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Starr's problem was not his outbursts, of which there were few, but a vanity he had trouble concealing. At intervals during the course of the day, he compared himself to both the Lone Ranger and George Washington, and he wrapped himself in Justice Louis Brandeis when he insisted that he too was a servant of "facts, facts, facts." Over and over he said that Congress had to rely on its own "judgment" in deciding whether to impeach--a fact so obvious that the more he said it the more it sounded as if he had trouble believing it.
Sam Dash, for one, made it clear last week that he doesn't think Starr really believes it. On Friday morning Dash, a Democrat who was the chief counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee 24 years ago, resigned as Starr's $400-an-hour ethics adviser, saying Starr's performance had convinced him that the independent counsel had "unlawfully intruded on the power of impeachment which the Constitution gives solely to the House." Because Dash, who was regarded within the independent counsel's office as pompous and temperamental, is a venerated Democrat, he was a valuable asset to Starr. During his testimony on Thursday, Starr cited Dash's "great wisdom," and after Dash quit, Starr told reporters that "reasonable minds can differ." He added, "I love Sam Dash."
Dash had dealt Starr a big blow. His resignation helped seal Washington's posthearing verdict that Starr's performance would not change the dynamic in Congress against impeachment. Committee Republicans did expand their inquiry last week into the Kathleen Willey affair--the accusation by the former White House volunteer that the President groped her near the Oval Office. So this week and next their investigators want to depose in closed-door sessions Willey's attorney Daniel Gecker, Clinton's attorney Bob Bennett, Clinton confidant Bruce Lindsey and Democratic contributor Nathan Landow. But even as Hyde was pressing on, more rank-and-file House Republicans were declaring publicly that they would not vote for impeachment. And outside emissaries began calling around Capitol Hill, once again floating the idea of a bipartisan resolution of censure as an alternative to impeachment.
In Japan, where the President was safely engaged in negotiations over international finance, the Lewinsky affair intruded in a surprising way. It came via an Osaka housewife, and it had nothing to do with impeachment. "How did you apologize to Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea?" she asked him at a town-hall forum. "Did they really forgive you, Mr. President?" Replied Clinton: "Well, I did it in a direct and straightforward manner, and I believe they did, yes. That's really a question you could ask them better than me." It was perhaps the only fact that Americans too still wanted to know.
--With reporting by Jay Branegan and Viveca Novak/Washington