In the great annals of American history, there are certain dates that echo across the decades: July 4, 1776; December 7, 1941; July 20, 1969. And then, of course, January 26, 1998 — the day President Bill Clinton stood before the nation, wagged his finger at the camera, and gave us the immortal line:
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
The words were so emphatic, so carefully rehearsed, so devastatingly specific that one could almost hear every lawyer in Washington choking on their Chardonnay. After all, when a sitting U.S. president stares down the American people and tells them something that sounds like it was drafted by a divorce attorney mid-billing cycle, you know you’re in for a ride.
Fast forward a few months and, lo and behold, the ride arrived. On August 17, 1998, Bill Clinton appeared again, this time not wagging his finger but swallowing it. In front of a grand jury — where lying carries actual consequences beyond late-night ridicule — he admitted to having had what he described as an “improper physical relationship” with Monica Lewinsky. Not a sexual relationship, mind you. Just an improper physical one. Because nothing screams “innocent” like stringing together three words that sound like they belong on a malfunctioning HR form.
And then, because history is nothing if not thorough, that very evening Clinton returned to America’s living rooms to inform us that, yes, the relationship was “not appropriate.” America nodded in unison, realizing that “not appropriate” was the sort of language one uses when a toddler bites someone in daycare, not when the leader of the free world is caught in a scandal that involves a stained blue dress and more euphemisms than the Oxford English Dictionary can handle.
But the true triumph of the Clinton-Lewinsky saga wasn’t in the scandal itself. It was in the national discourse it inspired. Suddenly, every high school debate team in the country was forced to wrestle with the philosophical puzzle of what “sexual relations” actually meant. Was it all-encompassing? Was it technical? Was it, as Clinton’s legal team implied, something you needed a stopwatch and a flowchart to prove? By the end of 1998, America had unwittingly taken a crash course in both constitutional law and creative semantics.
In the end, Clinton survived impeachment and left office with approval ratings that would make most modern politicians weep. And why not? He gave us one of the most enduring lessons in politics: it’s not the crime, it’s not even the cover-up — it’s whether you can deliver your denials with enough finger-wagging bravado to make people laugh and shrug at the same time.
As for the rest of us, we learned that sometimes the President of the United States really does look America in the eye, and with the confidence of a man who’s just eaten the last cookie from the jar, says: “Trust me, I didn’t do it.”
And that, my friends, is the moment America collectively decided to buy a much bigger cookie jar.
source
https://www.onthisday.com/articles/i-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman
History of Sorts 
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