David Runciman: The things Bill Clinton loves are politics, hard data and his family, in roughly that order. The thing he hates is the media, above all newspapers, on which he blames almost all his troubles. His love of politics is not a love of the sort of low-level politicking in which Stephanopoulos and his fellow staffers indulge. Rather, he has an unquenchable fondness for politicians themselves, with all their foibles and all their weaknesses -- it is, in other words, a kind of self-love.
Taylor Branch, from a conversation in 1997: After a White House parley, Clinton had asked Senator Alan Simpson in confidence whether Republican strategists really believed the Clintons did something terrible in Whitewater, like theft or perjury. He mimicked the hearty response. 'Oh, hell no,' cried Simpson. 'But our goal is to make people think you did, so we can pay you Democrats back for Iran-Contra.' Clinton chuckled with appreciation. Politicians understood payback.
Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan: I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people.
Runciman: Clinton liked politicians who played dirty because they made him feel better about his own peccadilloes.
Seth Kugel: That's not grime you're seeing, it's historical charm!
Judith Hertog: I find other people's errors very reassuring. It makes me feel better about my own deficiencies.
Runciman: Clinton doesn't do introspection: his obsessive, almost prurient interest in other people is partly there to prevent him having to think too hard about himself.
Mark Bittman: Who would say you don't need time to think, to reflect, to be successful and productive?
Louis Menand: People are prurient, and they like to lap up the gossip. People also enjoy judging other people's lives. They enjoy it excessively.
Richard Sandomir: In the nearly two weeks since Tiger Woods became tabloid fodder, his personal Web site has turned into a kind of town hall meeting on his reported extramarital behavior.
Charles McGrath: Tiger Woods has had the misfortune to come of age at a time when the public appetite for details about the private lives of celebrities is apparently insatiable.
Neil Howe: If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.
Decius: It's important to understand that it isn't Congress that must change -- it is us.
I Could Fix That | 
