Bill Clinton was not a great guy

And neither is Donald Trump

I thought the most interesting responses to my June 13 column “The Orange Man is Bad” were those that asked some variation of the question “what about Bill Clinton?”

It’s an interesting response because, depending on exactly how it’s meant, the point is either a very good one or a very bad one.

That conservatives’ decision to stand behind a not-so-great guy is psychologically comprehensible and non-unique is, I think, a great point. Present-day American conservatives are human beings, and the kinds of cognitive errors they make are human errors that, in different times and under different circumstances, have been made by many different people. And given the political shifts the country has experienced, I bet there are actually a lot of people who voted for Ross Perot in 1992, Bill Clinton in 1996, and Donald Trump in 2016.

I also think “what about Bill Clinton?” is a shrewd move if you see yourself as Donald Trump’s Discourse Lawyer. Many prominent Democratic Party politicians — inclu…