Funny. This morning, Campaign Spot reader John asked, “Any chance that the whole Bonds perjury thing gets people talking about Billy Boy again? Effects on the campaign?”

And as luck would have it, in the Style section of the Post, a story with pictures of Bonds, Nixon, and Clinton.

Washington, in particular, knows how this one rolls. Several major political scandals of recent vintage have turned less on the basis of who did what to whom than on who lied or dissembled about what.
The enduring formulations may be Richard Nixon’s downfall in 1974, which made “stonewalling” a household word, and Bill Clinton’s impeachment in late 1998, which turned on his efforts to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton’s legal troubles overshadowed those of his Housing and Urban Development secretary, Henry Cisneros, who lied to federal agents about the amount — but not the fact — of “hush money” he paid to a woman with whom he was having an affair. (Cisneros pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI and was fined $10,000; he was pardoned by Clinton in January 2001.)
Similarly, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted not of revealing the name of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame, but of lying to a special prosecutor about his role in the episode (Libby, too, was pardoned).

I disagree with the gist of that article, by the way; people aren’t just upset that Bonds is charged with perjury when he said he never knowingly took steroids; they’re upset because he took steroids.