The Reckless and the Stupid

The character of a President eventually determines his destiny

Americans trying to get their bearings thought of Richard Nixon and traced his descent from the charge of obstructing justice to the threat of impeachment, and then to the morning of his maudlin-defiant resignation. Or, imagining a precedent for the origins of the current mess, they went back to Bill Clinton's Rose Garden hero of long ago, John Kennedy, the martyred Ur-boomer who may have been Clinton's role model in obdurately reckless sex.

But maybe the third protagonist of the '60s should be conjured up. Until the middle of last week, I had been working on the conceit that Bill Clinton...

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