Up In Smoke

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By Friday the President was sounding more bareknuckled, denouncing Republican proposals for a stripped-down bill as "a charade." The Senators, he said, "voted not to implement a program that can save a million lives a year. It was a vote against our children and for the tobacco lobby. It's as simple at that." The goal for him now is to inflict the maximum political pain on the Republicans without totally killing any prospect of a deal. But a political campaign for a new bill requires focus, which is something this White House has largely lacked during the second term, and particularly since the Lewinsky scandal broke open in January. Between managing an Asian financial crisis, nuclear tests in India and Pakistan and ethnic conflicts in Kosovo, the strategy is to book his days so fully that he never appears bogged down in scandal. Recent weeks have seen him planting flowers in Harpers Ferry, Va., talking to the Delaware assembly on education, discussing census sampling techniques at a Houston community center, dedicating a new institute at Walden Woods and studying tidal pools in Monterey, Calif. And, of course, raising money for Democrats almost everywhere. They now have a rich issue to add to their political war chests.

--Reported by Jay Branegan, James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Karen Tumulty/Washington