Day Of Deliverance

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But all those who said it was now likely that Starr would just shrivel up and go away don't understand the man or his four-year mission. While the Jones matter rested on her word against the President's, Starr is armed with tape-recorded assertions by Lewinsky that implicate Clinton in sexual acts he specifically denied under oath and in an attempted cover-up of those acts. "Our facts are very different; our scope is very different," Starr told reporters as he recited the allegations that the Attorney General instructed his office to examine: subornation of perjury, intimidation of witnesses and obstruction of justice.

There was, conspicuously, no mention of perjury. Starr knows that lying about sex is not the stuff of impeachment proceedings. He is more intent on compiling evidence of obstruction: the possibility that Clinton coached secretary Betty Currie on key details of his relationship with Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan's extraordinary job search for her around the time she signed an affidavit denying a presidential affair, and the orphaned "talking points" Lewinsky allegedly handed Linda Tripp, asking her to lie in her deposition. Starr hopes to make obstruction the heart of his report to Congress, not only because it is a grave offense. It is a common thread in other parts of his far-flung probe of alleged hush money to Webster Hubbell, the sacking of the White House travel-office staff and the disappearance of Hillary's billing records in a Whitewater-related case.

But the political terrain keeps shifting beneath him. "Independent counsels need to take a measure of their environment and the temperature of the community," whether a jury or Congress, said Washington criminal defense lawyer Tom Green. With the dismissal of Jones v. Clinton, "it will look even more like the only reason Starr's probing into some of these areas is to learn more about Clinton's sex life," said another legal observer.

Over on Capitol Hill the lawmakers were just as shocked as everyone else and scrambling to find some high ground. For Democrats who had stuck with Clinton just as long as the public did, the ruling made it much easier to snuggle up to him and embrace an agenda that has been carefully tailored to their tastes. For Republicans who had been relishing the opportunities for legislative mischief that a distracted President presented, the idea of facing a vengeful, vindicated, legacy-building White House wasn't much fun. Any impeachment effort that was not bipartisan would amount to a suicide mission. The G.O.P. lacks the votes as well as the stomach to do it alone, and the House judiciary panel is hopelessly divided by party and ideology: Bob Barr vs. Barney Frank sounds like a special weeklong edition of Crossfire, not a constitutional crisis. Senate Republican Arlen Specter came right out and drew the line: "Unless there is an open-and-shut case, the kind which would result in a resignation, as happened with President Nixon, I do not think there ought be an impeachment proceeding."