Mimi's Very Private Affair

Farce repeats itself, the second time as history. Comparisons between Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton - who deliberately had a JFK haircut during his first presidential campaign - have always been tempting. But they shift from the general to the spooky with the news that the first of the two great Democratic presidential shaggers kept a 19-year-old student - "Mimi" - in his entourage for what the disclosing biographer calls "sexual release".

Mimi, obviously, mimics Monica; the intern returns. My colleague, Jonathan Freedland, hosts a radio show - The Long View - which asserts that almost all dramas in history are revivals rather than new plays: what changes is the performance of the characters. Mimi and Monica feels like a dream edition of the show because the two events played out so differently.

Admittedly the behaviour of the two young presidents was very similar. However, the history of erotic manners suggests that the Jack-Mimi encounters were probably less reciprocal than the Monica-Bill ones. "Ms Lewinsky testifies she had an orgasm," says one of the more startling footnotes to the Starr Report, the fact that we know this marking another difference between the eras. Back then, Jack was possibly less attentive.

The primary differences between 1962 and 1998 involve the behaviour of the journalists and women involved. The Camelot press knew there were second, third and fourth ladies in the White House - perhaps even specifically of Mimi - but deference prevented publication.

And yet this is a complicated comparison, because the Lewinsky affair was discovered, not by a journalist, but by Linda Tripp, a Republican stooge - and was broken, not through mainstream media, but by an internet maverick. Until licensed by the web to pile in, the US newspapers and networks turned an eye as blind as in the 1960s, though the blink was more agonised this time.

But, if the loss of journalistic reticence can be applauded, the flight from civilian discretion is more regrettable. The dignified statement from Mrs Fahnestock - as Mimi now is - that she wishes to return to private life after the media fuss this week, contrasts startlingly with the post-exposure behaviour of Lewinsky, who has moved through memoirs and interviews to her present position as hostess of a television dating gameshow. Yet, in their response to media exposure, the two women probably exactly represent their different generations: media-phobes and media-slaves.

The 60s intern's plea for anonymity - and refusal to discuss the affair at a press conference - means we'll never know if Mimi humidified cigars in the fashion favoured by Monica, although the proximity of the Cuban missile crisis to JFK's trysts might have made access to the prop problematic.

In an age driven by gossip, the lack of such information feels like a loss, but we need to learn to see it as a gain. The unmasking of Mimi challenges us to imagine an alternative world in which we don't find out about Monica until around 2032.

Former President Clinton is senescent or dead and Monica Something-Else, a Miami grandmother, comes shyly out to hold a single photo-call at which she confirms that she and the former president were intimate but that what happened was between their consciences and genitals.

Imagine it. No Kenneth Starr, no Linda Tripp, no telling children how that mess got on that dress, no witless gameshows playing on the intern's notoriety five years later. There are those - most often to be found among Republicans and journalists - who would say that this universe of ignorance is a worse world than the one we have, but it feels temptingly like a better one.

There's an argument that sexual harassment in America's highest workplace had to be exposed, but there's doubt about who was the predator, and I would bet that Lewinsky has been damaged more by the publicity than by the relationship. How she must envy Mrs Fahnestock, whose "I now want to return to private life" deserves to become a quote of the year, if not the decade.