Two ways to disgrace a President

On October 21, Ben Bradlee, the famous ex-editor of the Washington Post died aged 93. The day before that, on October 20, Monica Lewinsky, 41, the even more famous ex-girlfriend of Bill Clinton, made her first public speech after 10 years spent keeping out of the public eye. They had nothing in common except for the fact that each had been responsible for bringing disgrace to a President of the United States.

Richard Nixon would have faced impeachment by Congress over the Watergate scandal, which the Post exposed, if he had not first resigned in 1974 (the first President ever to do so) and then been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. President Clinton was impeached in 1998, but acquitted by the US Senate. Lewinsky’s re-emergence from the shadows coincided with the cranking up of Hillary Clinton’s efforts to seek the Democratic candidacy for the White House. What effect, if any, it will have on this ambition of hers is hard to know.

Invited by Forbes magazine to address a convention in Philadelphia of under-30 “young entrepreneurs and achievers”, Lewinsky used the occasion to give her own version of what happened: “Fresh out of college, a 22-year-old intern in the White House and more than averagely romantic I fell in love with my boss in a 22-year-old sort of way… We started an affair that lasted, on and off, for two years. And, at that time, it was my everything.”

“That woman”, as Clinton dismissively called her when he denied that they had ever had a sexual relationship, then claimed to have been the first ever victim of “cyberbullying”, “the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet”. This had brought her to the brink of suicide. “Having survived myself, what I want to do now is help other victims of the shame game survive too.”

It must be bewildering to Monica Lewinsky that the Clintons have not only survived this scandal but now even have realistic hopes of returning to the White House, while she has found her reputation in shreds.Watergate, on the other hand, was the making of Ben Bradlee. He was a fun-loving man who combined perfect manners with a vulgar taste for profanity that he had acquired in the navy. He actually possessed even more star quality than Jason Robards, the actor who won an Oscar for playing him in the 1976 film All The President’s Men, which was based on the book of that name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the Post reporters who exposed the Watergate affair.

But they could never have done so without the courageous backing of their tenacious editor, a man whose establishment connections never weakened his commitment to the pursuit of truth. I watched his funeral in Washington Cathedral on YouTube. Everyone who was anyone was there, including vice-president Joe Biden and secretary of state John Kerry. The coffin was draped in the Stars and Stripes. The choir sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic and America the Beautiful. It seemed a rather wonderful thing about America that shaming the head of state of the most powerful nation could be seen as a great act of patriotism, worthy of such a celebration.

By arrangement with the Spectator