31837 | igh Crimes or H
Misdemeanors?
W
henBo B dyLAn oBseRved that “even the president of the
United States sometimes must have to stand naked” he hadn’t
imagined Bill Clinton with a cigar and an intern.
The Clinton-Gingrich brinksmanship over Medicare, Medicaid, edu-
cation and the environment caused two shutdowns of non-essential fed-
eral services between mid-November of 1995 and the new year. A million
federal employees were furloughed, with the overall cost estimated at
$800 million. Clinton was already winning the public relations war when
Gingrich bragged to reporters that he forced the shutdown because the
president had made him and Dole sit in the back of Air Force One on
a flight to Israel for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. “What had
been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a
spoiled child,” wrote Tom DeLay, the majority whip in the House. The
budget standoff also kept Dole from the campaign trail and boosted Clin-
ton’s approval ratings.^1
In the middle of the government shutdown, the short-staffed White
House took on “the giddy atmosphere of a slumber party.” Monica Lewin-
sky, a 22-year-old unpaid intern, was filling in at the office of Clinton’s
chief of staff. She was curvy and flirty. The president noticed.^2
Clinton’s flings were legendary. Lewinsky was far from the first
woman to note that he exuded sexual energy. “Power,” Henry Kissinger
observed in his political prime, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” A former
Arkansas state employee named Paula Jones was suing Clinton for sex-
ual harassment in a case that dated to his days as governor. Kenneth
Starr, the independent counsel appointed to investigate the Clintons’
involvement in Whitewater, a failed Arkansas real estate development,
broadened his probe to embrace Jones’ allegations and discovered
Monica.
The news broke in January of 1998. The Drudge Report lit the fuse on