Turning Up The Heat

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After 10 days at her father's home in Los Angeles, Monica Lewinsky flew back to Washington last week. And Washington, which was trying hard to care about Iraq, the budget surplus and the tobacco deal, held its breath. All week the legal and political pageantry in That Story favored the President, at least in public. The spectacle of independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr's putting the screws to Lewinsky's mother, followed by the subpoenas to Secret Service agents, helped consolidate the White House spin that Starr's investigation is a full-speed, partisan vendetta. But the White House and Starr's office both know that everything up to now is merely prelude to the one event that can change the entire dynamic of the scandal: Lewinsky's grand-jury testimony, which could happen as early as this week.

President Clinton's strategy so far has been simple. Say almost nothing; buy time. The time has been needed to get past the first weeks of revelations, to let Clinton marshal his forces and to allow everybody to digest the thought of a goatish President unbuckling with an intern. But if Lewinsky testifies the way she is expected to, the President's "no comment" approach may not work anymore. Lewinsky was prepared two weeks ago to testify unequivocally to a sexual relationship with the President, though she denied that she and Clinton had engaged in intercourse.

If Lewinsky offers that story to the grand jury, even if she does not say that Clinton urged her to lie to the lawyers for Paula Jones, she's on a collision course with the President. Clinton then has two choices. One would be to change his own story to conform more closely to hers, which means stepping back from his earlier denial. Though polls show that more than half of Americans already think he had sex with Lewinsky--and most of them would be pleased to forget about it and move on--they may not be looking forward to watching another episode of Clinton's bending the answers to a question about his personal life into yet another wiggly shape.

Clinton's other option would be to cast doubt on Lewinsky's own credibility. That can be done gently, by depicting her as a cornered victim of Starr's ruthless investigation--or not so gently, by playing up the idea that she's inventing or exaggerating details of their relationship. But that tactic runs the risk of appearing to victimize Lewinsky all over again. In a scandal in which much of the political fallout will center on who's taking advantage of women, the all too warm Clinton or the all too chilly Starr, that's one more tricky path.