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The endless campaign has taken its toll, especially when it looked as if he was losing. A longtime ally recalls, only a week or so ago, a midafternoon phone call from the President. "There was a very down, discouraged sense and sound to his voice," the source says. Again and again, Clinton thought he might be home free, particularly in the joyous wake of the fall elections. But he underestimated Republican fortitude--How could they keep ignoring the polls he lives by?--and was stunned that he still hadn't managed to shut it all down. At recent public appearances, his eyes have teared up at inopportune moments--a lapse that's startlingly different from the calculated mawkishness he's known for. He has stood onstage staring into space while awaiting an introduction and has rushed from his public events at first opportunity.
But the long year's work finally paid off, especially on Capitol Hill. Democrats knew the attack on Clinton threatened them too, and that survival depended on getting past both their disdain for him and their history of mutual backstabbing. The armistice talks began after the 1996 election as an effort to heal the wounds of the divisive campaign, but it was the scandal that forced Clinton into his fellow Democrats' arms. Without them he could not survive.
So Clinton has worked the leadership hard, prescreening his proposals with Richard Gephardt and Daschle, burying porcupines like "fast-track" trade authority to maintain the peace. "A lot of this has been about keeping Gephardt happy," says a leadership source, "because they hope Gephardt will keep labor and other liberal groups happy." Every Friday senior members of the leadership staffs meet in Gephardt's conference room with White House advisers to talk about policy and message. Impeachment lurks but never sits down. "You talk about it before and you talk about it later, but the point of the meeting is to come up with an alternative message, something to put out there other than impeachment," says a participant. Says a Democratic strategist: "Defending himself against impeachment is just another part of the President's public relations operation. It's all clearly integrated."
The problem is that while the scandal may have helped Clinton generate policy ideas, it has drained his ability to get them passed. Former chief of staff Erskine Bowles has privately said that last year the White House was ready to make a swap with Republicans: Clinton would support their plan for vouchers in the D.C. school system if they would go for managed-care reform. But at the last minute he realized he couldn't, because doing so would enrage the Democrats, whose votes he needed for impeachment. And one suspects that Clinton will judge last week's State of the Union speech not by how much actually becomes law but simply by whether it gets him two more years in office.