"The desire among his supporters for a liberal agenda was held hostage to Bill Clinton’s libertine appetites."

"Let Bill be regressive and transgressive with women he was attracted to, and he would be progressive for all women. You want enlightened policies for women and a record number of women in exalted posts? Then you must endure — and cover up.... His wife and other prominent feminists backed Bill back then, and he and Hillary always had henchmen who were willing to smear Bill’s girlfriends and victims as trailer trash, cash-for-trash, nutty and slutty... So it came as a surprise to him when he had no more skirts to hide behind when Craig Melvin asked on the 'Today' show whether his actions in the ’90s would fly in the #MeToo era. Bill went to his usual go-to: his excellent record on appointing women.... Bill Clinton tried his usual trick of scapegoating, as he and his co-author, James Patterson, evoked J.F.K. and L.B.J. to Melvin. That was an unpleasant echo of Clinton aides calling around to reporters during the 1998 spiral to say that J.F.K. had fooled around with young women at the White House. But by 1998, feminism had been flowering for 30 years. And J.F.K. was no role model in that regard.... And Bill Clinton has learned that his threadbare routine of maudlin self-pity and casting blame on everyone but himself doesn’t work anymore."

From "Bill’s Belated #MeToo Moment" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).