’s good that there is an investigation of a real Presidential scandal.
After all hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, there were many casualties amongst the Allied troops - and the US + allies then got horribly stuck in Afghanistan.
I don’t take issue with the rest of your post, but this is a ridiculous and needlessly inflammatory assertion. I don’t recall hearing about any unwanted advances unless they came from Ms. Monica “presidential kneepads” Lewinsky herself. Bill was (and likely is and always has been) a philandering megalomaniac and a sub-par father/husband. But the fact angry women came out of the woodwork when it would harm him most seems to suggest he never made (or followed through with) undue perks for handling his meat.