Peter Beinart shines as he occasionally does.
Yes, that's right: Respected conservatives are actually suggesting that Enronand WorldCom cooked their books because Bill Clinton lied about a blow job.It's not an argument that takes a lot of deep thinking to rebut. First of all, corporate fraud wasn't invented on Clinton's watch. The United States endured a wave of financial scandals in the late '80s as well, at the end of the last Wall Street boom. When Ivan Boesky was arrested for insider trading, Michael Milken was busted for market manipulation, Charles Keating was running a fraudulent savings and loan, and Gordon Gekko was declaring that "greed ... is good," Bill Clinton was an obscure Southern governor, and the man setting the moral tone "at the top" was Ronald Reagan. Maybe Boesky and Milken lost their moral bearings because the Gipper was a divorcé who neglected his children.
I thought this latest round of Blame Clinton would be laughed off the pages, despite its promotion by liberal media elites like Howard Kurtz. If they had wanted to blame it all on Clinton they could've found more creative ways to (try and) do it than bring up the blowjob. Even Kate O'Beirne had a bit of trouble reading her blastfax with a straight face.
