This is not what the civics books had in mind. This thing is about sex. On its face that statement may sound so banal as to be meaningless. Everyone knows sex is involved. My point is different.
Sex is the whole ball of wax.
If the scandal mortally wounds Clinton, it will be because the public understands the relationship he is alleged to have forged with Monica Lewinsky. It will be because they had sex and because of the kind of sex they had. So let's stipulate that simple adultery would not have endangered the President politically or created the lurid spectacle before us. He's been accused of that before and survived. An implicit bargain was struck, and it's hard to imagine a national convulsion erupting from disclosures that, say, he had stashed away somewhere in the Old Executive Office Building a cabaret singer roughly his own age.