Mark Steyn: Open-Mouthed (Steyn On Clinton's State Of The Union Speech During Monica Scandal)

FOR six days, Bill Clinton kept his head down, a position usually reserved for his womenfolk. But on the seventh the President ventured out - to Congress, for the annual State of the Union address.

Last year, he had to share the spotlight with the O.J. Simpson civil trial, which, with exquisite timing, had chosen the President's big night to reach a verdict. The networks, torn between Clinton boring on about his bridge to the 21st century and O.J. getting taken to the cleaners, restrained themselves and went to a split screen, dutifully sticking with Washington in one corner while all eyes were on California in the other. ABC's star anchorman Peter Jennings had been warned not to use the word 'guilty' in connection with O.J.: in this second trial, ,the correct word was 'liable'. He almost got it right. `Mr Guilty has been found liable,' he announced sonorously.

This year, the President decided to come as his own O.J., singlehandedly bridging last year's split screen. He has yet to pledge that he won't rest until he tracks down the real adulterer, but otherwise the approach is much the same. In lieu of Johnnie Cochran, Mr Clinton has the First Lady: just as the brutal murder of a battered wife turned out instead to be a racist conspiracy by the LAPD, so perjury about oral sex is apparently, according to Mrs Clinton on NBC's Today show, part of 'a vast right-wing conspiracy' by shadowy groups of Clinton-haters.

Both theories depend on a mind-boggling suspension of disbelief: how did the LAPD get the victims' blood inside O.J.'s locked car? How did Richard Mellon Scaife plant the young daughter of a wealthy Democratic party contributor inside the White House late at night? Mr Clinton isn't saying.

His strategy on Tuesday was to replace the pants-dropping, frock- staining, phone sex-crazed fellatio junkie of the past week with the windy, platitudinous, butt-numbing yawneroo beloved by New Democrats. Traditionally, the State of the Union address begins at 9 p.m. Eastern time and wraps up just before 10 o'clock, after which there's a brief Republican response and then the network pontificators analyse the President's proposals on Medicare and defence spending until it's time to hand back to the local affiliate stations at 11 o'clock. This time, Mr Clinton stepped to the podium just after 9 o'clock, and began to talk . . . and talk. . and talk.

`If we join together, we can finish the work at hand,' he declared boldly. 'Preparing for a far-off storm that may reach our shores is better than waiting till the sound of thunder is overhead,' he continued. 'I say to you it is a journey we can only make together,' he added. Ten o'clock came and went with nothing more than a dull thud - probably a new intern, installed under the lectern, falling to the floor with lockjaw. But the President was only warming up: `We must work together, learn together, live together, serve together . . . We are many. We must be one .

For a week now, commentators have been deploring Mr Clinton's descent into lawyerly English. `There is no improper sexual relationship. . . ' What does he mean by 'is'? Is he saying that there was one? And what's an `improper sexual relationship'? How does it differ from a proper one? On Monday morning, he was more emphatic: 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' But that only sent everyone scurrying to the dictionary: 'sexual relations - intercourse, copulation (esp. of a man and a woman); insertion of the penis into the vagina....' So does that rule out oral sex?

But Tuesday was a reminder that, when President Clinton stops being precise and evasive and becomes generalised and evasive, he's even worse. `While we honour the past, let us imagine the future,' he droned, as the clock struck 10.20; `An uncharted sea of limitless mystery', 10.25; `The unbroken connection between the deeds of America's past and the daring of America's future .

He'd lost the room by now, but what did he care? He knew every network had a studioful of pundits waiting to talk about subpoenas and impeachment, and he ran 'em out. He sat down, the networks hurried away to the Republican response, and that left about three minutes for the `Can this presidency be saved?' discussion.

`The President went longer than anticipated,' sighed Peter Jennings, signing off as ABC handed back to its local affiliate, and suddenly we were into heartwarming stories about how dairy farms were clearing up after the ice storm. Brilliant.

Monica Lewinsky isn't the only one sitting there open-mouthed. The President's understanding of the media is amazing: he succeeded in keeping the sex stuff out of prime time. Puffy-eyed and unusually stiff (in the Al Gore sense), he was nevertheless doing what he does best - boring the story into the ground, the approach that's worked so well for him over Whitewater, the FBI files, the Indonesian money men.... This year's Mr Guilty may yet be found liable, but the bland torpor of the State of the Union was the most explicit signal yet that he's prepared to do whatever it takes to cling on, figuring that even an oral sex scandal can't be dragged out all year: one swallow doesn't make a summer, as they say in Arkansas.

He may be right. Invited to compare this year's speech with Nixon's in 1974, as Watergate was raging all around him, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin sniffed, `Obviously, that was a much more serious situation.' Yet with Mr Clinton it's the very triviality that's so serious. There are no great mysteries to unravel - this time round, we all know who Deep Throat is - and the only unanswered question is: how did the most powerful office in the world shrivel away to this?

Clinton's presidency now resembles a deranged version of La Ronde, in which he staggers from one girl to the next without ever managing to shake off any of their predecessors: if his aides hadn't stupidly revealed her identity, Paula Jones wouldn't have sued; if she hadn't sued, he wouldn't have had to give a sworn deposition admitting to the affair with Gennifer Flowers; if he'd settled the suit, her lawyers wouldn't have taken testimony from Kathleen Willey, the woman who says he groped and fondled her on the day her husband committed suicide; if his lawyer hadn't trashed the reputation of Mrs Willey's corroborating witness Linda Tripp, Miss Tripp wouldn't have set about getting her revenge; if the President had only managed to keep his hands off Monica Lewinsky, they wouldn't have had to move her to the Pentagon, where she became friends with Miss Tripp; if he'd been able to steer clear of Sheila Lawrence, Miss Lewinsky wouldn't have become jealous....

The more worldly commentators bemoan the fact that America isn't like France, where M. Mitterrand was buried with both his wife and mistress in attendance. But, if Mr Clinton's funeral applies the same admission criteria, it'll be the biggest windfall for the nation's charter buses since the Million Man March.

The more worldly commentators bemoan the fact that America isn't like France, where M. Mitterrand was buried with both his wife and mistress in attendance. But, if Mr Clinton's funeral applies the same admission criteria, it'll be the biggest windfall for the nation's charter buses since the Million Man March.

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