The Clinton Impeachment | 2. There There
Slow Burn
Slate Audio
4.6 • 25.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2018
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton moved into the White House on a swell of optimism. In less than a year, the new administration was mired in a sea of scandals: Travelgate, Filegate, Nannygate, and, most consequentially, Whitewater. What went wrong?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Susan Matthews, one of the hosts of Slowburn. Thanks for joining us for episode two of this season. I hope you're enjoying the story so far. I want to let you know that after this episode, the rest of the season will be available exclusively to Slate Plus members. Becoming a member gets you full access to every season of Slow Burn. Plus, add free listening and exclusive bonus |
| 0:23.2 | episodes from your other favorite Slate podcasts. And it helps support the work we do here at Slate. |
| 0:29.1 | Stick around to the end of the episode for more about why Slate Plus is so essential, how you can |
| 0:34.5 | join, and what you will get when you do. |
| 0:43.7 | In September of 1991, Bill Clinton summoned a group of Democratic operatives to a quality inn in Washington, D.C. Clinton was the governor of Arkansas, and he was exploring |
| 0:48.7 | a run for president. The group discussed Clinton's potential platform and what his campaign |
| 0:54.0 | might look like. |
| 0:55.4 | Then Clinton brought up a sensitive subject, his reputation as a serial womanizer. |
| 1:01.1 | I know you're all concerned about this, he said. |
| 1:05.1 | Clinton had considered running for president once before in the run-up to the 1988 race. |
| 1:10.4 | His chief of staff had helped talk him out of it by showing him a list of women he was |
| 1:13.7 | rumored to have been involved with. |
| 1:15.6 | It was not a short list. |
| 1:18.2 | Four years later, Clinton told his guests at the Quality Inn that this time he had a |
| 1:22.7 | plan for how to deal with accusations of infidelity. |
| 1:25.7 | If the issue were to come up during the 92 campaign, |
| 1:28.3 | he said, he would be straightforward. He would say that, yes, he and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, |
| 1:34.0 | had run into some trouble earlier in their marriage, but it was now behind them. That would be the line. |
| 1:39.3 | The past was the past. Clinton seemed so convincing that he even won over a guy who had worked for Gary Hart, |
| 1:46.6 | the Democrat whose presidential campaign had gotten blown up by a sex scandal in 1987. |
| 1:51.9 | That's how enthralling Clinton was. How talented he seemed. How seductive. |
| 1:57.1 | Here's journalist Ruth Marcus, who covered Clinton's presidency for The Washington Post. |
... |
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