Clinton's Crisis: Truth or...Consequences

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So while others whispered resignation and worried about felony charges, Hillary decided the Clintons would both come out swinging. "We need a field general," she declared. None lives at the Clinton White House anymore. The Old Guard, always spoiling for a good fight, was gone long ago. Many people who are left want to leave. Most wouldn't dream of asking the President whether the charges were true, and wouldn't get an answer if they did: many aides were simply too stunned and tired to trust their judgment about what to say. While the nasty spin said Monica was too fat, too dumb, even for Clinton, those with a pulse murmured privately, as one put it, that "she fit the type too well."

So there was really only one person who could muster the troops, just as she had in Arkansas in 1980, in New Hampshire in 1992 and in the Executive Residence in 1994, when the Democratic Party died. By Thursday, Hillary was putting together a new, combative team. She wondered if her old, ousted alter ego Harold Ickes could come back, and she added Mickey Kantor to the legal team, more for his political skills than his legal ones. Adviser Sid Blumenthal created a gigantic diagram inside his office outlining with circles and arrows the byzantine Republican conspiracy surrounding the tapes. A fierce argument raged over whether the First Couple, singly or together, should sit down for some big, cathartic confessional on the state of their union before Tuesday's State of the Union. But that idea was rejected, and by Saturday Hillary was fighting on several fronts at once.

First, she asked attorney Bob Bennett to try to move up the trial date of the Paula Jones case, now scheduled to start in May, to keep that scandal from dragging out any longer. Besides, even if Jones has a case, it's a hard one to prove; and were Clinton to emerge victorious from that trial, he could try to spin it into a big, warm blanket vindication. Then she decided that she would be the one to do the talking; she agreed to sit down for a Tuesday Today show interview. If she had lost faith in everyone else's ability to do damage control, she still had faith in her own. "They are digging in for the fight of the century," said a senior official tonight. "They are rolling out artillery, antiaircraft guns, and talking about never surrendering." There are at any given time 250 interns strolling the 18-acre White House campus, enrolled in the ultimate political science class; and much of the staff is not much older. In the early years it felt like a children's crusade: the President was in his forties, most of his staff were in their thirties and the rest in their twenties. One full-time staff member in the press office was 19. Kids and Cabinet officers seemed to have equal standing in the meetings that went on forever and ever. This was the land of the adolescents who dissed Air Force generals, wore multiple earrings and squeezed into every photo op with the President.

The interns didn't just work at the White House; they seemed to live there. And Clinton was known for hanging out at the offices and cubicles where the prettiest ones worked. "It's a group of men who look," said a female aide. "They all look. It's a construction-worker mentality." Clinton made fun of George Bush for not having a phone line that he could dial out on; last week a White House official said, "There was a reason."