Did Bill Clinton’s politics save him from #MeToo?

THE opening episode of the new BBC2 drama Impeachment took me back to the bizarre early months of my two-year assignment in Washington DC at the height of the Clinton years.

My job turned out to be much more concerned with sex than I ever expected. I even found myself covering the ghastly Bobbitt trials, involving a very nasty dismemberment in Virginia. I will never forget my long, late-night phone calls with Paula Jones, the Arkansas woman who accused Bill Clinton of behaving very rudely indeed in a Little Rock hotel room. I still don’t think I could repeat her deadpan description of the occasion in a family newspaper.

So when, years later, Monica Lewinsky made some pretty lurid claims about Mr Clinton, I was not especially surprised. But while the President’s behaviour was scandalous, was it harassment? Can anyone who wasn’t there ever really know?

Miss Lewinsky has since joined the #MeToo movement, pointing out very reasonably that Bill Clinton was not just 27 years older than her at the time of their encounters, but also one of the most powerful men in the world. If Mr Clinton and his wife Hillary were not still at the very heart of the American political Left, would he have been dragged down as other powerful men have been? Is #MeToo in fact selective? And if it is, how real is its outrage?