“When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

[W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old]

Foreword:

I viewed twelve hours of depositions, given separately, by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the investigative panel of the United States’ House of Representatives.

The subject was the reach and influence of Jeffrey Epstein into the highest echelons of American power.

These are appearances the former first couple fought hard to avoid, even if Bill Clinton was known to have ridden in Epstein’s private jet twenty-six times, and the latter’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was a friend of the Clinton family.

The depositions took place in the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center in New York’s Hudson Valley, close to the Clintons’ home. It is reasonable to assume that the choice of venue, awkward for everyone except the deponents, was as petty as the committee’s subject matter was serious.

These are my observations.

***

Event I:

Is this a fever dream?

Hillary, in blue, parsing questions and growling answers; refusing to look at the Republicans who thank her for her presence and contribution.

Welcome to Clintonia – the land where exceptional talent and service is accorded its due honour, and expects never to be questioned.

Scaffolded in preparation, Hillary Clinton’s stern intelligence guides a defence of her record, her character and her motives.

She is first up, and hot for it.

It takes a woman – Nancy Mace – to penetrate Clinton’s calm disdain, suggesting that Hillary indeed curried favour with Jeffrey Epstein and his money, by way of an intermediary. Clinton starts yelling in that familiar way. The congresswoman yells back – a choice few men would dare make.

Each woman has a point.

In fairness, Hillary did not knowingly meet Epstein, never flew in his plane, never stepped on his island, and hence never witnessed the very young women in his entourage.

But Mace has evidence that Madame Secretary benefitted from $20,000 of Epstein-ian political support during her Senate run. Mace notes other Jeffrey adjacencies – a lack of curiosity about her husband’s shenanigans being one of them – and claims that they make Hillary stink.

In 2026, the same old derivative issue pursues the same old feminist Hillary: did the head-girl turn a blind eye to the hijinks of her golden boy, at the back of the class?

Clinton handles the Mace exchange in her cool, cold manner. She speaks a familiar political dialect from the borderlands of self-pity and self-righteousness.

A thought occurs to me as I watch.

Unlike her husband, Hillary Clinton appears to see domestic politics as a war, not as a game.

Her bids for the presidency (2008, 2016) may have come undone precisely from wanting the White House too much; needing her enemies buried too deeply. It is a self-totalling eagerness  musicians call ‘singing sharp’.

***

Event II:

‘He’s a hard dog to keep on the porch’.

Hillary Clinton was describing her husband in 1999, in the embers of the intern affair which led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. It is a curious depiction, given she spoke of an uber-powerful philanderer with a very young woman for three years in his sights. Her folksy Arkansas phrase seems to guarantee that dog a steady home no matter the wandering.

The man from Hope followed his wife, becoming the first American former president ever compelled to testify to Congress. Indeed, he sat on her exact seat; the fraying on the top left corner of the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center seat-back was on camera both days, and exactly matched.

Bill Clinton wears a somber blue tie, knotted tightly to a once-thick neck, emptied now through the passing of 79 years.

In 2026, he is familiar and novel.

Age has made his long fingers quiver and his voice box rasp; from time to time his mouth cleaves open. Unlike his wife, who continues to power on all cylinders of bristling acuity, Bill Clinton’s cognitive powers appear dulled. [He has asserted that he does not have Parkinson’s].

The lawyers who flank him spend most of their time restating questions, ostensibly so their client can understand, perhaps also to steer him towards the safest answer. One of the two, Cheryl Mills, acts around the president with revealing familiarity: she takes his shoulder, plucks papers from his hands, and enters his personal space to underline words on the page as he reads.

Clinton is a man who likes the care of women. Mills defends her boss ferociously, although the old dog remembers a few tricks all by himself.

‘The Sultan of Brunei asked me to try out the hot tub, so I gave it a go for five minutes and then went to bed’.

The convenient detail is so preposterous, one might expect Slick Willy’s nose to grow.

***

The stated issue for the Committee (beyond the politics of muck-raking) is to explore how a venal and corrupted rich man like Epstein could penetrate the corridors of American power.

On the face of it, this seems obvious to the outsider: the powerful are chronically partial to free and pleasurable lunches. Indeed, if ‘lessons learned’ is an ambition, an enquiry into the rich and powerful people who turned Epstein away might be more revealing.

But no. We continue the charade that the smartest men in the world were all caught out by Epstein and his rakish ways. His carry-on was an outrageous manipulation of their vulnerable sides.

In short, naivety is an alibi for gluttony.

***

Two themes emerge across the Presidential testimony.

Bill has crystal recall of the innocent context to every incriminating photo in existence: back rubs with young women, hot tubs with young women, matey smiles with paedophiles. Yet, in a startling and happy coincidence, every allegation which lacks proof is either not remembered, or fully denied.

’Not that I recall’ is the well-worn phrase of deniability. This is all the fragrance of the Prince Andrew playbook, with smoother petals of execution.

What Bill recalls most is the laudable work the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) did, participating in bringing AIDS medication and earthquake relief to the poorest regions of the world. That this work for the needy was undertaken through the use of abject luxury and pampering goes unremarked.

Epstein was a pleasure mule – and as long as plausible distance was maintained, it all seemed to work just fine. But then he died; and then 3,500,000 files dropped.

***

Afterword:

These depositions constitute the Clinton swansong. The duo is unlikely to testify in such a public forum again. Henceforth, public funerals seem the only tool left for their myth-building.

Caged by the tactics of Trump, who pursues them to obfuscate his own potential guilt, they had no choice but to sing.

It was a familiar and plaintive air.

They leave us now as they found us in 1992: wound tightly around things fair and foul; good deeds and bad. There was a time when I believed in them too much. I am far from that now – made weary by the world; exhausted by Clintonia.

The final lines of that Yeats poem return to mind. Within them, I find all that I need.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old]

***