Mclean's Magazine
"...First, Morris and Clinton agreed,
they should conduct a poll to find out whether Americans were prepared to forgive their President. The answer came back no. And so Clinton did not fess up, but instead denied all and sent his supporters out to attack those who doubted him. Only last week, backed into a legal corner by his relentless foe, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, did he finally admit publicly that he had had an "inappropriate" relationship with the young intern and say he was sorry - sort of.
The speech - perhaps the most important four minutes and seven seconds of Clinton's political life - was bound to be a turning point. Before he gave it, his advisers had clearly hoped that, as he had done so often, he would seize the moment and turn looming disaster into an opportunity for redemption. Americans, went their mantra, are a forgiving people. Given the chance, they wanted nothing more than an end to the appalling spectacle of a President tarnished by constant chatter about "sex acts" steps from the Oval Office, and of "genetic material" indiscreetly left on a dress.
...
The open questioning of Clinton's motives after last week's missile strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan emphasized just how much his credibility has suffered. As presidential historian Robert Dallek of Boston University put it in an interview:
"For presidents, trust is the coin of the realm. You need it to have any credibility, and how can you create a groundswell in the country or the Congress for anything if you have no credibility?" With Clinton's trustworthiness so badly undermined, concluded Dallek, "Frankly, I think he is largely crippled now."
The President's decision to tell his story to the grand jury came on July 29 - the day after Lewinsky cut her deal to testify in return for immunity from prosecution. But it was only in the few days leading up to his appearance that he apparently came to grips with exactly what he would say - to the jury, to the public, to his daughter, Chelsea, and to his wife. From the moment the scandal erupted in late January, Hillary Clinton has been crucial to her husband's survival. She stood beside him in the Roosevelt Room of the White House as he wagged his finger at the TV cameras and defiantly, unambiguously declared: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky...."
