The Starr report is so devastatingly thorough in corroborating every damning detail of Monica Lewinsky's testimony that the possible defenses of the president's behavior have shrunk almost to the vanishing point. In fact, rather than deny Clinton's immorality and illegality, David Kendall was reduced last Friday to arguing that the punishment should fit the crime and that it's a disproportionate response to seek the president's removal from office. This was the best the president's attorney could do.
And amateurs didn't do nearly as well. House Democrats who wanted to carry water for the president last week -- and there still were a few dozen of them -- all offered variations on the theme of "fairness" -- i.e., that the president should get an early peek at the Starr report. This sudden mania for Marquis of Queensberry rules reached its unintentionally comic peak not when Rep. Jim "Phone-Tap" McDermott compared his colleagues to a lynch mob but when Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina argued that Bill Clinton should be receiving the same level of due-process protection as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh received during his trial. The implicit comparison of the president to a terrorist murderer -- by one of his own defenders! -- was astonishing.
But even Watt's rhetorical ineptitude wasn't the worst pro-Clinton talking point of the week. THE SCRAPBOOK bestows that distinction on the president himself for whining at a Coral Gables, Fla., fund-raiser: "I've tried to do a good job taking care of this country even when I haven't taken such good care of myself and my family."
This is the hoary "I've been working too hard to behave" defense, not heard in public life since Marion Barry took off to a holistic spa in 1996 to dry out, blaming his personal woes on "unrelenting commitment, dedication and hard work" for the people of Washington, D.C. Of course, if hard work really is the root of the problem, there's an easy solution: early retirement.