Amid the spectacle that has become Anthony Weiner’s campaign for mayor, New Yorkers have heard many arguments calling for him to withdraw. Surely the least persuasive of these is the one advanced on national TV by Dee Dee Myers: that Bill and Hillary find his continued candidacy distasteful.
Like so many others statements that involve the name Clinton, Myers later “clarified” her comments by saying she hadn’t actually spoken to the Clintons before saying they wanted Weiner out. Her remarks, however, fit with all the other anonymous complaints we hear that the Clintons are “livid” over the comparisons between Anthony and Bill — or Hillary and Huma.
And here we have Weiner’s real sin: It’s not that he’s treated women shabbily. It’s that the national focus on Carlos Danger is an uncomfortable reminder of Bill Clinton’s own antics in office — and the way those around him fought to help him remain in office.
On the material facts, it’s easy to understand why Weiner is resisting calls to step down. For every argument against Anthony applies even more forcefully to Bill:
Everyone deserves a second chance, but not a third chance. In Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, we learned about Gennifer Flowers. Later, we were treated to a parade of wronged women: Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick. If Anthony Weiner doesn’t deserve a “third” chance, what about the 8th and 9th chances given Bill Clinton?
That’s the Clinton standard. Dee Dee Myers herself noted this during a long interview on the Clinton presidency for a PBS documentary. “How many second chances does any one person deserve?” she asked. “And Clinton’s view is, as many second chances as a person is willing to try to take.”
It’s not the sex, it’s the lying. Please. Clinton was the man who parsed the meaning of the word “is.” The man who claimed to a grand jury, as president, that he hadn’t had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky on the grounds that while receiving oral sex constitutes sexual relations, giving oral sex is not.
It’s true that when the first Weiner sexts emerged, instead of owning up to his behavior, he (like Clinton) lashed out at his accusers. This time around, when the Sydney Leathers sexts emerged, he was better prepared.
At the outset of his mayoral run, Weiner issued a carefully parsed statement — no doubt approved by his wife, Huma Abedin — that was Clintonian to its core: There are other women out there, Weiner said, and we might hear from them.
The implication being, of course, that these were women he’d sexted before resigning from Congress, not after.
There’s something especially creepy about a congressman sexting to young women. Well, yes. But if it’s creepy for a middle-aged congressman or mayoral candidate to be trolling for young women on the Internet, what about a middle-aged president hitting on interns?
Again, here’s Myers, writing for CNN in 1998: “The president’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky was so reckless as to seem pathological. He knew the consequences of getting caught, but he went ahead. For 18 months. In the West Wing of the White House.”
And while Bill didn’t have Twitter and instant messaging in his day, he was more than adept at using the technology of his time to gratify himself. Late at night, he would have phone sex with Lewinsky, even though at one point he speculated a foreign power might be listening in.
In the years since the Clintons left the White House, they’ve worked hard on two things: to burnish Bill’s reputation as an elder statesman and to fulfill Hillary’s ambitions for the presidency. L’affaire Weiner reminds us how much we are required to overlook in service of these two goals.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, always an avatar of the received wisdom, recently nailed it on “Today,” when she said people close to the Clintons are wondering why Huma Abedin is “letting this happen to Hillary, her long-time mentor?”
There we have it. This was supposed to be Hillary’s triumphant week, with a highly photographed White House lunch with President Obama and the announcement of a new NBC biopic. Instead, we have a new Lewinsky sex tape, Tammy Wynette comparisons with Huma Abedin and a reminder that before there was Little Anthony Weiner there was Big Bill Weiner.
And for that, as our sinking candidate for mayor is finding out, there can be no forgiveness.