A President brimming with self-assurance

Some newspapers have banned the use of "split-screen" and "surreal" to describe how the US thrives under a President who has been impeached and is on trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.

But if the commentators strive to find fresh ways to describe this phenomenon, Mr Clinton has no trouble telling the American people how blessed and happy they are after six years of his Presidency.

His State of the Union address on Tuesday night was 77 minutes of good news and how to ensure the good times roll into the next century.

The man is so brimming with self-assurance that he has revealed a plan to keep the threatened social security system solvent until the year 2055, not just for the baby-boomers like himself but for their grandchildren.

Democrats applauded and leapt to their feet 96 times, according to one count. Republicans for the most part sat on their hands, having to acknowledge that this is a President who has a brass neck but can charm the voters like no one on their side.

Hours later, Mr Clinton was off on a swing through eastern states to bring the good news to the grassroots Americans where only 16 per cent had a "negative" view of his speech.

Republicans must wonder what they have to do to put this President down. Last month the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to impeach him.

Now he is on trial in the Senate, but you would never have known that watching Mr Clinton exhorting his "fellow Americans" to lift their eyes and "from the mountaintop of this American century look ahead to the next one".

Yet hours earlier, the 100 senators listening to this brand of American feel-good rhetoric were sitting silently on their old-fashioned seats in the Senate chamber as White House counsel, Charles Ruff, defended the President against charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

And today and tomorrow and the day after, the senators will still be in those uncomfortable chairs pondering whether the man who has presided over "the longest peacetime economic expansion" in US history must be dismissed from office because of a furtive dalliance with a 21-year-old White House intern.

This is why the baffled commentators reach for adjectives like "surreal" and marvel at this "split-screen" Presidency simultaneously portraying humiliation and triumph.

Most Americans have similar divided feelings about their President.

The same poll by Gallup that showed 69 per cent approving of the way Mr Clinton is handling his job and 81 per cent saying his Presidency has been "a success" also asked questions about his character.

Only 24 per cent said he was "honest and trustworthy." Does he provide "good moral leadership"? Only 20 per cent answered Yes and 79 per cent No.

You can see why Mr Bob Dole who campaigned against Mr Clinton in 1996 on the slogan "character matters", and George Bush who took the same high moral tone in 1992 ended up as losers.

American voters are practical people when it comes to choosing presidents. Mr Clinton's political adviser, James Carville, put it crudely in the slogan "It's the economy, stupid."

And now the presidential election of 2000 is beginning to dominate the political agenda. Former vice-president Dan Quayle does not seem "to get it", as they say.

Quayle, who has his eye on the Republican nomination, has said no one will be able to run for president in future unless he or she can say they have been faithful to their marriage vows.

But that is not what the polls say. Mr Quayle is, of course, speaking from the Republican side where the putative Speaker, Bob Livingston, was forced overnight to drop out of politics when his marital infidelities were exposed by Mr Larry Flynt, publisher of the pornographic magazine Hustler.

The conservative wing of the party, especially in the South where the religious right is in control of the party organisation, is calling the shots.

The Democrats do not seem to have the same moral hang-ups. The impeachment vote in the House of Representatives was on largely partisan lines.

Republicans saw perjury and obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky affair as impeachable while Democrats denied that what Mr Starr exposed rose to the constitutional level of "high crimes and misdemeanours".

In the Senate trial all the indications are that there will be a similar divide. But this time the Republican majority is short by 12 votes of the two-thirds needed to convict Mr Clinton and dismiss him from office.

While the 100 senators will dutifully listen to the legal arguments from both sides, they are not strictly bound to make their decisions on purely legal grounds. They are free to set their own burden of proof.

In the end the legal arguments look like cancelling each other out, but the Republicans have it in their power to insist on calling witnesses such as Ms Lewinsky to resolve conflicts of evidence. This would prolong the trial and probably send Republican poll ratings even lower.

Why would Republicans want to do this? Should they not cut their losses at this stage and either agree to halt a trial that is not going to end in the conviction of the President or at least not prolong it?

Politically, they would be wise to do this. There is the nagging question of not wanting to let the President away unscathed for the perjury which most Americans believe he committed. But a censure motion agreed between the two parties could deal with this.

Meanwhile, President Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and Vice-President Gore are on tour around the real America outside sex-obsessed Washington spreading the cheerful message of the State of the Union speech.

Trial? What trial?