Politics by Other Means? Democracy and the Clinton Crisis

Since January the American media have been obsessed with sex, scandal, and lurid sensationalism in an unprecedented way. This has baffled and amused outside observers, especially Europeans, who are always ready to sneer at this country’s “puritanical” and hypocritical attitudes toward sexuality. Foreign commentators have professed amazement that an array of alleged peccadillos could undermine the most powerful officeholder in the world. The French and the Swedes, among others, seem to handle these things with so much more civility, discretion, and panache. Many Americans would also like to dismiss the whole affair as trivial or as an obvious attempt to “get Clinton” that has made political use of sexual moralism, lawyers’ dir...