THE STARR FACTOR

Midway through a long spell of bad news, Bill Clinton took the stage of Constitution Hall in Washington last Thursday to address the Presidential Scholars, a group of high school honor students, along with their parents and teachers. "This has been sort of a crazy week around here," he admitted. Given that this was an especially brainy gathering, he jokingly asked if anybody could help him get a handle on things. "I was hoping," he said, "maybe one of the scholars could explain chaos theory."

Good choice. Chaotic is how things must feel right now at the White House, as each day brings another shot over Whitewater and the FBI files. But the explanation doesn't require much scientific theory. For months Clinton has been waiting for the G.O.P. contender who would turn the '96 race into a real battle. It looks as though he has found him at last--and it's not Bob Dole. Every serious matter bedeviling the President has Kenneth Starr connected to it somewhere. And the special prosecutor who once predicted that his investigations would be wrapped up well before the '96 election now gives every sign that he will pursue the President and First Lady into their second term, if they get that far. With the Dole campaign still unable to gain traction on its own, Republican hopes are riding on a presidency worn to pieces by subpoenas and indictments.

Starr's major coup last week was to get Washington to tear itself away from the fang baring on Capitol Hill and take note of the opening of the second Whitewater trial in Little Rock, Arkansas. Herby Branscum Jr. and Robert Hill, joint owners of a bank in microscopic Perryville, Arkansas (pop. 1,141), are charged with illegally channeling funds to Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign. The two men allegedly failed to notify the irs that they let Clinton's campaign withdraw $30,000 at one time--banks must report any cash transaction over $10,000--by disguising the withdrawal in smaller amounts. As it happens, Branscum was eventually appointed to the state highway commission. Hill got reappointed to the state banking board.

The convictions that Starr recently won of Jim and Susan McDougal, the Clintons' former Whitewater partners, had already raised the stakes for this trial. So did the fact that the charges involve Clinton campaign finances. Even so, the trial might not have provided much drama if Starr had not bitten hard into the White House by indicating that he will name the President's close friend and adviser Bruce Lindsey, who was treasurer of Clinton's 1990 gubernatorial campaign, as an unindicted co-conspirator, a term popularized during Watergate. With that, Starr attached two scandals by prosaic association. Like the little cookie in Proust, the words bring on a flood of memories, in this case most of them foul.

What the phrase means in strictly legal terms is that prosecutors may not have enough evidence to charge Lindsey but believe he is linked to a crime. The court will now be able to hear testimony about things that he may have said concerning the alleged crimes that would otherwise be inadmissible as hearsay. That testimony will probably come from the bank's ex-president Neal Ainley, the chief prosecution witness, who has already pleaded guilty to failing to report cash transactions from the campaign.