SEMEN AND SEMANTICS

Congressional Democrats, deserting President Clinton

New Hampshire 'WE WERE in denial,' said one junior White House staffer. 'Not any more.' For the past seven months, Washington has been Hans Christian Andersen country. The King, having been caught in the alto- gether, summoned his Queen and told her, 'To a fool, I appear to be absolutely naked. But, to a wise and intelligent woman such as yourself, it is obvious that what you are looking at is a vast right-wing conspiracy.'

He called for the Royal Court to con- vene and told his Ministers and Counts and Dukes, `To a fool, I appear to be a reckless narcissist and shameless liar. But, to men and women of reasonable bent such as yourselves, it is obvious that what you are looking at is a politically motivated investigation led by an unaccountable, out- of-control, partisan prosecutor.'

He sent for the Ladies of the Court and said, `To a fool, I appear to be a sexual predator so concerned with immediate self-gratification that the palace intern didn't even have time to get her dress off. But, to progressive feminist thinkers such as yourselves, it is obvious that what you are looking at is a vicious campaign by political reactionaries to eliminate a woman's right to choose.'

Finally, the King received the Town Criers and told them, `To a right-wing talk- radio shock jock, I appear to be wearing a cocktail dress with semen all over it. But, to distinguished members of the Fourth Estate such as yourselves, it is obvious that what you are looking at is a media feeding frenzy that raises serious questions about press ethics in the information age.'

And yea, the Town Criers went among the populace and proclaimed, 'Hear ye, hear ye! To gun nuts, Clinton-haters and uptight guys Who couldn't get laid in high school, the King appears to be an embar- rassing buffoon staggering around with a permanent stiffie. But, to a complacent, prosperous electorate such as yourselves, that's just the Dow Jones shooting up past 9,000.' And for seven months the Queen, the Ministers, the Ladies and the Town Criers danced around the cobbled streets of Washington gleefully denouncing the independent counsel:

This suit of Ken's is altogether But altogether, it's altogether The most ridiculous suit to bring Against a sitting King. . . .

But on Monday night something went badly wrong. The King went on television and for the first time he looked, well, kinda naked. At first, everything seemed much as usual. In Seattle, Dallas, Charles- ton and Providence, the news shows rounded up the usual vox pops. The anti- Clinton crowd said: lying to the American people is wrong; this man has dishonoured his office; the President should be held to the same standards as any other citizen, etc. The Clinton defenders said: hey, everyone lies; or, anyway, everyone lies about sex; or, everyone in Washington lies; or, everyone in Washington lies about sex.

The President's and his party's problem is that these are now the only defenders left. The so-called 'Clinton true believers' How do we stand on giants?' are no more. More importantly, the mea- sured, moderate, respectable opinion with- in the governing class — the well-now- let's-just-hold-off-on-that-rush-to- judgment/presumption-of-innocence/I- believe-my-President line — has collapsed as quickly as his pants.

When Monica's dress was being forensi- cally examined, commentators compared it with the seminal 'hair gel' scene in this summer's hit film comedy, There's Some- thing About Mary: the leading man, after a hurried bout of self-abuse, answers the door to his date unaware that his, ahem, ejaculate is hanging from his ear. The dif- ference is that Bill Clinton's ejaculations wind up dripping from everyone else's ears and noses: on Monday the First Lady, the secretaries of state, commerce, health and education and the other senior Democrats who'd gone out on a limb for him were left with DNA all over their faces.

On Tuesday, when they were supposed to be working the phones to drum up Con- gressional support, White House staffers were too demoralised even to make the calls. It was left to the President himself to pitch his latest routine to a dozen influen- tial allies — the same guys who'd backed him in January, when he'd looked 'em in the eyes and assured them of his inno- cence.

This time round, most of them stayed indoors, and those who did venture out had few words of comfort: `I'm disappointed he didn't tell me the truth,' said Tom Daschle, the party's Senate leader; 'I share the dis- appointment that most Vermonters feel,' said the state's senior senator, Patrick Leahy; Dianne Feinstein, the California senator who'd been standing a few feet away when the President did his 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman!' routine back in January, released a state- ment declaring that 'My trust in his credi- bility has been badly shattered'; and Pennsylvania's Paul McHale became the first Congressional Democrat to call pub- licly for Mr Clinton's resignation.

Over the weekend, the President finally faced his wife and informed her that, despite her public insistence that this was a vast right-wing conspiracy and (just last week) an anti-Arkansas conspiracy, it was in fact mainly a conspiracy between him and his zipper. Through a spokesperson, the First Lady said that 'she believes in this marriage', but for the moment she no longer has the stomach to keep up the act in public.

After protracted negotiations over the choreography for Tuesday's departure to Martha's Vineyard, Mrs Clinton agreed to walk across the White House lawn holding Chelsea's hand, while Chelsea held her dad's and dad held tight to Buddy's leash. The First Lady kept her head down, her mouth tight-lipped and, climbing up the steps of Air Force One, brushed past her husband without a glance. From junior staffers to the party leadership, the Presi- dent's colleagues said they felt variously disillusioned, humiliated and betrayed: the King's Consort, Ministers and Courtiers have belatedly discovered that Monica's not the only sucker inside the Beltway.

In a confessional culture, folks love to forgive. But Mr Clinton is in a more awk- ward position than, say, pre-op transsexu- als going on the Jerry Springer Show to confess that they're now dating their ex- wives' fathers. The President's political advisers were urging him to do the full Oprah — say 'I'm sorry' and ask the coun- try for forgiveness; an early draft of the speech used the phrase 'sexual contact' and apologised not only to Hillary, his staff and the nation, but to Monica, too. But his lawyers felt this would, in effect, be con- ceding perjury and risk reopening the Paula Jones suit. So they came up with the classic Clinton formula of minimal and grudging concession, in which he main- tained that his January deposition had been 'legally accurate': in other words, the President's official position is that, by his understanding of the term, while Monica Lewinsky may have had sex with him, he did not have sex with her.

He might have pulled off even this ludi- crous pubic hair-splitting. But Monday's testimony went badly: in the Map Room, where F.D.R. charted the course of the Allies' advance, his successor did his best to obscure the course of his own advances. But the President was startled by the detail in the prosecutors' questions on obstruc- tion of justice: as usual, he blamed others — the First Victim is always happy to toss wives, secretaries and interns into the fir- ing line; the buck stops in the outer office, or the typing pool, or anywhere but here.

He left knowing there was nothing he could do to stop Ken Starr delivering a report of impeachable offences to Congress. So he determined to get his retaliation in first. And waiting to coach him through it was Harry Thomason, one of the few old Arkansas buddies not now dead, in jail or drowning in legal bills.

Mr Thomason is a producer of TV sit- coms — nothing great, no Ozzie and Harri- et or Beverly Hillbillies, just middling stuff like Designing Women and Evening Shade. But the Clintons think he's a genius. In January, after Bill looked wobbly in his ini- tial denials, Harry flew in from Hollywood and tutored his pal through that famously forceful finger-wagging: 'I did not have sexual relations. . . .' This time, Bill was admitting that he did have 'inappropriate' relations, but Harry was determined it should still be forceful. When the Presi- dent delivered the line, 'I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It's nobody's business but ours,' Mr Thomason, sitting Just off-camera, punched his fists in the air and, in a triumphant stage whisper, hissed, Tesssss!!!'

No. Hollywood values are not entirely synonymous with Washington's. To devote the bulk of his address to an attack on Ken Starr enraged previously emollient Repub- licans like Orrin Hatch and provided the more sober Democrats with a stark glimpse into just how boundlessly self-serv- ing this President can be. To tack on windy appeals to 'all the promise of the next American century' was even more dismal. Besides, it was the forcefulness of his last Thomason-produced soundbite that has proved Mr Clinton's greatest hostage to fortune: the multitude of evasions to Paula Jones's lawyers, his Cabinet and his wife were distilled into one exquisite, televised lie to the American people. As Richard Nixon discovered, Congress in the articles of impeachment can include any false pub- lic statement: the President is always under oath.

`You parliamentary types have it right,' one Democrat told me. 'What was the name of that Lord who resigned on the day the Argentines invaded the Falkland Islands?'

`Carrington?'

`Yeah, right. Why can't we get guys like that?'

Unfortunately, Harry Thomason's model for Bill Clinton is not Peter Car- rington but Stephen Carrington — you remember, the token bisexual on Dynasty. Some weeks he was gay, some weeks he was straight, some weeks both, some weeks neither, his sexuality ricocheting across the spectrum with no regard to anything he'd done in the previous episode. That's how Harry Thomason is recasting Bill Clinton — someone for whom normal considera- tions of consistency, motivation or basic continuity no longer apply. In a present- tense culture, it may convince the public — for now. But, with his own party, it's bombed. In private, senior Democrats in Congress put it this way: at some point, they have a duty not to follow public opin- ion, but lead it.

Meanwhile, in between vacations with Carly Simon on Martha's Vineyard and fund-raising with Steven Spielberg in the Hamptons, Mr Clinton goes to funerals. Traditionally, that's been the principal duty of otherwise under-occupied vice- presidents, but for Bill Clinton it's now the last residual function of his shadow Presi- dency. When Washington police officers are killed in the line of duty, when the bodies are brought back from the rubble of America's East African embassies, the President is there with a teary, lip-jutting eulogy, and commentators agree that this is Bill Clinton at his best. Next day, it's back to Bill Clinton at his usual — subpoe- nas, subornation, semen and semantics.

Which party has the most to gain by let- ting this crippled lecher fester in his stag- nant pool of bodily fluids for another two and a half years? This week, Congressional Democrats finally began to figure out the answer.