Scandal? What Scandal?

Scandal: a circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it.

-Merriam Webster Dictionary

Prior to the modern era, Presidential scandals didn’t really exist, at least not to the point of capsizing an administration.

 Oh, there was lasciviousness, political malfeasance, and financial misbehavior, but it seldom got in the way of choosing a leader. Jefferson was elected even though it was whispered he had fathered children by Sally Hemmings, a slave who seems to have been groomed as his paramour since his days as Ambassador to France.

Andrew Jackson’s enemies tried to label him a bigamist, but that just pissed him off. There wasn’t a lot of upside in pissing off Ol’ Hickory.

Whispers about James Buchanan, a lifelong bachelor, echoed throughout the pre-Civil War political class. His long-standing friendship with former Vice-President William King led Jackson to refer to them as “Miss Nancy and Miss Fancy”.

History doesn’t reveal who was who, but King does bear a passing resemblance to Nancy Culp, who would star as Jane Hathaway in The Beverly Hillbillies a century later, so let’s go with that.

 Andrew Johnson was one of three Presidents to endure impeachment. He was a drunken buffoon, but his impeachment in 1868 was less an indictment of his character than a parliamentary trick to stymie his policies, which were shitty but legal. Ulysses S. Grant’s Presidency is historically judged as “scandal-ridden”, with corruption running rampant. Not only did Grant survive two terms, but his party also held the White House for 24 of the 36 years after he left office.

 They also set the blueprint for the oligarchy America has become, but that’s a different story for a different day.

 Warren G. Harding was the whole package: Multiple mistresses, hush money payments, and financial support to an out-of-wedlock child in addition to the financial cronyism of the Teapot Dome scandal. These, along with his rank incompetence, threatened to torpedo any hopes for reelection, so he died.

 At least he had the good sense to die with his wife by his bed. FDR was hanging out with his sidepiece at their summer retreat when he croaked.

 The strait-laced Eisenhower was rumored to have dalliances in his army career, and there has never been more prolific one-two horndog punch in the Executive branch than John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

Hell, even Nixon, RICHARD GODDAMN NIXON, the most reptilian of Presidents, was said to have had affairs Zsa Zsa Gabor and several Chinese ladies.

 Tricky Dick energy.

 But all that was just boys being boys and seeing as officials were elected by their fellow boys and nobody else (until 1920), and boys were controlling the media, a little shark-to-shark courtesy was extended.

The scandal that cratered the Nixon Presidency wasn’t of a carnal nature. It was an abuse of power that even his own party couldn’t stomach, and he resigned rather than face impeachment.

 No, crimes of libido may titillate and sell papers, but they never really threatened a Presidency.

 Then along came Bill Clinton.

Representing a new paradigm arising out of the Democrat’s time in the desert of the Reagan/Bush era, Clinton was young, charming, glib, smart, and ambitious. He scared the hell out of the standing coalition of neocons, Bible-thumpers, and corporate whores scheming to stay in control of the government machinery.

 If only he’d had more self-control and less concupiscence than your average bonobo.

 He got a blowjob. In the White House. From an intern. A quarter of a century younger than him. And she told her friend about it. Who told everybody about it.

Oh, and he left forensic proof.

 The press, less constrained than formerly and eager to push a bawdy narrative, responded with wall-to-wall coverage of his wayward Presidential jizz and the intern’s blue dress it used as its runway.

 There was, rightfully, public moral outrage.

 Conservatives, sensing the moral vulnerability of a Democratic party unused to welding power, began studying the angles for a more formal indictment, and trotted out a thin rationale: Clinton wasn’t impeached for high crimes, treason, or even abuse of power, which might hold a tendril of legitimacy. He was impeached for lying in a deposition about a blowjob. Obstruction of justice in a case unrelated to his duties as Chief Executive.

Impeachment was, in retrospect, a truly stupid move. He was not removed from office, and the final vote wasn’t close. He won reelection and the fallout even cost two Speakers of the House their job for similar moral failings (elected individuals of the Legislative branch, being subject to more compact and malleable constituencies, don’t have the built-in protective coating of Presidents).

 Republicans succeeded in one area; Clinton’s behavior salted the Earth and almost certainly cost Vice-President Al Gore the Presidency. The strength to be gained from a less slippery precedent was lost.

 The impeachment of Clinton was a frivolous move, doomed from the start. Regardless of Clinton’s documented tomcat proclivities, there really was no legitimate reason to move a sitting President from the White House.

 Not to mention, most people cared not two shits about the President’s reputation as a sex lizard, as long as he did his job in a way favorable to them.

 Republicans trivialized the act of impeachment and weakened both themselves and the seriousness of impeachment in the process.

 So much so that when a President who truly deserved impeachment on Constitutional grounds showed up, the process had been reduced to a mere partisan activity.

 Twice he was legitimately deserving of being judged unfit to govern, and twice a gutless coterie of Republicans allowed him to stay in office. Because guns and Jesus and people getting’ all gay married and shit…

 So now, after the voters removed him from office and then asked him to come back, will the Epstein Affair end his Presidency?

If the shear sleaze of the man didn’t prevent his election, it’s not going to get him removed from office now.

 He’s always had the morals of Tomcat on ecstasy and the resources to act on his base appetites while avoiding repercussions. By his own admission, impulse control is not in his psychological arsenal. He’s a giant man-baby. While I don’t think he’s predisposed to pedophilia, I do know if he is struck by some Humbert Humbert-esque lust for an underage girl, he’s more likely to act on it than not.

Even if he’s not personally guilty of crossing that line, it doesn’t matter. Deep down, everyone who voted for him, including those who now serve in his administration and elected officials with power to remove him from office, know, at the very least, that he hung out with, befriended, and enabled child rapers.

 They don’t care.

 And that is the scandal.