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Moderate Republican Bob Franks was waiting last Friday with a blue pen, a white pad and a can of Dr Pepper in front of the TV in the study of his Berkeley Heights, N.J., home when the President began to speak. For days Franks had been signaling the White House that he would vote against impeachment if Clinton would just come clean. "As the President started speaking, I started jotting down a couple of phrases," remembers Franks. "Then I just stopped when it was clear that he wasn't going to make an admission. I just looked at the screen and shook my head. If he had told the truth, that he had broken the law, he would have saved the nation from the ordeal of an impeachment and saved his presidency." Within an hour, Franks announced that he will vote to impeach this week.
Rather than providing a way out, Clinton's speech opened another one of those miniature windows into his soul. He talked about how hard it was to "hear yourself called deceitful and manipulative" but never admitted that he was those things. He attributed his 11 months of stonewalling and deception to his "shame" over what he had done, the one quality he has never shown. He continued to thread his presidency between the words misled and lied.
After the speech, his aides explained that Clinton had several reasons for leaving some things unsaid. He feels he has already done more penance than any other public official, and justifiably wonders where it will end. "It's a bit of Lucy with the football," said an official. "The bar does keep getting raised." But the main reason Clinton rejected the L word on Friday is that he continues to insist that he didn't lie under oath. "It's very simple," an aide explained. "He doesn't believe it."
It was a fitting irony--the one time it would have helped him to shave the truth, to just pretend for a minute that he agreed that he was a perjurer--he couldn't bring himself to do it. By Saturday there was still no stampede to save Clinton, and both Democratic and Republican head counters said the momentum seemed to remain against the President. When it became clear that the speech had fallen short, some White House officials hinted that he might have to try one more time before the House vote. Others argued that the apology was actually embedded in the text, that he might explicitly apologize for lying someday, once censure was safely in hand. (The speech, and its reference to "rebuke and censure," had no effect on the committee: on Saturday it rejected a Democratic censure resolution, 22-14.)
The only person more allergic to impeachment than Clinton was Senate majority leader Trent Lott, who made little secret of his desire that the whole thing just go away. He knows that a trial, which could take weeks if not months (and require members to listen patiently from their uncomfortable seats), would anger his caucus, bog down his party and make bipartisan progress on other issues virtually impossible for months. "He don't want no trial," said a Lott confidant this week.