Remember?

摘要

It is more than two years since Monica Lewinsky's face first appeared on the cover of Newsweek, and more than two years since Bill Clinton, famously wagging his finger, denied having sexual relations with "that woman". It feels like a different age. Viewed calmly and with hindsight, it seems extraordinary that a lie about sex— which, as Jeffrey Toobin correctly points out, was what started the Lewinsky affair-should almost have capsized a president. His critics, who included this newspaper, believed that a "pattern and practice" of lawless behaviour could be pinned on Mr Clinton which, in the end, would show him unfit for his office. Such a pattern never appeared. In a life well-strewn with falsehoods and risky self-gratification, the president was never proven to have done anything that was actually criminal.