That Was No Lady

BLACK in the early days of the Clinton administration, Barbra Streisand became known as a C-SPAN junkie, immersed in the nitty-gritty of public policy. She had the ear of the president and that ear needed to be filled—with her insights. According to the Wall Street Journal, Streisand also “holed up in her Manhattan apartment with a stack of books about Thomas Jefferson”; she was tackling politics with the zeal of a mid-life divorcee going back to college. When Streisand, who’d stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom very early in Clinton’s first term, learned that another—more natural—blonde had stayed at the White House, she reportedly erupted with incredulity, “What does Sharon Stone know about policy?!”

This little episode is a useful reminder about Clintonism. Most sleazy politicians suffer from a tippingpoint dynamic: Each successive scandal piles on the previous one until the combined weight tips him over like a man trying to carry one too many bricks. The brilliance and the horror of Bill Clinton was that each successive chapter of sleaze eclipsed the previous one. Like a Russian matryoshka doll, Clinton concealed muck by hiding it behind a larger pile of muck. The Lewinsky scandal and, finally, the par-dons-for-sale scandal blocked from view our collective memories of the earliest manifestations of not merely the metaphysical tackiness of the Man from Hope but the moral hall of mirrors that was the entire decade—from the O. J. Simpson and Menendez trials to a Wall Street gold rush that made the alleged excess of the 1980s seem sober by comparison.

About the Author

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg is a National Review contributing editor.

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BLACK in the early days of the Clinton administration, Barbra Streisand became known as a C-SPAN junkie, immersed in the nitty-gritty of public policy. She had the ear of the president and that ear needed to be filled—with her insights. According to the Wall Street Journal, Streisand also “holed up in her Manhattan apartment with a stack of books about Thomas Jefferson”; she was tackling politics with the zeal of a mid-life divorcee going back to college. When Streisand, who’d stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom very early in Clinton’s first term, learned that another—more natural—blonde had stayed at the White House, she reportedly erupted with incredulity, “What does Sharon Stone know about policy?!”

This little episode is a useful reminder about Clintonism. Most sleazy politicians suffer from a tippingpoint dynamic: Each successive scandal piles on the previous one until the combined weight tips him over like a man trying to carry one too many bricks. The brilliance and the horror of Bill Clinton was that each successive chapter of sleaze eclipsed the previous one. Like a Russian matryoshka doll, Clinton concealed muck by hiding it behind a larger pile of muck. The Lewinsky scandal and, finally, the par-dons-for-sale scandal blocked from view our collective memories of the earliest manifestations of not merely the metaphysical tackiness of the Man from Hope but the moral hall of mirrors that was the entire decade—from the O. J. Simpson and Menendez trials to a Wall Street gold rush that made the alleged excess of the 1980s seem sober by comparison.