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 House Managers One, President Coming to Bat * When the White House Lawyers begin to make their case
tomorrow at The Trial they will be dealing with a logical
conundrum: They don’t want witnesses, but if they argue that there are discrepancies in the facts
the only way to resolve those issues is to call witnesses.
* We must stop referring to witnesses in The Trial as “live” witnesses. What other kind is there?
* Wouldn’t you think there would be even one person who the White House thinks, if called to
testify, would improve the President’s case?
* Over the past three weeks Bill Clinton has proclaimed his Initiative Du Jour. The State of the
Union speech Tuesday night will be his greatest hits – a little something for everyone. Save Social
Security First? If all Clinton’s initiatives were to be enacted, forget Social Security, there wouldn’t
be money enough left for pizzas at the White House, if-you-know-what-I-mean-and-I-think-you-do.
* The speech will be designed to do one thing and one thing only: Demonstrate that the
Impeachment case against the President is so miniscule in its importance compared to the real
work Clinton is trying to accomplish that the Senate will be flooded with phone calls to adjourn
The Trial.
* This, because the Senate seems to be taking The Trial way, WAY too seriously to suit the
White House. Frank Clines wrote in Sunday’s NY Times: “When the final charges were fully
heaped upon President Clinton as a man of ‘subversive and dangerous conduct’ who must not
‘remain in office with all his infamy,’ the Senate seemed a stunned court gravely taken with its
task of judgment.”
* If the Secretary of the Senate begins every Trial session with a warning everyone must remain
silent under pain of imprisonment, why, following his outburst, isn’t Senator Tom Harkin sharing a
cell with about 15 would-be constituents discussing soybean futures in a DC jail?
* Harkin complained that the Senate should not be referred to as a jury because, unlike a criminal
jury, the Senate can take into account other things, like the good of the nation.
* Let’s take that as read. If the Senate is not a jury then – also unlike criminal juries – there is no
need to have their deliberations take place in secret. I want to hear the
First-Sister-in-Law-Once-Removed, Senator Barbara Boxer, argue that Clinton did nothing wrong
so that we can put into their proper context her future statements on the matter of
superior-subordinate sex in the workplace.
* Another irony: A Journal of the American Medical Association editor lost his job at that
magazine for an article defending Bill Clinton’s definition of when sex-is-sex but Bill Clinton still
has HIS job.
* I went to the movies the other night and saw “Life is Beautiful” which I thought was named “It’s a
Beautiful Life” so, of course, I assumed it had something to do with George Bailey and Clarence
the Angel. After we settled in, I heard a woman ask the man she with whom she was walking
down the aisle: “Are you a close-up person or a far-back person?” If ever there was a First Date
question. . .
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