This Is a Battle --Hillary Clinton

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction? Do you think I am trusty and faithful? --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Was Monica reading the poems the President gave her, when she wasn't trapped playing strip poker with the prosecutor last week? Holed up in her Watergate apartment, could she bear to watch herself all day, all the time on CNN, as old lovers denounced her, pundits dissected her and the President's defenders dismissed her? Or did she fall back on old comforts, watch Days of Our Lives? Could she tell the difference? Could we?

If the first episode of the Story of Monica and Bill required the country to get used to the very idea that the President of the United States might have fooled around with an intern and then tried to hush her up, the second installment dared us to trust him. The first week was an All-Starr game, in which a crusading prosecutor, after 3 1/2 frustrating years of sniffing through sour Arkansas land deals, suddenly swooped down on the White House, subpoenas in hand, FBI agents in tow, asserting his right to ask just about anyone just about anything that had to do with the President's most intimate acts. Even people disgusted by what the President might have done were disturbed by what it might take to catch him.

And so last week, in a reversal so breathtaking it briefly knocked the wind out of the hoarse commentators who had left the President for dead, Clinton spun around and used the assault to consolidate his power. The threat of the prosecutor was no match for the power of the presidency, and Clinton used it to full advantage. He finally managed a denial as airtight as it could be without getting anatomical. The White House shock troops, led by Hillary, gave ambivalent voters someone else to blame, a "vast right-wing conspiracy" that was trying to destroy the President. And then, best of all, he changed the subject.

Clinton's gritty State of the Union speech reminded voters how well things are going, how much he promised to do for them if they would just give him one more chance. He invited his exhausted audience to take a holiday from Lewinsky and spend a refreshing hour and 12 minutes feeling like a country again. For once the talk on the screen was not of oral sex, but of our lives and fortunes and sacred happiness. He had become all human nature, the best and the worst, standing there naked in a sharp, dark suit, behind the TelePrompTer. That which does not kill him only makes him stronger, and his poll numbers went through the roof.

Exactly a week after the sex scandal broke, Clinton achieved the highest approval ratings of his five-year presidency. That may have been a miracle, but it was no accident: Americans are less puritanical and more forgiving than the cartoon version suggests, and this President is never better than in his worst moments. Starr meanwhile was left trying to build a case around a single witness who was neither entirely cooperative nor totally credible, whose own lawyer admitted she was given to exaggeration, who a source said tried to bribe another witness, and who described herself as a lifelong liar. The story of how Clinton came back, and how Starr seemed to be letting his quarry slip through his nets, is a drama unlike any in memory. And this was only Chapter 2.