Former President Bill Clinton is raising eyebrows after a Monday appearance on the Today show in which, during a segment to promote his new book, The President Is Missing (cowritten with James Patterson), he maintained that his decision to fight impeachment after the Monica Lewinsky scandal was the right thing to do.
But there was one quote in particular that says a lot about how he views the #MeToo movement, which was referenced in a segment of the conversation when NBC News’ Craig Melvin asked whether Clinton would have done anything differently had that scandal happened during the #MeToo era. In one swoop Clinton managed to praise the movement while simultaneously casting doubt with his own concerns.
“I like the Me Too movement, it’s way overdue,” he told Melvin. “I think the…it doesn’t mean I agree with everything. I still have some questions about some of the decisions that have been made.”
In the 20 years since the Ken Starr investigation that turned her into a household name, Lewinsky appears to have done a lot of thinking and analysis about her role in the scandal, as evidenced by her February essay for Vanity Fair. In the wake of the #MeToo movement that is changing cultural views about sexual harassment, Lewinsky opened up about being able to look at the situation differently, while still accepting responsibility for her own decisions. “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances—and the ability to abuse them—do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”
“He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better,” she said. “He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.”
Clinton, however, is still making it about him.
“One of the things that this Me Too era has done is that it’s forced a lot of women to speak out. One of those women is Monica Lewinsky,” interviewer Craig Melvin says. “She wrote in an op-ed that the Me Too movement changed her view of sexual harassment….Looking back on what happened and through the lens of Me Too now, do you think differently or feel more responsibility?”
“I felt terrible then. And I came to grips with it,” Clinton said. When asked if he’s ever apologized, Clinton said that he hasn’t talked to Lewinsky personally, but has apologized “to everyone in the world.”
“Nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt,” he says. “But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this. And I bet you don’t even know that. This was litigated 20 years ago, and two thirds of the American people sided with me.”
The conversation was an uncomfortable watch, albeit an important one. Two decades have passed, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back and reflect on what happened in hopes of learning from the situation. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be Clinton’s point of view.
Yes, it’s great that he has supported women in many ways during his political career, but that doesn’t absolve him from bad behavior, especially as it relates to Lewinsky. Doing good work and behaving inappropriately are two things that can be true at the same time. But the defensive and smug tone of his responses indicates to me that Clinton is unchanged in looking at the role he played in the situation.
And that’s incredibly disheartening.
As women, we can continue to tell our stories, to speak our truth, to call out bad behavior that has been tolerated for far too long. But when men, especially leaders, refuse to acknowledge their own roles in the culture of harassment, progress will come much more slowly.
