Americans have woken from their apathetic holiday slumber to find the President of the United States facing impeachment. They awoke, finally, in a big way. They stopped Christmas shopping and turned their attention to the business of democracy.
More than 14,000 telephone calls swamped the Capitol switchboard on Monday. Tom Campbell, an undecided Republican Congressman from California reported that he got 900 email messages over the weekend. By yesterday, Mr Campbell announced he would vote in favour of impeachment.
On the other side, people who oppose Mr Clinton's impeachment have mobilised. In New York on Monday night, a rally was held at New York University School of Law and was attended by respected scholars and writers. Impeachment opponents claimed that the US was in a constitutional crisis that would threaten the stability of the republic.
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, daughter of President John Kennedy and an author of two books on law, also a woman who rarely speaks in public and never of her famous family, mesmerised the crowd. "The Bill of Rights is an inspiration to people all over the world," Ms Kennedy said. "Politics has become too personal. Growing up in our family, we were taught that politics is a noble profession.
"I worry about my own children. What does this impeachment teach them? We must teach our children that there are punishments for moral transgressions. But they must also know the world around them is fair. And this impeachment is not fair."
The author Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize winner, said: "If this particular constitution of this particular country is suspended, we all go down. This is not an entertainment. This is not a little play. If you believe that, you are deceived.".
The Irish novelist Mary Gordon called the impeachment proceeding "sexual madness" and urged the country to "stand up to irrationality". A New York University law professor, Tom Nagel, said: "President Clinton is standing in for all of us in fighting for a separation of sex and state."
Author E.L. Doctorow said the prosecution of Clinton "smells of entrapment", adding: "If this President is impeached or forced to resign, American puritanism will be reborn for the 21st century."
Senator Robert Torricelli, one of 50 senators who would be the jury in a Senate trial of Mr Clinton, said that 10 or 15 Congressmen hold the power to determine whether impeachment goes forward. "This could change 200 years of precedent. If this president is impeached, no president ever again will be secure in their administration. The great gift of the founding fathers, political stability, will be lost."
The Nobel Prize winner Eli Wiesel called for a censure of Mr Clinton instead of impeachment. "Harsh words will be remembered. All the President's wrongdoings do not pass the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors."
All sides agree that the next three days will be some of the most tense and historic in memory in the US. Some 64 per cent of the American people, according to the latest poll, support Clinton. They, and a minority that wants impeachment, are now expressing their views to representatives.
Debate about impeaching Clinton has raged in the US since this summer, though raged is hardly the right word to describe a dopey combination of public apathy and media histrionics. Impeachment was never really going to happen; that was one of the reasons that everyone could throw the word around so cavalierly. That was why the media and the public could savour the Starr report for all its salacious detail and over-the-top prosecutorial tone. This was not real. It was a sexual soap opera on TV that would end at the prescribed hour.
Something, everyone now knows, went askew. Impeachment is now real. No one, if you believe the polls and the pundits, quite understands how this happened.
Let's recall the elections in November. Americans turned out in fair numbers and voted in favour of the Democratic Party. That, combined with solid poll numbers showing that nearly 70 per cent of the American people did not want Clinton impeached, seemed to settle the matter. Politicians, if anything, are often accused of paying too much attention to the polls. On the matter of Clinton, the polls were clear; Americans thought he was an adulterous liar and a good president and wanted him to remain in office.
So the United States moved on and celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday. Then people started shopping for Christmas. They stopped watching CNN and they stopped paying attention to what was happening in Washington. They assumed, not unreasonably, that their voice had been heard.
But Washington, and specifically the Republican Party, remained hard at work. And today articles of impeachment are being sent to the full House of Representatives for a vote. Mr Clinton stands a very good chance of being impeached by the house. Whatever happens this week democracy here will not be the same.