The Political Interest:The Lies of George and Bill

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The Bush campaign is obviously delighted. "It's Clinton's to lose," concedes a top G.O.P. official. "But he may be on the verge of doing just that, and on the very issue we've been pushing -- trust. Clinton could have come clean months ago, or even last week. Every day that he doesn't, we'll do what Bob Kerrey predicted we'd do: we'll take Clinton's draft record and open it and him like a soft-shelled peanut. It's that simple."

So far, Clinton has reverted to type. He massages and fillets the facts, leaving behind pronouncements that are technically accurate but devoid of the inner truth. His explanations about avoiding Vietnam do not hang together. From the beginning it has been obvious that if Clinton truly thought it unethical for him to remain home after four of his friends died in Vietnam, he could have exposed himself to the same risk at any moment simply by enlisting in the military. Even now, a last "last word" and a forthright mea culpa would help immeasurably. In seeking to understand his candidate's self- defeating silence, a senior Clinton aide turned again to Hart and recalled the miniautobiography Hart had written shortly before the 1988 campaign. In the last paragraph of that otherwise forgettable book, Hart said, "The immortal Yeats wrote, 'Not a man alive has so much luck he can play with.' As usual," continued Hart, "Yeats put it right. A man would be a fool to take his luck for granted." Clinton has already admitted an overeagerness to please, an aversion to saying anything that could cause people to dislike him. If he doesn't transcend that foible quickly, his luck may run out on Nov. 3, and he will be back in Little Rock with no one to blame but himself.