Remember Whitewater?

[Tommy Carcetti]

Well, maybe we political nerds do.

Most ordinary Americans probably don't. Even those who were around in the 90s.

Whitewater was the byzantine, nebulous "scandal" alleged against the Clintons that lead to the appointment of a Special Prosecutor--first Robert Fiske, but subsequently the late and infamous Ken Starr.

Ask anyone what Whitewater was actually about and it's doubtful they'd tell you.

There was something about a land deal in Arkansas, a defunct savings-and-loan, bank records, billing records, and--wait, your eyes are glazing over already, right?

It all was terminally dull, confusing, and most importantly of all, didn't seem to actually implicate the Clintons in anything. The hope was that it would lead to something scintillating and shocking that would outrage Americans and turn them against President Clinton. Or at least mire them in rumor and innuendo of wrongdoing.

But nobody cared. Nobody had any sort of reason to care, because there was nothing to care about. It was the biggest non-story of non-stories.

Once Starr had commandeered the Special Prosecutor ship, he realized the Americans' complete sense of apathy towards the Whitewater story. And thus he somehow was able to parlay it from a vague, confusing two-decades old financial matter into allegations of more recent inappropriate personal behavior by President Clinton--namely the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil suit. How he managed that turn of events, I'm still not 100% sure. But nonetheless, it eventually lead to the discovery of a consensual relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, which Clinton subsequently denied under oath, and in turn which Republicans ultimately used for purposes of impeachment.

That scandal Americans do remember.

Of course, the economy was absolutely roaring under President Clinton, and most Americans didn't feel the need to make an impeachment issue over what was at most a personal failing by the President.

Still, the Republicans got the impeachment of President Clinton that they had always wanted, as laughable and unpopular as it was. And despite President Clinton's obvious acquittal in the Senate, the scandal did still leave an embarrassing mark on his personal legacy.

But it wasn't over Whitewater.

It's not exactly clear what Republicans want to impeach President Biden over. They've drudged up various bank statements and made references to his son and his financial dealings. There's references to supposed shell companies and beneficiaries and money transfers and--your eyes are glazing over again, right?

This all is just Whitewater 2.0--a confusing twisted-up financial story that most likely won't reveal any actual wrongdoing by the President, and won't actually grab the attention of Americans by storm because it is neither straight-forward and simple (as was the case in Donald Trump's two impeachments) nor salacious and sexy (as it was with President Clinton's impeachment).

The bad news for Republicans in this case, however, is that there's unlikely to be a Lewinsky story at the end of the proverbial rainbow that they can massage into it in order to spice it up.

And so this, like Whitewater, will eventually disappear into the ether, never to be remembered and never to be understood.