This Is a Battle --Hillary Clinton

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But the gods of symbolism are not to be trifled with. So between stops they arranged for the President's airplane--the very Air Force One that carried Nixon home to California for the last time--to get stuck. In the mud. As the crew transferred food, beverages, luggage and equipment from one plane to another, Clinton waved at reporters and threw both arms up in an expression of helplessness. And as the replacement plane (this time, the one that carried Kennedy's body) finally arrived in LaCrosse, Hillary's Right-Wing Conspiracy piled on. On the banks of the Mississippi near the plaza where Clinton spoke, someone had stamped the gigantic word IMPEACH into the snow.

Still, the outing achieved its purpose. Clinton drew energy from it, growing visibly stronger as the day went on. If Clinton has a strategy here, it is to change the subject. "If we make this about their lives and not mine, we'll be fine," he has told aides repeatedly in the past few days.

But even some in the White House were careful not to place too much hope in the skyscraping poll numbers. When the country faces a crisis, the people tend to rally around the President no matter what. The long-memoried in Washington recalled last week that when the Iran hostage crisis began--an event that would eventually topple the Carter presidency--his approval ratings jumped from 37% to 55% and stayed there for the next three months.

--Reported by Margaret Carlson, Michael Duffy, Viveca Novak, Karen Tumulty and Michael Weisskopf/Washington