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Comment by p-o | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how you elect to name two presidents in an era that were democrats while conveniently omitting the republican president in between. With all his baggages, I find this quite convenient.

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It's an interesting point. With Clinton, l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public as a means of congressional focus. It should be noted that until then, this was effectively off limits. It was an open secret in DC that his predecessor, Bush the 1st, kept a mistress for years and that was never discussed publicly.

In the case of Obama, the GOP noted that their top priority was to make him a 1-term president and that meant attempted sabotage of any legislation that might make him look good.

Neither man were perfect presidents, but compared to the current regime it is night and day.

The Lewinsky Affair got traction because Clinton used his position of power (literally in the Oval Office) to take advantage of a young subordinate, in a time when ‘sexual harassment’ was becoming a hot topic. Then lying about the affair made it much worse (as cover-ups often do). It was definitely used against Clinton by his opponents, but the way he abused his position, then perjured himself was truly shameful.

Ironic because Trump said (and did) far worse things in 2016 and didn’t affect him one bit

I purposely avoided any comparison between Clinton and other presidents, as many have done bad things, and it is difficult to rank them all. I just wanted to address the parent comment's minimization of Clinton's wrong-doing, as evidenced by this quote: "l'affaire de bj was a willful attempt to take the president's private life public"

What Clinton did was absolutely wrong, but that was a personal affair.

In life and the law, intentions are foundational for evaluating people's actions.

The scandalizing of Clinton's behavior was only about political slander, mud slinging. Your pearl clutching is performative and partisan.

There's so much to not like about the Dems, and it's primarily in the fact that DNC leadership is corrupt and they are only interested in serving themselves and their patrons. But the party members as a whole do work on trying to do good governance. They often fail, but on the intentions front, it's not disagreable.

Counter this to the modern day GOP -- they've been coopted by the evangelicals and white nationalists, and the only thing they want to govern is demanding that their theology is the law of the land. No thank you.

I have respect for old-school conservatives who cared about limited government -- I totally agree with that concept but differ on how those limits are set.

I have no party affiliation and loath partisan politics, but with the two-party system one has to choose the least worst.

If you do something at work with a subordinate, it’s no longer personal.

Dating in the workplace is usually a bad idea, especially if it's a manager and an underling because the power dynamics get fucked up.

But in the case of the Clinton affair, it was effectively personal (Bill, Monica, Hillary) -- their business.

Please explain how this impacted Clinton's ability to execute his job, or how that dynamic hurt Lewinsky in such a way that it needed to be a national affair?

This is the same kind of feigned moral panic over Hunter Biden's business dealings -- designed solely to smear the president for their opponents political gain.

Edit: as a counter point, Trump fucking a porn star months after his son was born was technically between him, Stormy, and Melania. The reason that it was worthy of public scrutiny was that he committed campaign finance fraud with the hush money. Ironically, no pearls were clutched by his supporters over that.

Clinton damaged the White House intern program by making it look like they were either his harem or victims; having an affair in his office also made it look like he was more interested in using his position to cheat on his wife than do his job. It was at least a distraction, and probably more of a handicap. If he wanted to have sex with Lewinsky, he should have waited until she left the internship, and done it in the Residence.

I purposely avoided comparing Clinton to anyone else, so whatever horrible things Trump has done is just changing the subject. I personally believe that neither of them has committed (anything approximating) the most abhorrent acts by a POTUS, but that's a different conversation.

Clinton as a sex pest is a more recent narrative. At the time the media coverage was not about how he was abusing an intern. It was about how he was debasing the office and how Lewinsky wasn't even that hot. It was certainly not the narrative from the right that Clinton was an abuser.

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