Look back in bewilderment..

In these dark hours, it really helps to go back to a much more horrible time, when Bill Clinton rocked the nation to its very core because he, ummm....got a blow job. This article, from Washington doyenne Sally Quinn, really captures the essence of that time, when our constitution hung in the balance. Even though a large majority of the country thought the whole idea of censure or impeachment was an absurd over-reaction to a personal matter, and that the panty-sniffing of ideologues like Ken Starr and Newt Gingrich were way beyond the pale, the real aggrieved parties were the insiders in the Beltway, who were so offended by the crass outsider who had, after all, spoiled their party:

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. "This is a demoralized little village," she says. "People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They're so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn't quite as sordid as this."

and of course, Saint Joe needs to weigh in:

"This is our town," says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president's behavior. "We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton's behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general."

and the most famous quote of them all, from the biggest 'villager' of them all:

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."

It's all kind of quaint, in a way. But these were also Bush's enablers, the same pundits and politicians who were wowed by the bullhorn, the flight suit, and the faux machismo. These are the same people who bought the fact that a cheerleader from Yale could pretend to be a cowboy from Crawford, and rallied behind his lies and looked past his incompetence. Now, the country has turned against the man and his disastrous war, and the pundits are ready to move on, because the war was only fun when we were winning, wasn't it?