Eric Pooley

In September 1998 Kenneth Starr, a special prosecutor who had been investigating several potential scandals surrounding President Bill Clinton, delivered a report to Congress. In the report, which Congress soon made public, Starr concluded that Clinton had committed impeachable offenses over the course of concealing an affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. In the following viewpoint, Time magazine writer Eric Pooley reports on the findings of the Starr report and compares Clinton’s actions to the Watergate scandal that resulted in President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation under threat of impeachment. Nixon, Pooley argues, misused his presidential authority to harass his political enemies, then sought to cover up his questionable actions and those of his subordinates. Clinton’s lies and obstructions, Pooley concludes, were at bottom the result...