Clinton may survive, but his legacy won’t

And that hits the President where it hurts most, his former spokesman said. “For someone who loves the presidency and loves that White House and is a student of it, that will hurt him a lot forever,” Michael McCurry said in an NBC interview.

Clinton, who already has blueprints for a presidential library in his Arkansas hometown, has long had his eye on history.

“Thirty-two years ago another young candidate who wanted to get this country moving again came to theconvention to say a simple thank you,” he said in his 1992 nomination acceptance speech.

Clinton was referring to his model, John F. Kennedy, whose hand he shook at age 17 and whose glamorous footsteps he pictured himself following since boyhood. A look at presidents past finds that greatness eludes most and that many are remembered for misdeeds and missteps.

Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than face an impeachment vote in 1974, is described as “undone by Watergate” in reference to the Opposition party headquarters break-in that brought him down.

Until Clinton, Andrew Johnson took his ignominious place in history by being the first impeached President. He was saved from removal by one Senate vote in 1868. Text books note he was called “an ungrateful, despicable, besotted traitorous man,” an “aching tooth in the national jaw,” and an “incubus” covered with the “filth of treason”.

Thomas Jefferson, a revered founding father, has lately been resurrected as an adulterer who fathered a childby his slave.

On a lesser scale, Gerald Ford had a reputation for tripping over his own feet, Ronald Reagan tended to forget things and George Bush was known for misspeaking.

“Only Theodore Roosevelt had a triumphant presidency without getting us into a war or major depression,” said Graff. “You either have to win a war or be associated with winning a war, and even that doesn’t always do it as Bush discovered,” he said of the 1991 Gulf War which failed to win Bush a second term.

Graff cautioned, however, that only time will tell what true mark Clinton will leave. “We don’t know what will happen. We may take a different view and say he was pilloried because of sex,” he said.

Indeed, that’s what Clinton may be hoping.

In an impromptu interview at a Christmas party after the historic House vote to impeach him, Clinton said he didn’t feel “too bad” about being impeached and that within “10 or 20 years” historians won’t give undue weight to the impeachment.

He also told the Los Angeles Timesreporter that he had learned to “purge” his anger toward his attackers and that fellow leaders such as South African President Nelson Mandela had taught him to turn the other cheek.

The view certainly fits with the notion that Clinton, arguably the most psychoanalysed of presidents, is either in denial about the gravity of the situation or is simply able to “compartmentalise” aspects of his complex life.

It is also testimony of his continued belief in the legendary resiliency he first claimed in that 1992 nomination speech, when he told supporters: “I will be the Comeback Kid.”