What's Next For Bill and Hillary Clinton?

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Classical drama requires elegant balance. So, for that matter, does farce. One way or another, then, it makes sense that this story began and now ends with Monica. The cartoon versions of her that dominated the past year--child-victim, stalker-vamp--threatened to reappear on Saturday, when we got to meet her at last, on videotape. But for all the artful editing by both sides, there was no concealing that a flesh-and-blood Monica Lewinsky really does exist after all. She talks, she hides, she teases, she thinks fast and explains, grounded and credible and well practiced after 23 depositions. The very reality of her was more of a relief and revelation than anything she had to say. And that her long-awaited, much feared, out-of-body performance on the Senate floor should have been more anticlimax than denouement was the greatest justice of all.

Even though the outcome was never in doubt, the White House bit its lip while watching her, as it has throughout these final weeks, because there is more to worry about than Clinton's removal from office. In the debris of this past year are scores to settle and debts to pay, which will help shape the last two years of the President's term, which in turn affects what happens in 2000, which then helps shape the rest of his life. For both Bill and Hillary Clinton, what matters now isn't so much what they do as how they seem--how reconciling, how inventive, how invested in the well-being of every last citizen whose hand they will shake and vote they will claim on behalf of their anointed successor, Al Gore. Because in Gore's victory they see their redemption.

So the Clintons were careful to learn from their mistakes, especially the post-impeachment pep rally on the South Lawn, which had convinced many moderates that Clinton still thought of himself as a victim, deserving of cheap grace. If a full acquittal this week triggers an early Mardi Gras inside the White House, the bitterness among Republicans and disgust among Democrats could become a kind of poison in the system. Clinton's outside advisers are pushing for discretion. Says one: "I hope he just gives a 30-second statement saying, 'I'm glad it's over,' and goes upstairs for a cold drink."

And so it was that spokesman Joe Lockhart declared the briefing room "a gloat-free zone," and at the senior-staff meeting Thursday morning, chief of staff John Podesta put the word out: "I don't know if I need to say this again, but I'm going to say it anyway: everyone should focus on their business and keep their opinions to themselves."

Their business now is the boss's statuary: what will last once the presidency officially ends. Clinton began his ostentatious search for a legacy soon after he became the first Democrat in 32 years to be re-elected, and that was before a year of sex scandal following a year of campaign-finance scandal raised the risk that the echo of his presidency might sound like a dirty joke. He was lucky and unlucky to have been elected at just 46; with his youth comes the reality that he will actually have to live with his legacy, which may be why an aide says she detects "a sense of urgency to him: 'What can we do? What can we do?'"