Electronic Telegraph, UK
By Hugo Gurdon in Washington
Republican hopefuls pitch for the moral high ground ... Opponents clash over release of grand jury testimony.
PUBLIC support for President Clinton appeared to be collapsing yesterday as America prepared for today's broadcast of a potentially devastating video of his alleged perjury.
Surveys show big increases in the proportion of voters who think the President should resign or be impeached. The tide of opinion may run even faster after Americans today see more than four hours of Mr Clinton's testimony to a grand jury in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
A Fox News poll found that 47 per cent of the public now think Mr Clinton should resign or be impeached, twice as many as favour a reprimand or letting him off without punishment. Newsweek magazine found 46 per cent wanting Mr Clinton to resign. This is up from 39 per cent a week ago and 31 per cent last month. Half the public still opposes resignation, but that is down from two thirds last month.
One of Mr Clinton's former close aides, George Stephanopoulos, said: "All the facts finally settled in on people. By the end of the week . . . the President was standing on quicksand."
Sources inside the White House say talk of resignation is spreading in the executive mansion. Although Mr Clinton has said he will "never" quit, and that remains his official line, one official said he would go soon after Jan 20, the date after which his full pension of $150,000 (œ100,000) a year becomes secure. After that date, too, Vice-President Al Gore could take over and still be allowed two full terms in his own right in addition to the rump of Mr Clinton's second term.
The haemorrhaging of support for Mr Clinton will continue today, some analysts believe, because the President reportedly looks shifty, evasive and unpresidential in the video. Bill Kristol, former chief of staff to Vice-President Dan Quayle, said viewers would see that "it's not the sex, stupid, it's the perjury".
It has emerged, according to one leak, that Mr Clinton debates the meaning of the phrase "the whole truth" in his oath before giving testimony, and also that he walks out in fury at one point because his cross-examiners grill him about the exact nature of his sexual contact with Miss Lewinsky, a junior White House employee. Later, after protracted wrangling with prosecutors, a member of the grand jury butts in and asks: "Why aren't you answering the questions?"
In his testimony, Mr Clinton portrayed himself as a friend who, after their sexual contact ended, tried to find Miss Lewinsky a new job and to help her avoid having to testify in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. But the President said he took these actions out of concern for her and not because he was trying to silence her.
Mr Clinton also answered questions about Kathleen Willey, the woman who has accused him of an unwanted sexual advance, acknowledging it was possible that he tried to reach her as early as the autumn of 1992 at a hotel in Williamsburg, Virginia, during a presidential debate. Prosecutors confronted him with a record of two calls he made to Mrs Willey's room around that time.
As for the alleged advance in the White House in 1993, Mr Clinton gave an identical answer to the one he gave in the Jones lawsuit, denying anything improper happened except that he may have hugged her or kissed her forehead to comfort her.
The decision to release the video has sparked a political storm, with White House supporters accusing Mr Clinton's Republican opponents of rushing out the evidence solely to humiliate the President and make it easier to bundle him out of the Oval Office.
Congressman Barney Frank, a Left-wing Democrat and fierce supporter of the President, said the House of Representatives' judiciary committee, which is responsible for the release of the video and 2,800 pages of other evidence, said: "All we have done so far is be a transmission belt for Ken Starr's accusations, which is one-sided."
Although the public would see Mr Clinton, "one of the most articulate men ever to occupy the office, harrumphing and looking confused because he knows he has done something wrong", it was natural that he would seek to keep as much as possible secret about his illicit sexual affair, Mr Frank said.
Critics, however, accuse the President of "manufacturing after-the-fact explanations of his sexual relations" and lying under oath. They say there has already been eight months of concealment and deception by the White House and it is time for the public to see the evidence and judge for themselves.
Even though today's evidence is mountainous - eight times the length of the Starr report 10 days ago - it is still less than a tenth of what remains. Today's release is from just one of the 17 boxes of Starr report documents, and the judiciary committee has yet to decide about editing and releasing the remaining 16. That could come next week.
According to what appear to be White House leaks, Mr Clinton at one point in the video says to the grand jurors: "I'd give anything in the world not to admit what I had to testify to today." He later accuses prosecutors of making "this the most important issue in America". At another point the President, who is said to have used a cigar as a sex toy in one encounter with Miss Lewinsky, describes sex as "the most mysterious area of human life".
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