Stormy Weather

As storms, real and metaphysical, buffeted the South, brewed turmoil in Moscow and depressed world financial markets, the clouds of another tempest hung about the borrowed clapboard cottage, where President Clinton and his family were winding up their decidedly unrelaxing vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. The official word from the White House was that a "healing process" was under way. And indeed, the President was doing his best to make amends, not only with the woman who is making good on her promise to stick with him for better or worse, but also with the political party that has always been far less certain of its marriage with Clinton. Even as he was resisting his advisers' urgings that he make another public act of contrition, Clinton was offering private ones by phone to dozens of angry, dispirited Democratic leaders. "You pick up your Directory of Distinguished Democrats, and you'll hit a good percentage of the people he's called," said press secretary Mike McCurry. "He's getting a good dose of medicine in those calls."

On a brief venture away from Martha's Vineyard last Thursday to speak about school safety, Clinton had lunch at Scano's Restaurant in Worcester, Mass., with five Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Over a "steak bomb" submarine sandwich, Clinton reluctantly brought up his troubles and seemed perplexed by the reaction of his party. For a President who invented the strategy of "triangulation"--staking out a position away from his party when its interests do not serve his--making amends with Democrats is a new experience.

He would try to send a signal the next day. Unlike the political audience in Worcester, the crowd at Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard was ensconced in a church and used to the dramatic arc of a sermon--of sin and repentance. It was a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington, and there to introduce Clinton was Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, an authentic hero of the civil rights movement. The hours before were filled with conference calls about Russia and the impending Northwest Airlines strike, and as Clinton was riding to the chapel, he was still stitching together a speech he had started working on just before lunch, jotting down notes on a two-page draft sent from Washington overnight. (Almost nothing of that version would remain.) The words the press would focus on came from ideas rattling around in his head about the spirit of the civil rights movement. Still he delivered them as a wry aside, done with mirrors to simulate depth. "I'm having to become quite an expert in this business of asking for forgiveness," Clinton said. "And if you have a family, an Administration, a Congress and a whole country to ask, you're going to get a lot of practice." He also said, "In these last days, it has come home to me, again, something I first learned as President--but it wasn't burned in my bone--and that is that in order to get [forgiveness], you have to be willing to give it."