It's A Jungle Out There

It seemed at times like a week out of the early 1992 campaign. Once again Bill Clinton was stumping New Hampshire in the winter (as well as Boston and Detroit). Just as he did two years ago, he sought to take the offensive against attacks on his character and credibility -- and in some of the same places; as the President strode through the lobby of the Sheraton Tara in Nashua, New Hampshire, aides reminded him of a 1992 press conference in the same hotel at which he confronted charges that he had dodged the draft. Now, of course, the questions are about Whitewater, but Clinton's strategy is pretty much the same as it was two years ago: accusing his accusers of trying to distract the public's attention from far more important issues like health care and crime. At a Democratic dinner in Boston, a red-faced Clinton shouted that instead of engaging in "honest political debate," the Republican Party "just stands up and says no, no, no, no . . ." Reporters counted nine noes, each punctuated by a slam of the presidential fist against the lectern.

This time, though, the strategy is not working quite so well. Clinton did draw sympathetic responses from the crowds he worked; at a "town meeting" in Nashua, a woman remarked that she thought Whitewater was for rafting and canoeing. But back in Washington the Administration was in a worsening bind, facing congressional hearings about Whitewater and the near-certainty of further revelations and unable to stop either. Special prosecutor Robert Fiske subpoenaed a 10th Administration official, senior adviser George Stephanopoulos, possibly to ask him what he may have said about Whitewater in phone conversations with Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman. As for congressional hearings, Clinton knows they will become a highly partisan circus. But the prospect nonetheless puts him in a dilemma pithily summarized by his chief Republican congressional tormentor, Iowa Representative Jim Leach: "If ((Democrats)) provide me a hearing, their President is likely to be embarrassed. If they don't, they look like they have been complicitous in working with the Executive Branch to block full disclosure."

At week's end Senate majority leader George Mitchell and Republican chief Bob Dole struck a deal that enabled the upper chamber to approve the idea of a probe, 98 to 0. The resolution, however, left in doubt "the appropriate timetable, procedures and forum"; Mitchell and Dole are to work those out. The Senate also specified that the hearings must not interfere with Fiske's probe. That means witnesses will not be given immunity. Also, each phase of ^ the hearings will begin only after Fiske has completed the relevant part of his investigation. Thus even the first hearings -- into contacts between the White House and Treasury officials that have prompted suspicions of a cover-up -- will not begin for weeks or months. Any hearings into Whitewater proper -- that is, the Clintons' land deals in Arkansas -- would come much later.