Think I'm exaggerating? Then check out this from Time columnist Michael Kramer, written in January 1994 (and count the maybes as you read along). Whitewater is significant, Kramer opined," or could be -- because the wrongdoing (if there was any) may have involved abuses of power while Clinton was serving as Governor of Arkansas. On the other hand, even if the worst were proved -- and no one yet knows what that is -- the offense might not warrant impeachment." Then came the clincher: "How is it possible that two respected lawyers like Bill and Hillary Clinton don't possess a paper trail capable of proving their innocence?"(my emphasis).

Had Time's resident inquisitor plagiarized Franz Kafka's "The Trial," or George Orwell's "1984"? No, he was merely another in the pack of American journalists, like so many in the Whitewater hunt, demanding with absolute solemnity that the President of the United States and his wife prove themselves innocent of charges he could not himself define.