The Clinton affair

In the week since independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr released his report to Congress, Gore had refused to answer questions from the growing national press corps traveling with him. But in four sessions with New Hampshire reporters, he praised Clinton’s address to religious leaders the morning the report was released as the “finest speech of his presidency” and maintained Clinton will complete his eight years in office. “It will never happen,” Gore said, when asked about the prospect of resignation. He will finish his term with a distinguished record.” Gore said that he has not read Starr’s voluminous report but thatstaff briefings and news accounts have provided enough information for him to decide it’s time to move on. “The president himself has said the actions described in that report were wrong,” he said.

“And he has apologised, and he has asked for forgiveness and said he has moved on to continue doing the job, which is what the American people want.” Asked what he is doing during this crisis, Gore replied, “At a time of stress and pressure for (Clinton), it’s more important than ever I do everything I can to help him be the best possible president.”

Calling the shots

If Clinton is the central character in the drama convulsing Washington, the man writing the script is Newt Gingrich. Feminists may be preoccupied with Monica and Hillary. Gossip-mongers may be diverted by Matt Drudge and Salon magazine. Conspiracy theorists may be riveted by Starr and Sidney Blumenthal. But the person who really matters now is Gingrich. The hunting down of President Clinton has always been highly political,but until a week ago there were other aspects to it too.

Then, on September 11, Starr’s report was submitted to Congress. At that point, Clinton’s crisis became wholly and explicitly political. And since Congress is controlled by the Republicans, and the leader of the Republicans is the House of Representatives’ Speaker, Gingrich is the playmaker of the Clinton crisis. Gingrich underlined his central role in a rare but trenchant set of comments in a speech to the conservative Christian Coalition. His words made clear that he is prepared to go all the way in driving Clinton out of office if necessary. “This is a constitutional challenge”, he said.

“We in the House will do our duty. We won’t do an inch more than our duty for partisanship, and we won’t do an inch less than our duty out of intimidation. We will do our duty. We will let the facts lead us where they lead us.”

As his remarks indicate, Gingrich has been careful to take, or at least to appear to take, the formal and bipartisan high ground indealing with the Starr report. He has emphasised that impeachment of a president is a formal and constitutional question, and has gone out of his way to allow the minority Democrats to have equal access to Starr’s evidence and to consult them about the process ahead. At the same time, Gingrich has tried hard not to appear obsessed with the subject. At a press conference on education earlier in the week, the first question he faced was about the scandal. “We in the Congress are actually focusing on substance,” Gingrich snapped. “I spent less than 45 minutes on the topic that interests you most.”

Over the months, though, Gingrich has spent much more than 45 minutes plotting the Republican response to the long-anticipated Starr recommendations. “He calls all the shots,” a senior colleague told The New York Times this week. Knowing the president is popular and the public mood against impeachment, Gingrich has decided to pursue a gradual, drip-drip strategy on Capitol Hill so that public opinionbegins to desert Clinton.

Language hurdles

The great mystery, of course, is why The Voters, which is to say, Those People Beyond the Beltway, refuse to demand the President’s head at the same time that they express general outrage at his behaviour, plus that of Starr, and at media messengers trumpeting all the smutty little details of l’affaire Lewinsky. It’s really all about language. Lawyers have taken over our minds in Washington, sort of like the pod aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Only a lawyer could contend, as David Kendall has on television, that no lying was involved in the President’s denial that he ever had sex with Monica Lewinsky. Even though they did have a sexual relationship.

Because the sex wasn’t really sex. Kendall, a partner in Washington’s legendary law firm of Williams & Connolly, makes some $500,000 a year coming up with arguments like that, and for many here in Lawyerville, the flaw in his line of reasoning is not that it sounds like dialogue from the MadHatter’s tea party, but that it might not fly before Congress. Out in The Real World, where non-lawyers dwell, people understand such reasoning is from Mars. But they also recognise, according to several experts on linguistics, that the game of legal “Gotcha!” being played by Starr and the Republicans is equally bizarre.

How else, many people wonder, could anyone equate deceits born of a pathetically reprehensible kamikaze dance between a lubricious 22-year-old groupie in thong underwear and a self-gratifying president, with the “high crimes and misdemeanors” envisioned by the impeachment section of the US Constitution? The only people who could, the language experts say, are people who think like lawyers. “I think that’s one of the key things going on” in the current presidential scandals, says Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author of You Just Don’t Understand. “I think it is also the source of the enormous disconnect between the average person andthe politicians, the pundits and the press. It’s a kind of taking over of the mental mind-set by the legal mind-set”, she says. “One of the things that happens in law school is you get taught not to use your common sense.” She believes Starr has overdrawn his case even more than has President Clinton’s team in defending him.

Hillary’s day

There was a small podium under an awning, a few rows of plastic chairs on a patch of open grass and an audience of about 40 who had turned up to watch the opening of some tennis courts not a major date in Washington’s social calendar. But no event is currently too small for Hillary Rodham Clinton if it allows her to speak about the issues she believes count, and offers her a reasonable excuse not to speak about the one issue she insists on avoiding. The First Lady seems to be talking everywhere about education, investment in Africa and sport for the poor. But the more she talks the clearer it is she is not going to address her husband’s sexualembarrassment.

“This is the way she has decided to go. She wants to focus on the real issues,” said one of her advance staff. Even on the day when it was announced the tape of Clinton’s testimony would be broadcast, there will be no mention of the troubles. Her aides say the president’s officials have been begging her to produce some more public forgiveness, but she has so far refused. Stick to the issues, she says. This is the way she has decided to go. Outings like this also mean the press is not scrutinising her body language with Bill. Her staff say she does not have the stomach to be touchy-feely at the moment.

As she emerged from the limousine, it was clear why so many presidential supporters believe the whole show now rests on her shoulders. She appeared supremely poised, in a chocolate-brown trouser suit and blue mirror sun-glasses. Washington’s political society magazine, George, has recently complimented her on finding a hairstyle “that works” — a highlighted bob.

But she not onlylooked chic. Everything she did seemed to say she was warm, friendly and approachable. As the standing ovation went on and on, she waved at faces in the audience whom she seemed to recognise and cherish. The only mention of the erring Bill was a plug. He had asked Congress for $1 billion for after-school recreational facilities for disadvantaged children, and she won another televised cheer for her husband. At this stage, every one counts.