By Giles Hewitt
Little Rock, Arkansas - Blink during your tour of the Bill Clinton presidential library and you might miss his impeachment, while only the closest scrutiny will yield any mention of Monica Lewinsky.
The $165-million (R985-million) archive that will be opened at a grand, star-studded ceremony on Thursday is, not surprisingly, brazen about trumpeting the successes of Clinton's two terms in the White House, and coy when it comes to the failures.
"Our job is not to rewrite history," insisted Clinton Foundation President Skip Rutherford during a media tour of the facility. "Our job is to protect and preserve it."
But if the presentation of Clinton's 1992-2000 presidency is not the whitewash some of his most ardent critics claim, it is certainly an exercise in carefully placed emphasis.
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As was the case with Clinton's memoir My Life published earlier this year, much public attention has been given to how the library exhibits deal with the salacious details of the scandal that led to the 42nd US president's impeachment.
Much like the book, the whole episode is presented as a personal lapse that was seized on as part of a partisan political crusade against Clinton.
An alcove dedicated to the impeachment is titled The Fight For Power and focuses, using video and still photos, almost exclusively on the struggle between Clinton and Congress after the Republicans took control of both houses in 1994.
The accompanying text has yellow highlights over such phrases as "character assassination", "politics of persecution" and "rumours and accusations", while Lewinsky's name, unhighlighted, appears only twice along with elliptical references to their affair.
"The impeachment battle was not about the constitution or rule of law, but was instead a quest for power that the president's opponents could not win at the ballot box," the text concludes.
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