Bill Clinton's Anxiety Management Technique

Sometimes the really smart thing is to know when to shut up. Sometimes the moral thing is to stop ripping open the scab.

Of course, really smart does not apply when we are dealing with the Clintons. They never miss a chance to remind us of how morally degenerate they really were. We still hear Hillary Clinton refusing to accept that she lost the election in 2016 because she was an incompetent fraud and an appallingly bad candidate.

Hillary thought that the American people owed her the presidency, because she defended her husband against charges of rape and sexual harassment. And she will not let us forget it.

Yesterday, the world was treated to Bill Clinton’s pathetic explanation for why he succumbed to temptation and allowed Monica Lewinsky to blow him. In the world of power imbalance sexual abuse, that one was near the top of the list.

Naturally, not a one of those advocates who deplore power imbalance sexual relations said a word about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. They were standing tall and proud for Clinton because they were convinced that President Al Gore would undermine their abortion rights. 

Anyway, the New York Times reports that Clinton hooked up with Lewinsky as a way to manage his anxieties. But seriously, the poor boy was so overwhelmed by the job that he became sexually frustrated. He decided that the best way to affirm his manhood and relieve his anxiety was to receive a blow job from a comely 22 year old intern. Besides, she had flashed her thong at him-- what man could resist?

The Times says:

Former President Bill Clinton, recalling the sex scandal that led to his impeachment in 1998, says in a new documentary series that his extramarital affair with Monica S. Lewinsky was a way of “managing my anxieties.”

Clearly, we are meant to sympathize with poor little Billy:

Mr. Clinton says that he was under enormous pressure, but that his actions were inexcusable.

“You feel like you’re staggering around — you’ve been in a 15-round prizefight that was extended to 30 rounds, and here’s something that’ll take your mind off it for a while,” Mr. Clinton says. “Everybody’s life has pressures and disappointments and terrors, fears of whatever, things I did to manage my anxieties for years.”

Naturally, the Twitter verse is now filled with suggestions that Bubba might have meditated or even might have taken a pill.

To the best of my knowledge, no one seems willing to point out that, throughout the Lewinsky affair, Bill Clinton had a wife. Now, why do you imagine that it has never crossed anyone’s mind that he could have managed his anxieties with conjugal relations? I will not explain it in more detail, but it is so obvious that no one mentions it.

But, that isn’t the reason for yet another post on our first family of moral degenerates. I am remarking that while Bill Clinton feels really, really bad about what he did and while he feels even worse about having destroyed Monica Lewinsky’s life, his regrets are fake-- as fake as everything else around him.

And even if Clinton was attempting something like an apology to Monica Lewinsky, it is too little, too late. We recall Kwame Anthony Appiah’s idea, namely that an apology should be timely, or not offered at all. Timely because its purpose is to repair damage, repair damage to a relationship or repair damage to a reputation.

One is reminded of the fact that Hillary Clinton never apologized for what happened in Benghazi. She dismissed it all in horrifyingly immoral terms: "What difference at this point does it make." And she allowed Susan Rice to go on all the Sunday talk shows to blame it on a California filmmaker.

To be clear, the American Secretary of State is responsible for the security of America’s ambassadors. Amb. Chris Stevens only asked for better security 600 or so times. But, if the fault did not lie with Hillary Clinton, by definition, some considerable blame must be placed on the ambassador himself. He forgot to duck.

Moral leaders take full responsibility for failure. If they are not responsible then the fault must be with their subordinates. Not taking responsibility and not being held accountable makes it appear that everyone else is at fault.

A leader who gives bad orders might choose, in other words, to say that when the campaign failed, the fault cannot be in his great orders or his great plan but in those who had implemented them.

So, if Bill Clinton is incapable of taking responsibility for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, for using a young woman for anxiety relief, then the person who must be at fault is Monica herself. In refusing to take responsibility and in refusing to be held accountable Bill Clinton cursed Monica Lewinsky and basically ruined her life. In that his degenerate wife was totally complicit.

So, however badly Bill Clinton now feels about Monica Lewinsky, the truth is he could have done something about it. It would have cost him his presidency and would have cost his wife her political viability, but resigning would have been the right thing to do.

One is confident that it never crossed his mind. One is equally confident that his ambitious wife would never have allowed it.