Updated: Jan 28 1998 10:42AM

Bouncing Back? President Clinton delivers the State of the Union address. RICK WILKING/REUTERS

WASHINGTON: Could the Clinton crisis have bottomed out? Tuesday's events gave the White House a glimmer of hope: Hillary hit back on the talk shows, Bill's State of the Union was respectfully received -- and strangest of all, the President was nominated for the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, ostensibly for his work in reconciling Israelis and Palestinians.

Whether he is around to collect it all depends on developments in the Lewinsky case -- but here too there was cause for some celebration in the Clinton camp late Tuesday. A Portland tea cher came forward to announce he'd had a five-year extramarital affair with Lewinsky, and that while she'd later told him she was involved with "a high-ranking person" at the White House, he believed her to be "less than trustworthy." His lawyer spoke of documents locked in a Portland safe that might help prove that.

And as for that "right-wing conspiracy" Hillary spoke of Tuesday, Clinton's attorney has subpoenaed a conservative New York lawyer, George Conway III, to testify on his connections to the Paula Jones and Lewinsky cases. The New York Observer reports that Conway is believed to be the key to a "scandal-mongering apparatus bent on destroying the Clinton presidency." If that even comes close to being proved, the President could turn the entire crisis to his advantage.

-- Chris Taylor