Clinton's Crisis: Truth or...Consequences

Americans like to bring their children to the White House, maybe get a picture, take a tour, hear a story. This is where one man decided to free 4 million slaves, others to wage a just war, to build a Great Society, to topple an "evil empire." Great men, when they take custody of the presidency, make the Oval Office shine, stake their claim to a portrait on the creamy walls. Lesser men, at the very least, are expected not to smear mud on them. When Bill Clinton got the keys six years ago, the voters knew he brought a lot of debris with him, joints he didn't inhale and truths he didn't tell and women he hadn't slept with ("They were awake at the time," his aides privately explained). It was a leap of faith by the voters that put him there. At the very least, they wanted him to keep the office clean.

That is why last week the allegations of a President spotting a fresh face in a ripe dress at a White House party, and eventually inviting her into a private study off the Oval Office for oral sex, and remarking that if she never told, no one would know, was enough to inspire first dizziness, then a regicidal rage. Through Clinton's peaceful, prosperous tenure he has been forgiven a world of winks and wiggly answers about youthful indiscretions and adult lapses of judgment. Last week even his apologists didn't know where to begin.

The only image as troubling as the spectacle of a teetering presidency was the possibility that a flirtatious, love-starved girl given to bragging about her conquests might have been spinning some ruinous fantasy about a love affair with the President. Monica Lewinsky's story was so tawdry, and so devastating, it was hard to know which was harder to believe: that she would make up such a story, or that it actually might have happened.

Without proof, both possibilities were left to squirm side by side. Either Lewinsky was lying when she swore under oath that she had never had a sexual relationship with the President, or she was lying through the hours of conversations she had with her friend Linda Tripp, who would later betray her, keeping a tape running to spin a web that would catch a President. As each new tape surfaced, each new detail arose, of Secret Service logs showing late-night visits when Hillary was out of town, of presents sent by courier, of a dark dress saved as a souvenir, spattered with the President's DNA, the American public began stripping Bill Clinton of the benefit of the doubt. A TIME/CNN poll last week found half of Americans saying he lacks the moral character to be President and should be impeached if the charges prove true.