Bill Clinton's Scandal Politics 101. That may be the only conclusion to reach after reading the April issue of everybody's favorite libertarian magazine, Reason. The Presidency Is a Counter-story By following these steps, Clinton manages to manipulate the media, protect himself and completely frustrate his enemies. He has expertly wielded the weapons of stonewalling, distraction, and diversion. He has no allegiance to any specific ideal, because everything is, ultimately, reducible to words.
Words have no meaning, in and of themselves, except at the given moment they are uttered.
The old view of scandals demanded a logical explanation. Freund's essay is truly remarkable, yet even he missed a large part of the story. Let's go back to the fall of 1998. It has been an awful year for Bill Clinton, dominated by Monica Lewinsky coverage. What follows is a chronological list of subsequent events which either produced clearly positive news coverage for Bill Clinton or resulted in something beneficial to him in the larger picture.