“In the spring of 1971 I met a girl.”

So began Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention, an address that was part love story, part campaign pitch, and in which he sought to humanise a woman long criticised for behaving too robotically.

It was clear he spoke from the heart. And while Mr Clinton showed he was no longer quite the energetic, bounding speaker he once was, he himself earned a standing ovation

But if some people were moved by Mr Clinton’s comments – “This woman has never been satisfied with the status quo about anything” – others were critical about what was elided.

Indeed, commentators on social media and elsewhere, were quick to point out that while he found time to talk about meeting his wife, marrying her, finding a house in Arkansas and raising their daughter, Chelsea, he failed to mention any of the sex scandals that have engulfed him.

Most notably among these, was his involvement with a 22-year-old White Hosue intern called Monica Lewinsky. His lying about the affair led him to endure the scandal of being impeached, and for Hillary Clinton to suffer the pain of her husband being publicly exposed as a cheat.

“The harder the Clintons have worked to preserve their marriage, the less easily that marriage has fit into easy stories about what true love should look like,” Alyssa Rosenberg wrote in the Washington Post.

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