Time & Perspective Quote by Joseph J. Ellis

Ellis lands this line like a historian doing stand-up with a scalpel. The sentence pretends to be a neutral analogy, then quietly detonates: Clinton, cornered by scandal, is imagined summoning a “character witness” from the national shrine to certify that libido isn’t disqualifying, it’s practically constitutional. The joke turns on “presidential pedigree,” a phrase that usually signals noble lineage. Here it’s a bloodline of appetite, a genealogy of men whose private conduct has long been treated as a footnote to public achievement.

The specific intent is to puncture the familiar defense that Clinton’s behavior was merely personal, irrelevant, even relatable. Ellis reframes it as a strategic appeal to precedent: if earlier presidents were celebrated despite (or with a wink at) their “primal urge,” then the scandal becomes less a moral rupture than an awkward reenactment of an old script. “Most respected character witness” is the needle. Ellis isn’t naming names, but the reader hears Jefferson’s shadow, Kennedy’s aura, maybe even Franklin’s mythos. That vagueness is the point: the American presidency has accumulated a usable tradition of male indulgence, one that can be invoked without being stated.

The subtext is darker than the punchline. Ellis is calling out how “character” gets laundered through greatness, and how history itself can be weaponized as an alibi. In the late-1990s Clinton moment, the country wasn’t just litigating sex; it was negotiating which sins are absolved by power, and which are only sins when they become public.