This may be about old history but it has to also be taken to be about something called principles and principles, if proper ones, do not get so old as to become obsolete and retrospect is a necessary aspect of any perspective that is legitimately principles, principles violated in the past proper exemplars for conduct in the present and future.
I remember really liking Bill Clinton and seeing him as the president who would take us into a better future (I was not paying attention to important details such as who Robert Rubin was or the polishing up of predatory capitalism that was going on or the make the streets safe for the haves by jailing forever those who made the haves feel unsafe). So, when the scandals were coming to light, I tried to make dim their significance.
I have wondered, more so now than before, but before too, about how I and others dismissed those who were making look ugly our pretty boy, our champion, thought about the fact that getting a blow job from a rather young woman in the confines of the White House, should be looked upon as deviant behavior, perversion, less so, foolishly, in terms of power dynamics, but wrong in so many ways, the enemies of the man right in their condemnation of the behavior, those enemies enemies of so many things I believed in, right though to excoriate Bill for his actions.
I remember cursing him for giving THEM, these self-righteous religious bigots (as I saw them), a reason for being self-righteous and I was righteously appalled by the sheen of dignity he put upon him by acting so disgracefully.
But I was happy that he stayed in office, continued to see him as the good against the bad and was angered by the accusations from other women who came forth to complain of his abusive behavior, dismissed them as surrogates for the bad people out there who wanted to have America be what they wanted it to be, not what I wanted it to be.
So, now, these many years hence, I really do not care to have Bill or the woman who stood by his side punished. I do want to have sensible people consider the principles and how they may have treated them then and how, now, they should consider that treatment and what it means for moving forward in a principled manner.
