Yes, many presidents have had affairs, Mephisto. The number of affairs Clinton has had brings his judgment into question, though. My own personal feeling is that he is a sex addict--someone who is compulsive and cannot easily stop the destructive behavior. Since this behavior hurts him, his wife, and their child at least, it certainly has a destructive influence. And a sitting president having state troopers bring a woman he does not know but is a state employee in the state he governs to his hotel room, pulling down his pants and asking her to "kiss it" is pretty vulgar, and now here the whole planet knows about it!! It is detrimental when a president creates a SPECTACLE because of his private behavior.
But those are moral questions. The reason impeachment is now being discussed is that he may have committed serious felonies like obstruction of justice for coaching the young woman to lie under oath. The reason the Whitewater investigation has lasted so long is partially because Clinton seems to have a pattern of coaching people to lie under oath, and that is why Janet Reno and a panel of three federal judges just decided that the investigation of the affair with the very young woman should be added to the Whitewater inquiry, because of a seeming pattern of obstruction of justice by the president.
The reason the young woman panicked, if I understand this all correctly, is that as the Paula Jones case moved closer to trial, she was subpoenaed to testify as one of a very large group of women who were suspected either of having sex with Clinton, or being propositioned by him in return for job promotions. If she lied under oath, she would also be subject to the perjury laws, and could get into a lot of legal trouble.
All I know is that there is an hour and a half of her on tape talking about the affair she did have, and begging the other woman to help her cover it up. So it is very incriminating, and it would be hard to believe her if she said she did NOT have an affair with him, which is what she was planning to do until the tape became public. Now she is going to plead the fifth, apparently, but is refusing to testify that she did NOT have an affair with him. She is already in a lot of trouble because she signed an affidavit, which is a legal document submitted to the judge in the Paula Jones trial, where she has apparently lied.
She is almost thirty years younger than Clinton, a twenty-one-year-old intern when the affair started. That is a pretty big age gap!!! |
