Impeachment's legacy will linger

Free at last! Hours after his acquittal in the impeachment trial, President Clinton flies to Mexico to meet President Zedillo. Next week he is in New Hampshire for the start of a series of fundraisers across the country for the Democrats, to whom he has promised to work hard to win back the majority in the House of Representatives they lost under his presidency.

The President's agenda is bursting with meetings and speeches to promote his policies on saving social security, educational reforms, childcare, higher defence spending.

So is it back to normal for the first President to be impeached tried and acquitted for high crimes and misdemeanours since Andrew Johnson in 1868?

No one believes that. The Monica Lewinsky saga which has dominated and obsessed America for the past 13 months is not going to disappear quietly into the night. Republicans mutter that there are "more shoes to drop".

The White House denies there are tapes of the President's telephone calls to Ms Lewinsky which would be damning, but Republicans with good contacts in the intelligence services are calling for a new investigation.

As the President tries to resume a normal life - he has not given a full press conference for about a year - Ms Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and other leading characters in the saga will be taking to the airwaves. Their books will be coming out with the usual interviews and hoopla on the chat shows so that no one is going to be allowed to forget this disgrace over the Clinton Presidency.

Independent Counsel Ken Starr has not gone away either. He still has it in his power to indict Mr Clinton on the perjury and obstruction of justice charges which failed to get a two-thirds majority for conviction in the Senate trial. Such an indictment and a criminal trial could be awaiting the President when he leaves office in January 2001. Just having the threat hanging over him is not pleasant for Mr Clinton in his remaining two years.

There is much speculation about his innermost feelings as he emerges from what must have been a terrible year of humiliation and shame while America and the world were regaled with the most intimate details of his affair with Ms Lewinsky. We saw the President at various times expressing contrition and regret, but we also heard tales of his late-night calls to friends expressing his anger at what Mr Starr and the Republicans were doing to him.

BUT the real inside story of how the Clinton marriage weathered this storm and the innermost thoughts of the embattled pair is known only to themselves. They have both explained at times how they can "compartmentalise" their lives so that no matter what the personal turmoil, they can get on with their jobs.

For the President this will mean the dual task of promoting his policies as set out in the State of the Union address and campaigning to get Vice-President Al Gore elected in 2000 and a Democratic victory in the House.

The campaigning will mainly take the form of fund-raising for the Democratic party at which the President is superb. The fact that the House minority leader, Mr Dick Gephardt, has decided not to run against Mr Gore for the Democratic nomination and concentrate on becoming Speaker has simplified the political scene for the President, who will not have to choose between them.

When it comes to pushing through his policy goals, life gets more complicated. With the Republicans in a majority in the House and Senate, no legislation will get through without their support or at least enough of them to win the necessary votes.

But the Republicans are in no mood just now to help a President they despise and who has been reported as seeking "revenge" on the more vulnerable ones in the next election.

The Republicans have also seen the unpopular impeachment process drive down their poll ratings while those of the President have soared. Why should they now hold out a hand to help the legislative programme of the man who has done them so much damage and will continue to do so?

Political observers point out that the President is now so indebted to the traditional, left-wing Democrats who fought for him throughout the impeachment process that he will have to shift away from the "centrist" or "new Democrat" policies that helped get him elected in 1992 and 1996. This would open up an even bigger divide with Republicans.

The dilemma for the Republicans is that to refuse all co-operation with the President will see them condemned as a "do-nothing" Congress when they face the electorate in less than two years. They might be bitter and angry at the President who has defied all odds to survive, but they are not suicidal.

Besides, parts of the Clinton agenda are goals that the Republicans share such as increased defence spending and ensuring that the social security pension scheme stays solvent into the next century.

In foreign policy, the President could face Republican opposition if he seeks Congress approval for sending US troops to Kosovo, two years after he was supposed to have pulled them out of Bosnia. The big NATO conference in Washington in April to celebrate 50 years of the alliance could expose strains about its future, not only between the US and its allies but between the President and Congress.

When Congress breaks up for its summer recess next July, Mr Clinton will be into "lame duck" mode as the sights of Washington will be fixed on election 2000. The challenge to him will be to try and preserve some significance in the political life of the nation.

Some predict that now that he is safe from impeachment, his popularity ratings will fall as the realisation of what he put America through for over a year sinks in. Even as Democratic senators were declaring their opposition to removing him from office, they were savagely excoriating his conduct and his character.

If this is what his so-called friends think of him, how will history judge the impeached but acquitted President? He has less than 24 months to make amends for a year he would love to forget but no one else will.