Irish Examiner view: Lewinsky scandal was a gamechanger in the Oval Office

A photograph showing former White House intern Monica Lewinsky meeting President Bill Clinton at a White House function submitted as evidence in documents by the Starr investigation and released by the House Judicary committee September 21, 1998.

It may be 23 years since the Monica Lewinsky scandal rocked Washington and led to the impeachment of the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton, but we are about to revisit the recent past with a new 10-part TV drama.

Impeachment: American Crime Story is the third in a trilogy which spans the period 1994, 1997, and 1998 and includes The People v OJ Simpson and The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Impeachment is different in that it tackles political downfall.

Clinton had won two stunning victories for the Democrats during a period of financial confidence and growth epitomised by the priority slogan that he kept on his office walls during campaigning: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Clinton became hugely distracted by investigations led by special counsel Kenneth Starr, who was to go on later in his career to defend Donald Trump in his own impeachment case.

Monica Lewinsky. Picture: AP

However, this was not to deflect him from his key role in the Good Friday Agreement while the thunder and lightning of allegations about his honesty and sexual activities crashed around the US Congress and the Senate.

This was a cause célèbre which marked the communications watershed from the old analogue era of leaks and print press coverage to the more florid, and rapid, transmission of the digital age and the 24-hour news cycle. 

It is difficult from a modern perspective to understand why this story took so long to come to the boil. 

But back then it was a slow reveal which was to abrade the Clinton legacy — both Bill’s and Hillary’s — from that point forward.

Starr’s report, delivered to the House Judiciary Committee on September 9, 1998, was released two days later to the public on a relatively new-fangled thing called the internet.

Weighing in at 453-pages it was downloaded by 20m people, setting a trend for instant access to all the information which informs publishing and political management to this day.

On early viewing this series projects a rather simpler, naïve, although certainly not straightforward, political climate of 20 odd years ago. The Los Angeles Times TV critic certainly thinks so. This was her verdict:

“The cutthroat machinations of 1990s Washington, and Clinton’s lie about not having sexual relations with that woman, are a breezy Sunday afternoon compared with the present-day DC apocalypse. 

"And impeachment makes one pine for those more innocent times, when shock could still be manufactured by an extramarital affair — and a lie under oath.”