The Lewinsky Mess: 10 years later

A week or so ago I had a little fun claiming credit for predicting that Hillary would cry sometime between Iowa and New Hampshire.

But that wasn’t the only time I’ve “predicted” something that sort of came true.

I’m no seer, of course, and make no claims to anything beyond weird co-incidence. But ten years ago, in the early morning, I wrote in my journal: today, something is going to happen that will be very bad for my country.

I often ramble in my journal.

The Lewinsky story broke that day, and I didn’t think about it. It was some time much later when, reviewing my journal, I put it together. And even then, I did not think about the long-term repercussions of the affair between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

James Taranto thinks about them, here:

The effects of the Lewinsky scandal continue to be felt. By some accounts it launched Mrs. Clinton’s political career….
[…]

Organized feminism lost much of its moral authority, as no less a personage than Gloria Steinem–in a famous op-ed that is mysteriously missing from the New York Times archives but we found here–explained away treatment of women that she never would have tolerated from a Republican or a private-sector boss.

The independent counsel statute, a post-Watergate abomination that no one thinks made government cleaner, finally went by the boards …
[…]

The paranoid style of politics…

You’ll want to read it all.