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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (1730)	9/7/1998 1:28:00 PM
From: Who, me?	Respond to of 67261

9/7/98 -- 12:45 PM Awaiting Starr, Washington asks: Is Clinton hobbled beyond WASHINGTON (AP) - Awaiting the Starr report that can only add to President Clinton's troubles, Washington worries whether scandal has undermined the president's authority to the point of rendering him ineffective and the country rudderless. Clinton's summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin did nothing to relieve that concern; it was shrugged off as empty diplomacy between two weakened heads of state. Foreign travel is often the last refuge of lame-duck presidents, but Clinton's trip to Russia and Ireland did not allow him to escape the impact of his confession of misbehavior with ex-intern Monica Lewinsky. ''Moral authority'' is the term that's come into use to question whether a scandal-hobbled president, facing the prospect of even more investigation, can effectively lead. The failure of Clinton's Aug. 17 speech ''has reverberated all through the system and I think the president has completely lost momentum,'' says Colin Campbell, director of the Public Policy Institute at Georgetown University. ''His capacity to deploy moral suasion is going to be greatly diminished.'' Senate GOP Leader Trent Lott said Saturday that Clinton had ''eroded the moral dimension of the presidency'' and pledged Congress would step into the vacuum. ''We are determined to maintain - and to justify - your confidence, no matter what else may happen in other branches of government,'' Lott said. Clinton and the Republican-dominated Congress are approaching a spending showdown that could close down the government as it did in 1995 and 1996. All of Clinton's legislative agenda, including his demand that Congress fix Social Security first, is in jeopardy. A hint of what awaits Clinton came abroad. Twice, once in the company of Yeltsin, once with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern at his side, he had to address questions about the adequacy of his Aug. 17 Lewinsky speech to the nation. ''I'm worried, I'm not panicked,'' says a foreign policy expert, Casimir Yost, as he surveys the potential foreign crises that could confront a weakened president in his final two years. They range from the financial emergency spreading from Asia toward Latin America - and possibly overlapping the United States - to the political weakness of Russia and the nuclear intentions of North Korea. Overseas, says Yost, director of the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, ''most people cannot comprehend what we are doing to ourselves.'' Former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., who investigated the Iran-Contra affair and chaired the Senate ethics committee, said he sees little international peril arising from having a weakened Clinton in office for the next 2 1/2 years. ''Having watched the way the system works, I don't have any doubt that people of both parties would put all this aside if there is a genuine threat to the national security,'' Rudman said. ''The bottom line is that any president who faces a Congress controlled by the other party and is in the last two years of his presidency has problems anyway,'' he added. Last week's explosion of Democratic dismay with Clinton may be only a taste of what awaits with the Starr report, expected soon. Even if it adds no new dimensions to the sexual scandal, laying out all Starr has learned in months of investigation is likely to cause more Democrats to cut their ties from Clinton, further isolating him. To use a Watergate-era term, he could be left twisting slowly in the wind. To add to his troubles, Attorney General Janet Reno, under intense Republican scrutiny, is reconsidering whether to seek another independent prosecutor to look at Clinton's role in raising money for his 1996 reelection. In the summer of 1974, at his moment of maximum peril, Richard Nixon, like Clinton, turned to Air Force One to carry him away from an exploding crisis and demands from both parties that he step aside or face impeachment. Nixon took a Mideastern swing, visited Austria and Belgium and conducted a week-long summit in Moscow with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Barely a month later, he was forced by the Watergate scandal to become the first president to resign. Of course, Clinton's situation differs a lot from Nixon's. The looming danger of the Cold War is gone, and the country is prosperous. And as a matter of practical politics, Republicans may be reluctant to replace a weakened Clinton with Al Gore, allowing Gore to seek the White House in two years as the incumbent president. Perhaps there are advantages to a GOP-dominated Congress to having a hobbled Clinton in the White House. --- EDITOR'S NOTE: Mike Feinsilber is a national reporter in Washington. tampabayonline.net