This is a very thoughtful article, but respectfully I disagree here. I do not believe that any evidence exists that having sexual relations with an intern and then lying about it under oath is in the mainstream of American behavior. I have not seen any data that supports the idea that most people do this, or approve of such behavior. Democrats were forced to acknowledge the depraved nature of Bill Clinton when they mounted their defense of him.
Secondly, in my memory the elections of 1998 were about anything other than impeachment. In fact, I remember very clearly conservatives growing increasingly impatient with Gingrich as he spoke about Social Security to Republican voters that wanted to here what he would do with a law breaking President. Gingrich would not attack Bill Clinton (he had his own girl on the side at the time as I recall), would not defend Ken Starr as he was brutally savaged by Democrats, and as a result Republicans did not turn out. I think the 1998 election was one of the worst run campaigns I've ever seen, but because Republicans would not go on the attack against Bill Clinton.
Infidelity is definitely mainstream behavior, and I can give anecdotal evidence of that firsthand.
In the early Eighties, older Baby Boomers who had married young began having affairs with coworkers. There was a new openness about this that I found disturbing. Married men were taking their mistresses out to parties and openly introducing these women as their girlfriends. The women had no shame about it, no doubt believing that the man would honor his promise to leave the wife who "didn't understand" him. (It didn't occur to them that they were merely inheriting men who cheated on their wives.)
I saw people and families destroyed by this behavior, and while it slowed down as the Eighties progressed, men of power, always seen as sexually attractive by women, continued to act this way.
Keep in mind that long before Monica showed up, there were rumors that Clinton had been a horndog in Arkansas, was still a horndog as president, and was partial to oral sex. Bill Maher on ABC's "Politically Incorrect" make a joke right after Clinton's 1996 re-election about Clinton being so confident now that he had started dating again. People pretty much knew what he was, and few were disturbed -- even after Monica showed up. More people were titillated than outraged. As an original FReeper, I watched the anger and disdain focused on Clinton at this forum, but I knew, like Mr. Limbaugh, that Clinton was simply behaving like so many alpha males I had worked for and with. It was just another manifestation of the breakdown of the family and the institution of marriage in this country.
Now if you had asked any of these mainstream philandering alpha males if they would have lied under Clinton's circumstances, they would have said, "Hell, yes!"
Regrettably, Bill Clinton was not that far out of the mainstream.