The Mood: For the Congress, the Capital and the Whole Nation, a Day for the Books

September 12, 1998

THE MOOD

For the Congress, the Capital and the Whole Nation, a Day for the Books

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By FRANCIS X. CLINES

ASHINGTON -- The day, as ominous as it was extraordinary, took a jagged tangent as the House finished its furiously partisan face-off on the question of impeaching the President. Instantly the city's focus, like the nation's, shifted to a long, salacious journey down the information highway.
The radio of Manhatt Bahia, a flower dealer three blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol, suddenly blared forth an early bulletin, the words spilling like mercury across the sidewalk: "And the Starr report vividly describes several sex acts that some people might consider unusual!"
Bahia blinked in absorbing the details, his hands clasped steady on his cane. "And the odds are 1.78 trillion to 1 that the semen is the President's!" the bulletin concluded, and the flower dealer only nodded slowly in acknowledgment.
"Clinton will bounce back," he declared. "Everything is premature," he insisted, resisting the enormous vector of accusation and humiliation directed at the President across a blistering day for the history books. Other Government business moved forward, but one item seemed ludicrous in the context of the day's agenda: a House subcommittee on trade and consumer protection held a hearing on "protecting children from inappropriate material on the Internet."
The vases of Bahia's colorful flowers arrayed on the sidewalk were one of the few grace notes on a Capitol day given over to a fury of partisan cut-and-thrust and dizzying absorption of the Chaucerian details of the Starr report.
Over the Democrats' vehement objections, Republican speakers on the House floor repeatedly showed their wariness that to yield the President even an hour's advance look at the Starr report would give him Houdini-like room to "spin" some masterly escape.
"We are unwilling to give you a public relations advantage any greater than the one you have had for the past eight months," declared Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois, who, while saluted bipartisanly for his anticipated statesmanship at the helm of the impeachment inquiry, did not shy from a tooth-and-claw rebuttal when the Democrats riled him.
The outcry from the Democrats was intense, but the final, lopsided vote showed most unable to resist the releasing of the report, poised as it was on the threshold of the Internet with its tales of Presidential sex and mendacity.
"Find a rope, find a tree, and ask a bunch of questions later!" boomed Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, angrily warning of "a political lynch mob."
The Republican whip, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, would have none of that.
"The President is no better than any other American," DeLay told the Democrats, surveying them with a a hard-edged stare and belittling the explanations and apologies of the President as "the spin, the whole spin and nothing but the spin."
At the White House, Clinton's press secretary, Michael D.
McCurry, weathering a storm of reporters' questions, had to pause when he was asked, "Is this the saddest day of the Clinton Presidency?"
The President's spokesman thought for a moment, then came up with the ultimate alternative: "the days on which we've dealt with the tragic deaths of people."
Woeful as the day was for Democrats, many feared the worst was yet to come with individual members of the House Judiciary Committee now free for two weeks to pore over -- perchance to leak -- the report's still secret appendix of 2,600 pages of detailed and intimate information.
"This information will leak out drip by drip, day by day," said Representative Joe Moakley, Democrat of Massachusetts, warning the nation of a nightmare of grim titillation to come.
As the impeachment question loomed, the House was cautioned by a longtime veteran, Representative David R. Obey, that the welfare of all politicians, Republican and Democrat, would be put at stake in a grueling constitutional ordeal.
"I was here during Watergate," Obey, a 10-term Democrat from Wisconsin, said gloomily. "I hated it, because it bittered up the politics of the entire country."
After authorizing the Internet distribution of the scathing report, lawmakers quickly poured down the steps of the Capitol into the day's sunshine.
"Clinton had such tremendous potential," said one tourist, Newton Stafford of Escondido, Calif., a Clinton supporter whose regret inched toward eulogy.
His wife, Geraldine, sadly told him, "Men with political power are very attractive to women: it's a double whammy."
The couple watched the emerging politicians steadily work enormous lines of television crews from across the nation, foraging for air time.
"Who are you?" one reporter demanded of Senator Arlen Specter, and the Pennsylvania Republican, who had detoured over from the other chamber, instantly took no offense and genially offered his name and a volley of sound bites.
"Now I'm going to read," the Senator concluded, beaming as he departed toward his office to delve into the sordid details of the day.

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