Yes it is also clever show biz. And with an ability at self reflection.
Clinton has joked about the time when the president can be replaced with a virtual president (virtual not virtuous). The emphasis on the professional management of the political system including the psycho-social elements, is starting to replace the old symbolic structures. There was a thread on marxism-psych which argued that Clinton represents a departure from the paternalistic authority figure President, to one who is the naughty middle aged lad next door who has got into a scrape of the sort that everybody knows about in some shape of form in their extended family or circle of acquaintances.
So presumably Clinton has sussed it out that even if the questioning of Lewinsky gets down to detail like what his semen tasted like, and whether he smelled the cigar after rubbing it her vagina, the broad swathe of American society will accept him as a private fool, and accept a meritocratic president with a less august persona. (There may even be a backlash against Republicans.) Perhaps very slightly this helps to demystify the state.
It does not leave a neat left wing party ready to impose a sort of dictatorship of the proletariat through a democratic election, without having defeated the armed forces, but that is a revisionist illusion. What do you expect?
Chris Burford
London