A L S O+T O D A Y Dear Henry Historians talk back to House impeachment managers Reactions to the president's speech Experts discuss Clinton's performance and what effects his proposals would have on the actual problems he identified as priorities What might have been By Joan Walsh It's hard to watch this president perform so well, knowing that he has already undermined his -- and our -- hopes for any real legislative success Diamond in the Ruff By Harry Jaffe The president's lawyer, a lone figure in his wheelchair in the well of the Senate, could not have been a more effective defender The State of the Union Prepared text of President Clinton's State of the Union address   T A B L E+T A L K Ignore the talking heads! Discuss your thoughts on Clinton's State of the Union address in the Politics area of Table Talk ___________________ Visit barnesandnoble.com for politics books on both sides of the aisle ___________________ Portrait of a political "pit bull" By Russ Baker Rep. Dan Burton, who called President Clinton a "scumbag," has a few questions to answer about his own behavior (12/22/98)   R E C E N T L Y Clinton's Star Wars sequel By Christopher Hitchens The president pays off the military by funding a notorious boondoggle (01/19/99) Impeachment diary III By Anonymous In the absence of real action, Senate insiders give the House Boyz low grades, rue the end of bipartisan cooperation and spread a whole lotta rumors about Trent Lott (01/15/99) American gerontocracy By Christopher Shea Is the mental capacity of the aged leaders judging President Clinton a fit subject for commentary? (01/15/99) Counting the dead children By Jeff Stein Critics blast U.S. sanctions that kill Iraqi babies, but leave Saddam fat and happy (01/15/99) Cracks in the bipartisan façade By Joshua Micah Marshall As House Republicans tried to depict their impeachment vendetta as a brave civil rights struggle, the important action was all taking place off-camera (01/15/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		We interrupt this impeachment ... TWO YEARS IN A ROW, CLINTON'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS PROVES HE WON'T FOLLOW THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAGEDY SCRIPT. BY JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL Republican grumbling aside, nothing could be more fitting than for President Clinton to be giving his State of the Union address while he stands trial in the Senate. The Lewinsky affair, after all, kicked off just before last year's State of the Union address. And even with all that has happened in the last year -- the Starr Report, the grand jury testimony, the blue dress, even the November election -- that night last January remains a turning point in the entire year-long drama. It's worth remembering that when it comes to awkwardness, this year's proceedings don't hold a candle to last year's. In the feverish first days of the Lewinsky crisis, CNN's Wolf Blitzer was out on the White House lawn gravely telling viewers that White House aides were beginning to talk about a possible presidential resignation. Other White House press corps worthies were describing Clinton as shocked, dejected, paralyzed. Sam Donaldson famously told viewers on ABC's "This Week" that the remainder of Clinton's presidency was numbered "not in weeks, but days." So sure, having the president on trial in the Senate during the day and feted in the well of the House at night may feel a bit odd. But last year you had to wonder whether Clinton would mount the podium and announce his resignation, or just break into tears, or maybe even have his head explode on camera in front of 100 million Americans. Somehow, though, he did none of those things. He appeared confident and forceful, even while the world seemed to be collapsing around him. Put simply, Clinton refused to play by the script -- and that's been the key to his success, as well as the increasingly frenzied Republican opposition, all year long. The script, of course, is the Presidential Tragedy script, a dramatic formula originated by Lyndon Johnson in the late 1960s and then shaped to Shakespearean perfection by Richard Nixon in the early '70s. The script goes something like this: The president is a man of outsized ambition and huge potential brought down by the mischance of fate and his own human flaws. As he tries to work on great things, he is pulled down further and further by his own dark character. He rages against fortune. He slips into introversion. Then come the "Final Days," when he is frequently spotted around the White House at odd hours with a dejected visage and his head cocked toward the ground. The whole spectacle provides grist for a few good books of facile psychobabble and dynamite career springboards for the reporters who dug the whole thing up. In other words, it's Woodward and Bernstein time. By all the laws of political existence as we then understood them, in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal Clinton had absolutely no choice but to be utterly humiliated, crack under the pressure and begin planning his resignation speech. But Clinton didn't play along. Even for many who have no use for the man or his policies, Clinton's resilience and grace under pressure that night couldn't help but elicit a certain measure of awe. Seeing the president looking more or less the way he had looked before the scandal was revealed stabilized his public standing (his bogus denial of having sexual relations with "that woman" didn't hurt either). If the president wasn't playing by the script, people reasoned, maybe it wasn't Watergate redux after all. That's the tone that Clinton set last January and it's the one he's been following pretty much ever since. And for all his many personal shortcomings, the president's refusal to knuckle under demonstrated a dimension of little-mentioned personal character that has contrasted well with the insincere, faux-moral culture that now prevails in official Washington. N E X T+P A G E+| Sit still and be ashamed! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.   PHOTOGRAPH: AP/WIDE-WORLD