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Having asked for 48 hours, the White House managed to release its own prebuttal by Friday morning, charging in 78 pages that Starr had unleashed a one-sided, salacious screed that failed to find any impeachable offenses relating to Whitewater or Travelgate or the FBI files or anything under his original mandate, and instead focused on sexual misdeeds for which the President had already apologized. The second rebuttal, on Saturday, again blasted Starr's "biased recounting, skewed analysis and unconscionable overreaching." But a rebuttal could only go as far as the facts allowed: it did little to combat the overall picture of what a White House aide described as "a pathetic predator who is just depraved." And to go down the road of contesting each tawdry detail is to get into a game, White House aides say, they could never win.
The President's approval ratings held up the first night, but Friday is always an imperfect night to poll, and many people had not yet had any chance to digest even a summary of the report. By Saturday afternoon, Republicans seemed more troubled than certain of what to do next. Some were ready to take their assigned seats right away: "What has struck me is that if this is true, it'll be difficult for many members not to vote to impeach the President," said Florida's Bill McCollum, the third ranking Republican of the Judiciary Committee. "I think we're well beyond the option of censure. He could already be censured for what he admitted a few weeks ago. I don't know how anyone could possibly consider keeping him if he lied under oath, if he witness-tampered, suborned perjury--it doesn't matter what the subject matter was."
But other Republicans, anxious to avoid stridency in any form, began warily to name Clinton a likely survivor. Several said Starr had so overplayed the sex that it might ultimately undercut his argument and obscure what many Republicans had hoped would be more open-and-shut cases on obstruction. Few, if any, said Clinton looked easily impeachable on perjury charges, which most members of the leadership want to avoid anyway. However obvious it was that Clinton had repeatedly lied under oath, most were doubtful that the country would be willing to impeach Clinton over lies about sex in any form. Even rock-throwing Republicans like Georgia's Bob Barr stopped short of calling for Clinton's head right away: "I've called for an inquiry into impeachment, not impeachment." Most were left shaking their head. "This is just sad, distressing," Florida Republican Charles Canady noted softly. "On a personal level, I'm stunned by the picture of the President treating a young woman in such an exploitative way. And I'm also struck by the more serious issue of whether the President committed perjury before the grand jury."