Clinton: What Report?

WASHINGTON: Could it be true? Is President Clinton just about the only person in America who has managed to avoid reading any of the Starr report, as his deputy chief of staff John Podesta claims? It's a tidbit that betrays the siege mentality at the White House, where the leader of the free world is increasingly becoming the loneliest man in it. Clinton skipped even his regular church service Sunday (where his transgressions were the subject of the day's sermon), while his attorney David Kendall hit the talk shows to defend his client's indefensible semantic contortion -- that he may have lied under oath about sex, but he didn't commit perjury.

Abandoning such a politically suicidal position is exactly what Clinton should do to save his presidency, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch. "If he'll quit playing this legal game and start being what he is, a basically warm winning person whom the American people have liked from the beginning," said the Senate Judiciary Committee chair on "Face the Nation" Sunday, "my gosh, I think the President could get through this. But he's starting to lose." Hatch was just about the only person in Washington to penetrate the White House's weekend wall of silence, calling the President from his car phone and having what he described as "a very good exchange." So Clinton still has some contact with reality -- even if he isn't reading any newspapers right now.