This and much more can be learnt from the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, a sparkling $165 million (£88.7 million) glass and steel container dubbed “trailer home chic”, which is to be dedicated today and officially opens tomorrow.

In among its 80 million pieces of paper, 2 million photographs and 77,000 objects and artefacts, we learn that Whoopi Goldberg thought Mr Clinton “the cat’s pyjamas” and that Elton John rang the Arkansas Governor’s mansion on election night in 1992 to congratulate him.

We learn that Mr Clinton kept a 3.6 billion-year-old lump of Moon rock in the Oval Office to offer perspective, and would rearrange his knick-knacks late at night to relax.

He made his left-handed ticks backwards and favoured writing in a thick black felt tip, often illegible in the margin of speeches.

And yet there is something missing. Where is Monica Lewinsky? The library boasts exact replicas of the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room and is a treasure trove of Clinton memorabilia. There are a dozen golf clubs, five saxophones — and the dark glasses that Mr Clinton wore while playing Heartbreak Hotel on one of them television as a presidential candidate.

There are gifts from travels around the world and visitors to the White House — plates and pots, Buddhas, statues, rugs, a chess set of caricatures from the Northern Ireland peace process.

But there is no picture of the woman whose visits to the Oval Office sparked a constitutional crisis. The only dresses on display are pristine ballgowns worn on state occasions.

Organisers had promised that the largest presidential library yet would show Mr Clinton, warts and all. There would be no airbrushing, they vowed. The result allows them to claim to have stood by their pledge — but only just.

Mr Clinton’s impeachment for lying under oath about his dalliance with Ms Lewinsky is addressed, but only in the context of his six-year war with Republicans on Capitol Hill. In a section entitled “The Fight for Power”, it is mentioned, along with the Whitewater investigations, merely as a by-product of his furious battle against what he and his wife considered a “vast right-wing conspiracy”. The section is one of 14 exhibit alcoves dedicated to themes of the Clinton Administrations.

Tellingly, the section begins with the “revolution” of 1994, when the Republicans captured Congress under Newt Gingrich, the starting point for the partisan bitterness that came to characterise the Clinton years.

The explanatory text addresses the Lewinsky affair in much the same tone as Mr Clinton’s memoir published six months ago: a moment, or several moments, of lapsed judgment ruthlessly whipped up and exploited by political opponents.

Phrases such as “character assassination”, “politics of persecution” and “rumours and accusations” are highlighted in yellow. Ms Lewinsky’s name, unhighlighted, appears only twice, along with oblique 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.

The relatively recent concept of a presidential library offers the former incumbent an opportunity for indulgence. His voice is everywhere. Layers of Clinton speeches pour forth from exhibits, delivering a State of the Union address here, responding to the African embassy bombings there, fighting crime from somewhere in the middle distance.

The main theme can be boiled down to his 1992 campaign maxim — “It’s the economy, stupid” — and the years of plenty over which he presided.

But there are walls of photographs of White House parties, dinners and recitals reminding visitors that the Clinton White House really only got into full swing at about the time his successor goes to bed.

For the more sober-minded, loose-leaf folders give Mr Clinton’s itinerary for every day of his eight years in office.

Other presidential libraries, like Ronald Reagan’s in Simi Valley, California, tend to be off the beaten track or, like Lyndon Johnson’s and the George Bush Sr’s, on college campuses. Mr Clinton’s, the eleventh, is the first built in the heart of a city and has brought almost $1 billion investment into the once-sleepy Little Rock. Its ambitious cantilevered design juts out over the bank of the Arkansas River, an echo of Mr Clinton’s portrayal of his presidency as “a bridge to the 21st century”.

Some 30,000 people are to attend today’s opening, including both George Bushes and Bono, the U2 rock star.

But some are not ready to let bygones be bygones. Clinton opponents are planning a “counter-library” nearby to tell their own version of the Clinton years.

This week a group of protesters handed out leaflets saying “Clinton Raped Juanita” — a reference to a claim that briefly surfaced in 1999.

When tempers flared while he was in office, Mr Clinton used to point to the Moon rock and urge calm. Nevertheless, it seems that for as long as there is life on Earth, arguments about the Clinton presidency will rage.

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