Bill Clinton: I Misled People

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It was really not until Tuesday, when the stories of these painful presidential conversations had made the front pages, that Clinton actually decided to have some of them. The Washington Post would later report that aides drafted talking points for colleagues on how to answer questions about their own reactions to Clinton's deceptions. "Do you forgive him for misleading you and the country?" read a sample question. The talking points suggested the following answer: "It's been said that 'He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.' Of course I do."

In the meantime, there was another audience to prepare for, and that was the prosecutors. Starr had many more choices to make about how Monday would go than Clinton did. It would have been unwise for Clinton's lawyer David Kendall even to consider allowing his client to answer direct, graphic questions about his conduct with Lewinsky. The President had, after all, not only denied having an affair with her in his Paula Jones deposition; he couldn't remember ever having been alone with her, an assertion that does not allow much room for elaboration. So there was very little leeway for Clinton to change what he intended to say to Starr.

That meant that what mattered was what Starr would ask. If the White House held out an olive branch to the prosecutors, it could hope that perhaps he would stand down a bit, not provoke a constitutional crisis, focus on the most relevant questions about obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury and not press the graphic sexual material too far. White House aides were quietly drawing reporters' attention to a hot scoop: "You know, the story no one has written..." The White House, they said, was backing off on Starr, hadn't attacked him for weeks. And of course, if none of that worked, if Starr came in with guns blazing, as every bit of his conduct to date suggested he would, the White House had some cover for fighting back.

That was enough to give the commentators plenty to chew on through the long wait on Monday. The day began with an NBC poll showing Clinton's job approval at an all-time high, 70%. The markets were happy too: the Dow jumped 150 points. The weather in Washington was baffled, raining and shining and raining again through air that defied you to breath it. On "Monica beach," the 50-yd. stretch of White House gravel where the TV reporters do their stand-ups, 35 bright umbrellas sprouted like mushrooms, and the pressroom was packed despite a complete absence of news. Outside the White House, a man was arrested after he cut his throat with a screwdriver in front of the mansion, shouting, "Why do you care about Lewinsky? Bad things are happening in Iraq!"