CROSSED LEGS AT 'GENITALIA
Mark Steyn watches Mr Clinton,
both on trial and on the State of the Union
Washington DC THIS is what the Hundred Years War must have felt like. 'Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye,' I sang, as the train pulled out and my family receded into the distance. At journey's end, handing me my temporary pass to Congress, the nice Sen- ate lady explained, 'We don't know when all this will end, so I'll put an expiration date for the end of the year.' Good grief!' I cried. 'I was hoping to be back home this weekend!' But it seems that, when next I see my infant daughter, she'll be old enough to join the White House intern programme. Still, I shall do my duty: as I told my New Hampshire neighbours, I won't come back till it's over over there. Or, in this case, I won't come back up till they've stopped going down down there.
The capital isn't exactly in the grip of impeachment fever — though I notice the adult video channel in my hotel room lists, along with Tongue 'n' Groove (Swinging & Swapping) and Red, Hot and Horny (Busty Redheads), a motion picture hitherto unknown to me called White House Interns (Sex & Lies) — at $8.95, it's cheaper than the Starr Report. My hand hovered ner- vously over the button, but I did not, as the President likes to say, 'give in to my shame'. However, I'm thinking of giving in to my shame tomorrow night, if I have to spend another day staring down at Senator Strom Thurmond's incendiary orange hair plugs. Not only is the Senate's 96-year old President as red, hot and horny as any of those busty redheads, but those who bemoan Mr Clinton's hairsplitting should note that no-one splits hairs like old Strom: he has six of them, evenly spaced across his pate like overdone fish fingers lying on the grill.
But the director of White House Interns is not the only motion picture artiste pre- occupied by public affairs. A friend of Barbra Streisand's has sent me news of the lecture she recently delivered on Edmund Ross, the Kansas Senator who in 1868 cast the deciding vote in the last impeachment trial and kept President Andrew Johnson in office. 'It is he who is remembered by history,' said Miss Streisand of the late Senator, `not those who voted for impeachment.' As Barbra famously observed in The Way We Were, mem'ries light the corners of her mind, misty water- colour mem'ries — but not until now did it occur to any of us that the misty water- colour mem'ries lighting up her mind's corners were of Edmund Ross.
The conventional wisdom is that this time round there's no shortage of Edmund Rosses — that the votes to convict just aren't there. Perhaps that's why the public gallery is rarely full — the American people are only allowed in for 15 minutes at a time, and, frankly, after 15 minutes of GOP Congressman Bob Barr citing legal precedents, most of the American people seem grateful to be led away, vowing never to vote Republican again. In the press gallery, we gaze at them enviously, but even our number thins out pretty quickly. Dominick Dunne, the (so to speak) Court and Social Correspondent of Vanity Fair, is there intermittently, but anything involving charts analysing Betty Currie's 'phone logs causes a stampede for the exits. Alas for them, the Senators have to stay put, and look increasingly uncomfortable. But, at the risk of rupturing the chamber's much vaunted 'bipartisan' spirit, I'd have to say the Democrats are taking it worse than the GOP. Republican Senators Fred Thomp- son and John McCain sprawl like barflies, slumping further and further beneath the desks; the only Native American Senator, Colorado's Ben Nighthorse Campbell, lies back, shirt undone, ponytail flapping behind him, like a Jilly Cooper heroine waiting to be rogered senseless. But over on the Democrat side postures are stiffer, more awkward. The strains of defending Bill Clinton are beginning to show. During Representative Bill McCollum's more explicit presentation, whenever 'genitalia' were mentioned, Joe Lieberman and John Kerry squirmed and crossed their legs; whenever oral sex raised its ugly head, Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln blanched and covered her mouth.
At day's end, the Senators are eager to touch each other: the small of Ms Lin- coln's back is a popular destination, but, if she has a prior booking, they make do with Ted Kennedy's elbow, which these days is as big as the small of Ms Lincoln's back. If Ted's tottered away, even members of the press will do. After a week in the Senate, I feel like Kathleen Willey. Senators don't feel they've spun you properly if they haven't given your arm a squeeze. So, every evening, your wary correspondent leaves the chamber, takes the elevator down and runs into the Democrat Senators John Breaux, Tom Harkin, Chuck Schumer, Bob Torricelli, Patrick Leahy, all eager to explain why this doesn't (altogether now) `rise to the level' of removal from office. It's not always the same: sometimes, instead of bumping into Chuck Schumer, Tom Harkin and Bob Torricelli, you bump into Bob Torricelli, Tom Harkin and Chuck Schumer. But, for all their cloying ubiquitous solidarity, eventually you begin to appreciate that the President's fate lies in the hands of those 30 or so Democratic Senators who aren't yakking — the ones whose discomfort this past week isn't entirely due to the Senate furniture.
On the third day, I ask the young fellow behind me what he makes of it all. He has a terrible haircut and a cheap suit that ends halfway down his arms. I assume he's with the Pocatello Courier-Indicator or some such and am trying not to stand on ceremony. But his responses are mostly monosyllabic and he won't even make eye contact. He moves to my other side, and I spot his earpiece: I've been chatting up a Secret Service man. He's so good at surveillance that I don't even notice he's followed me to the cafeteria until I make the mistake of taking the last tuna on rye and hear his forceful complaints.
While the rest of us aren't allowed to take coats or 'reading material' into the chamber, the Secret Service boys carry with them black bags containing gas masks 'in the event of airborne chemical attack'. Reassuring as this is, it doesn't address the more immediate threat of earthbound gas attack coming from the Senate floor. I like Henry Hyde, but I thought his closing peroration was, like his suits, off his peg. He hit the usual themes — Magna Carta, Iwo Jima — but somehow, despite his best efforts, it's hard to feel future generations will see this trial as an equally epic struggle for liberty: Magna Carta, Iwo Jima, Trousa Droppa. . . .
The President reacted to all this with his usual insouciance, giving the second- longest State of the Union speech in the history of the Republic, four minutes shy of his own 1995 record and full of all the stuff he promised last year, most of which is beyond Federal jurisdiction, and the bits which aren't, the GOP will ignore. Nonetheless, Congressional Democrats leapt up and down with the delirious aban- don of contestants on The Price is Right.
To clear my head, I went for a spin out- side the Beltway. A cop pulled me over for speeding, but said he'd let me off with a warning. Or as he drolly put it, 'This doesn't rise to the level of issuing a ticket.'
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