The main question left from the Monica era is: Was it inevitable? Not the trysts themselves--whether they were psychologically inevitable, apart from being insane, can now be left to various Clintons in their future books. Nor is it really worth pondering at the moment whether Kenneth Starr's fixation on the case, or the Republican Congress's exploitation of it in the drive to impeachment, was inevitable. Their responses were logical extensions of the scorched-earth party politics of the last 15 years.