Was the Clinton-Lewinsky affair an abuse of power? No, says Hillary. Yes, say experts.
Twenty years after the infamous Clinton-Lewinsky scandal — when then-president Bill Clinton had an affair with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky — Hillary Clinton has something new to say about the situation.
In an interview with CBS’ “Sunday Morning,” Hillary said that her husband should have “absolutely not” resigned from office after his affair was made public. She also offered her opinion that it was not an abuse of power on the president’s part, as Lewinsky has maintained, because the intern “was an adult.”
Lewinsky offered a different take, though, in her recent essay for Vanity Fair. “Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. (Although power imbalances — and the ability to abuse them — do exist even when the sex has been consensual.)”
The former intern also repeatedly referenced power dynamics. “He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet. He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better,” Lewinsky wrote. “He was, at the time, at the pinnacle of his career, while I was in my first job out of college.”
In another segment, she said, “What transpired between Bill Clinton and myself was not sexual assault, although we now recognize that it constituted a gross abuse of power.”
On Sunday, CBS correspondent Tony Dokoupil asked Hillary Clinton directly about that allegation. “[The affair] wasn’t an abuse of power?” he asked. To which she replied, “No. No.”
Dokoupil continued, “There are people who look at the incidents of the ’90s and they say, ‘A president of the United States cannot have a consensual relationship with an intern; the power imbalance is too great.’”
To which Hillary interjected, “… who was an adult,” in reference to Lewinsky. “But let me ask you this,” she added. “Where’s the investigation of the current incumbent [president], against whom numerous allegations have been made, and which he dismisses, denies, and ridicules? So there was an investigation [of Bill], and it, as I believe, came out in the right place.”
She’s wrong, Jaclyn Friedman, author of books on sex and power including Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “Obviously there’s an abuse of power,” she says. “She’s an intern and he was the president of the United States. This is not about ‘how do you know where the line is.’ He was literally the leader of the free world.”
Psychiatrist Carole Lieberman also agrees with Lewinsky. “It was an abuse of power because he was the president,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle. However, she adds, Lewinsky seems to “want to think of it as an affair, because she wants to believe he was equally besotted.”
An abuse of power is different from general power dynamics, which every relationship has, Friedman says. “Men have greater cultural power, someone has more money that the other — every relationship has this,” she says. “But when this person is your boss, it’s never going to be an OK situation.”
The Clinton-Lewinsky situation takes even that one step further, though, Friedman says. “This isn’t even a regular boss-direct report situation,” she says. “This is literally the president of the United States and an intern here. Yes, it’s an abuse of power.”
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal is now part of the #MeToo movement. Here’s why
That ‘Creepy’ Time Monica Lewinsky Finally Met Clinton Prosecutor Ken Starr
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