These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Clinton attempted to deflect inquiries about his alleged years-long affair with a woman named Gennifer Flowers by piously suggesting that public discourse had been demeaned by televised hearings, proposing to elevate it by refusing to provide details. “This will test the character of the press,” Clinton said on 60 Minutes. “It’s not only my character that has been tested.” The claim lacked the merest plausibility, not least because on other occasions Clinton had been perfectly willing to discuss matters that other presidential candidates and officeholders would have scorned as demeaning to the dignity of the office. Asked by a high school student at an MTV-sponsored event in 1994 whether he wore boxers or briefs, for instance, he’d not hesitated to supply an answer: “Usually briefs.”136 Clinton’s two terms in office frustrated the Left, enraged the Right, and ended in scandal. He won the 1992 election with the lowest popular vote—43 percent—since Woodrow Wilson. He set as his first task health care reform, which had been on the progressive docket for nearly a century. “If I don’t get health care done, I’ll wish I didn’t run for President,” he said. He handed this initiative over to his wife, assigning her to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, and calling her his Bobby Kennedy.137 Before her husband took office, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a chronic overpreparer, read forty-three biographies of presidential wives to equip herself for her role. After the adminis...