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WHITEFOAM

                                                    May 4, 2017
                                                                 UPSET
A bit of political history:
Whitewater, the Bill            If this strikes you as ancient history,
Clinton impeachment, etc.       I might be inclined to agree-- e.g. I've
                                never claimed this had much relevance to
                                the 2016 election.  I talk about it only
                                because I find the amnesia on this
                                subject among Democrats amazing...


It's a persistant myth among Democrats
that there was no fire to the Whitewater
smoke, else why did the impeachment          So, why did Starr go with
degenerate into a silly sex scandal?         just the sex scandal?

First of all: there's clear                     Under Reagan, the US had
indications of corruption in the                gone through the
tale of the Clinton's at play in                Iran-Contra investigation:
Arkansas, my favorite being the                 in any reasonable world,
funny claim that Hillary Clinton                Reagan would've been
was somehow doing an insanely good              impeached for what his
job of speculating in cattle                    administration had done
futures.                                        (Congress says: no we
                                                won't fund those Contras.
   Just to spell it out: her luck was           Reagan's boys go looking
   completely unbelievable.  The only           for ways to raise funds
   plausible explanation-- which isn't to       otherwise...)
   claim there's legal evidence for a
   convinction-- is "money laundering".         One thing was abundantly
   If you want to hand a payoff to the          clear after the
   governor, one way to do it is have the       Iran-Contra hearings: the
   governor's wife put a bet down at a          American people have the
   brokerage house, matched by you-- then       attention spans of fleas,
   the brokerage house chooses who bet          and were unable to focus
   which way, but only after the fact,          on the real issues there.
   when the winning side is known.
                                                So, if you've got a choice
                                                of a highly technical
                                                investigation of corruption
                                                before taking office as
                                                President, or a sex scandal
                                                that happened while in office,
                                                which would you go with?


                            There's still more
                            context to that though:
                                                              [ref]
                            Consider Senator Bob Packwood:

                            A Republican from Oregon, he actually had
                            a reputation for being strong on Women's
                            Issues... but unfortunately he also
                            repeatedly engaged in unwanted sexual
                            advances to various women he worked with,
                            and after many of them came forward he
                            was chased out of office.

                            A lot of Republicans evidently resented
                            this, regarding Packwood's offenses as
                            being relatively small matters-- going
                            after Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky
                            was regarded as fair payback for what had
                            been done to Packwood.
                                                                   
                                  The standard liberal-feminist take       
                                  on Clinton-Lewinksy seems to be "but     
                                  it was *consensual*", but note that          
                                  in every *other* circumstance,                  
                                  positions of power are supposed to         
                                  invalidate any possibility of            
                                  meaningful consent (e.g. in              
                                  professor-student relationships).        
                                                                           
                                                                          
            A piece by Trip Gabriel ("The Trials Of Bob Packwood")
            from 1993 tries to sift through some of the
            distinctions people try to make in these areas:

                [ref]


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