Some excerpts from the Sunday Times (London) at:
the-times.co.uk
Democrats desert 'Big Creep'
by Tony Allen-Mills
Washington
"Long used to outwitting his enemies, Clinton now faces the previously unthinkable threat of ruin at the hands of his friends as senior figures in his own party ignored his foreign accomplishments and lined up to denounce his behaviour.
"Kenneth Starr, the terrier-like special prosecutor who has exposed the most tawdry and demeaning revelations that any American president has ever had to endure, is putting the finishing touches to a potentially explosive report to Congress on the so-called Zippergate scandal.
"No allegation, however salacious, is likely to be left unexamined by Starr, whether it concerns the semen-stained dress that Lewinsky claims to have treasured, or the large Cuban cigar with which she is said to have performed an exotic dance in what has become known as the Oval orifice."
[Say, isn't the possession of Cuban cigars illegal in the US?]
"Nor will the president's problems end there. The Wall Street boom is fast disappearing into a New York-sized pothole, and may carry with it Clinton's much-touted reputation for sound economic management.
"The justice department has launched a new investigation into Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign funding, raising the prospect that yet another independent prosecutor will open a file on alleged presidential misbehaviour.
"Even the defunct Paula Jones sexual harassment suit may return to the front pages. Not only are Jones's lawyers considering a new suit against the president accusing him of perjury, but Judge Susan Weber Wright, of Arkansas, is preparing to make public all the court documents. One columnist described the material as "a gusher of nastiness about the president's secret life".
"Washington was agog last week at widespread reports that The Washington Post is preparing an as yet unpublished article on two more White House interns with whom Clinton is rumoured to have acted inappropriately.
"Then there is the matter of "Monica's mouth" and the chilling prospect that after months of strategic silence it may soon begin to speak. Outraged at Clinton's brutal public dismissal of what she evidently regarded as a deep romantic encounter, Lewinsky is said to be ready to tell all in her memoirs.
"According to opinion polls, the vast majority of Americans are said to be desperate for an end to a scandal so ugly that one Democratic senator complained last week he could no longer watch the evening news with his 10-year-old daughter. Yet there was a perceptible sense in the capital yesterday that, in the words of one despairing Clintonite, "we ain't heard nothing yet".
"The president's Democratic colleagues paid no more attention to the stories of sexual excess than the millions of voters who first backed the Big Creep (as Lewinsky calls him, among other unpublishable names) in 1992 and re-elected him four years later despite his endless legal and romantic upsets.
"Yet it seems to have dawned slowly on senior party figures - and many others in the American establishment - that there is a world of difference between a randy politician with a knack for wriggling out of awkward corners, and a president who looks his country in the eye and tells a barefaced lie, then drags his family and supporters through seven months of sordid evasion and who finally blames someone else for attempting to establish the truth. Clinton's half-baked apology as he departed for a holiday in Martha's Vineyard last month turned many a Democrat's stomach.
"To many Washington observers Lieberman's attack was inspired both by personal revulsion at the president's transparent lack of contrition - which Clinton scarcely revised with his reluctant admission in Dublin on Friday that he was "very sorry" about his behaviour - and also by a political fear that more damaging revelations lie ahead and that an increasingly disgusted public will begin to seek revenge on Democratic candidates in November's midterm congressional elections.
"[Clinton] cannot run the country without the support of his party in Congress. He cannot fight Starr and the Republicans without solid Democratic approval. Yet the most powerful politician in the world is fast running out of friends.
"The Democratic leaders who are busily distancing themselves from him foresee an eventual voter backlash not only against local candidates, but also against Al Gore, the vice-president, as he waits to succeed Clinton. Gore has been all but invisible since Clinton's televised confessions. His advisers are said to have begun discussing whether Gore's best chance of winning in 2000 now depends on Clinton resigning.
"Indeed, White House "spin meisters" were still insisting last week that Clinton was in battle mode. "As outcry grows, aides prepare fight," announced The Washington Post. The president's senior political and legal advisers were said to be still on "war-room footing" and ready to take aim at Starr when he releases his report.
"However, it is a pretty shrivelled army that Clinton now commands. Mike McCurry, the imperturbable White House press secretary, is counting the days until his departure.
"Rahm Emanuel, a senior policy adviser, is on his way out in the autumn. Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, is also said to be leaving. While all deny they are victims of scandal fatigue, veteran Clinton-watchers claim to have detected a shift of mood in the president's long-loyal coterie."
RS
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