As Clinton testifies on Epstein, his legacy is already diminished
For Democrats and even some reluctant Republicans, former President Bill Clinton was once the poster child for practical politics — popular, astute and charismatic.
His famous campaign phrase, “I feel your pain” – first uttered during a difficult public exchange in 1992 – became the embodiment of his ability to empathize with voters.
Even after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, which led to President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 for lying under oath about his sexual relationship with a White House intern, he remained a highly sought-after activist among his Democratic colleagues.
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For former President Bill Clinton, who left office 25 years ago, the impact of the Epstein scandal could only further damage his image, particularly among younger Democrats, amid changing morals regarding sexual abuse by powerful men.
But after the #MeToo movement erupted years later, as countless women came forward to tell stories of sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of powerful men, the ex-president came to be seen in a different light. “No one wants to campaign with Bill Clinton anymore,” headlined the New York Times in 2018.
Mr. Clinton’s closed-door deposition to members of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Friday about his relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, dealt another blow to the former president’s image.
Mr. Clinton figures prominently in the so-called Epstein files, millions of pages of documents released in recent weeks by the Justice Department, although he has not been accused of wrongdoing. Neither does his wife, former first lady Hillary Clinton, who testified Thursday before the same committee. Mrs. Clinton, a former senator, secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate, says she never met Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019.
At press time, Mr. Clinton’s closed-door testimony had just begun. In his opening statement, posted on social media, he wrote: “I saw nothing and I did nothing wrong. »
Yet the renewed attention to his past association with Mr. Epstein is a reminder of how the former president’s history of marital infidelity — including accusations of sexual assault, which he denied — has diminished his stature as a political figure today.
What’s more, Mr. Clinton’s testimony serves to underscore how far the Democratic Party itself has evolved in its handling of sexual misconduct within its ranks. As the president fought impeachment, Democrats aggressively defended him, effectively throwing Ms. Lewinsky under the bus.
“I think there is collective remorse” among Democrats over how they responded to the Lewinsky scandal, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Attitudes began to change, she said, when Ms. Lewinsky broke her silence on Mr. Clinton in a 2014 Vanity Fair essay.
“She talked about shame,” says Ms. Walsh. “There she was, this young woman, an intern. There’s no power differential you can imagine that’s bigger.”
Nearly 20 years after the affair broke, Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — who holds the seat formerly held by Mrs. Clinton — said she believed Mr. Clinton should have resigned at that time. She also acknowledged that standards of personal conduct during her tenure had changed.
Both Clintons testified this week under subpoena, after weeks of resistance, before the Republican-led committee near their home in Chappaqua, New York. After her testimony Thursday, Mrs. Clinton told reporters that she had repeatedly told the committee that she had never met Mr. Epstein and had no knowledge of his crimes, calling the deposition “political theater.”
On Friday, Mr. Clinton became the first former president in history to appear before a congressional committee under subpoena. In a sworn statement last month, he said he flew on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003 while he was traveling abroad on behalf of the Clinton Foundation. Clinton aides said he severed ties with the financier before his crimes became public in 2005.
House Oversight Committee Democrats/Reuters
The Clintons, in fact, appear to have been more closely linked to Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell than to Mr. Epstein. Ms. Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for child sex trafficking, helped the former president set up and finance his project known as the Clinton Global Initiative.
Still, the images of Mr. Clinton in the Epstein files are hard to ignore, including a photo of him in a hot tub with an unidentified woman whose face is redacted. The location and date of the photo are not disclosed.
President Donald Trump, another former Epstein associate, is also grappling with his thousands of appearances in the Epstein files — and other reported files that remain undisclosed. Democrats said President Trump should also be called to testify under oath.
But for Mr. Clinton, another near-octogenarian, who left office 25 years ago, the impact of the Epstein episode focuses more on his legacy and how mores have changed around sexual misconduct by powerful men.
The former president’s weak physical appearance, against a backdrop of health problems, only reinforced his image as a man of the past. He won the White House and governed as a centrist, passing tough-on-crime legislation and welfare reform. In stark contrast to today’s crippling national debt and deficits, Mr. Clinton — working with Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich — oversaw budget surpluses for four consecutive years, from 1998 to 2001.
Mr. Clinton, the Rhodes Scholar from small-town Arkansas, still has his record as a two-term president who governed during a period of peace and prosperity. It’s a big part of his legacy that no one can take away from him.
But today, after the #MeToo movement and its appearances in the Epstein files, “his voice is diminished, literally and figuratively,” says Barbara Perry, presidential historian at the University of Virginia.
