A new documentary that is set to air next week on PBS will take a closer look at former President Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The new documentary shows how Clinton struggled with the decision to go public with the affair and features interviews from staffers who felt betrayed by the scandal.
The two-part (four hour) documentary will air in Britain and the United States on February 20th.
The Guardian reports that the new documentary shows that Clinton was constantly hounded by women. Clinton’s sexual appeal, and future problem, was foreshadowed during his run for Governor in Arkansas. And the problem became uncontrollable when he became President.
Paul Fray, Clinton’s former campaign manager, said:
“You got to understand that at one time there was at least 25 women per day coming through there trying to find him and I’d tell them he was out on the road. Lord it was bad. Bad, bad bad, bad bad.”
Betsey Wright, Mr Clinton’s trusted political aide, almost convinced Clinton not to run for President due to his past affairs. Writer Gail Sheely said that Wright sat down with Clinton before he announced his bid for the presidency with some serious concerns about women. Sheely said:
“The day before the press conference he was going to announce that he was going to run, Betsey Wright, his ferociously protective campaign manager, sat him down with a list of names of women and went through one after the other. ‘How many times? Where did you meet her? How likely is she to talk?” Clinton said for each name that ‘she’ll never say anything’, but Miss Wright replied: ‘But you don’t know that!’ Miss Wright supposedly told Clinton: ‘The problem is we’re not just talking about you, we’re talking about your wife, we’re talking about your child.’ She said I don’t think you can run.’”
But Clinton ran and eventually won the presidency in 1992. In 1998, he was embroiled in a scandal that would stain his presidency.
The Daily Mail reports that when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Dick Morris, one of Clinton’s closest advisers, urged the president to tell the American public the truth. Morris said:
“I said to him that the problem that presidents have is not the sin, it’s the cover-up and you should explore just telling the American people the truth… I said let me test it, let me run a poll, so I took a poll… and I called him back and I said they will forgive the adultery, but they won’t easily forgive that you lied.”
Clinton, however, decided to cover up the scandal for as long as he could.
Are you a fan of President Clinton? Do you think the Monica Lewinsky scandal stained his presidency? Will you be watching the new documentary on PBS?