Shame has always been very high on the human agenda, at least since our expulsion from Eden. In fact, as Mark Twain observed, shame seems to be one of our peerless talents: “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” Or to put it more neutrally, shame has always been an inescapable element in our social existence, one of the most powerful of the sanctions by which the moral life of a community is sustained. Shame stems from our need to be well regarded by others, and is usefully distinguished from guilt, which involves our own sense of wrongdoing. Shame is inherently social, and is one of the chief means by which the community lets individuals know when they have transgressed acceptable boundaries. Shame disciplines the transgressors, both externally and inwardly, and makes an example of them to others. The more cohesive the community, the more effective the sanction when it is applied....
Surely Bill Clinton’s persona and career represented some kind of milestone in this moral transformation. For a sitting president of the United States to do the things he did while in office, and for him to have lied about those deeds brazenly and repeatedly, and authorized his minions to lie about the character of Monica Lewinsky and the other women whose lives he had damaged, would in the past have been permanently disqualifying, and would have ensured that the sight of his name on public buildings and works would have been rarer than that of Benedict Arnold. But, following in the pattern that morally stained figures like Ted Kennedy and Richard Nixon had successfully pioneered, Clinton has simply brazened it out, thus demonstrating two things. First, that beyond a certain point, the force of shame can have no effect on a person who is immune to it, and refuses to yield to its power; and second, that the aura of celebrity and charm, if applied with sufficient persistence, will cause much of the amnesiac American public to release its moral reservations, and overlook things it would never have overlooked in the past.
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