Monitor 1600

He may not think so. His wife may not think so. But Bill Clinton has been having a great sweeps month, caught up in scandals, scrapes and cliff-hangers just like the networks. Unlike the networks, however, the President may not find this kind of programming to be good for his ratings.

Sweeps — as most Americans are no doubt aware in the Entertainment Tonight, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, E! Entertainment Television era — occur every November, February and May. These are the months when TV stations receive ratings that will allow them to fix their advertising rates for the coming months, prompting the networks to trundle out their most lurid and spectacular offerings. This May, for instance, ABC has scored with an apocalyptic four- part mini-series based on Stephen King’s The Stand; CBS is airing a TV movie with the can’t-miss title Menendez; Fox inexplicably wasted its own Menendez movie on the nonsweeps month of April, but has countered with episodes of some of its most popular programs in 3-D and scratch-‘n’-sniff “Aromavision.”

The White House’s offerings this month have been every bit as attention- getting, beginning with a shocking one-two punch: the down-to-the-wire vote in the House on the assault-weapons ban that came on the very same day — No way! shouted millions of electrified C-SPAN viewers — that Paula Jones’ lawyers were toying with the question of whether or not to file a sexual- harassment suit against the President. The latter story line was echoed in the recent two-hour season finale of Melrose Place, a currently hot nighttime soap that was floundering until old pro Heather Locklear — a sort of Lloyd Cutler with dark roots — was brought in to get the show on track.

The second week of May saw the nation spellbound by the President’s agonized dithering over a Supreme Court nominee, a development for which there wasn’t really a Melrose Place equivalent — unless you count Jake’s ping-ponging between sexy, bitchy Amanda and not-as-sexy, pregnant Jo. But get this: Clinton, his writers even more shameless than Aaron Spelling’s, was torn between three possible candidates, though the President betrayed a misunderstanding of basic genre requirements in that none of his picks looked good in a halter top (still, some people admit to finding Bruce Babbitt cute in a kind of cheerful, nonthreatening way).

Here’s the latest Clinton plot twist: Can Dan Rostenkowski prod the big health-care bill through his Ways and Means Committee before he’s indicted on low-rent financial-irregularities charges? With the fate of the entire presidency allegedly resting on the shoulders of this unlikely hero, one can only note that even Melrose Place pays some obeisance to the notion of ^ plausibility. Still, we all want to see what happens next.

We didn’t use to think of politics in quite these terms — Eisenhower, surely, would not have appreciated being bound up in a flip essay with Aromavision (Clinton probably doesn’t either, but one imagines he’s grown used to this sort of thing). Thirty-odd years of expecting Presidents to be adept television performers and 30-odd years of Presidents’ playing to that expectation — the catch in Reagan’s voice, the tug on Clinton’s lip — have chipped away at our notions of intimacy, dignity and content, leaving behind a fat appetite for sheer spectacle. Not always by design, the Clinton Administration is far and away the most entertaining in recent memory (excepting, of course, its wonky bits). Nannygate, the $200 haircut, Gore- Perot, Whitewater, Troopergate, Hillary’s commodities trades … we’ve had a government in chronic sweeps mode for more than a year.

Whether all this is good governance is beyond the purview of this essay — and probably this electorate. The only real question is (you ask it, we ask it, the White House asks it): Will the ratings hold up?