HOW DARE YOU BRING A CASE THIS WEAK

A while ago, I heard Hillary Rodham Clinton speak at a charity event. With
all eyes not merely on her but virtually X-raying her, Mrs. Clinton
performed brilliantly. She mentioned the names of people she had just met,
extolled the cause, never paused, never said um, never said hmm, never
repeated herself and left her audience stunned. Not me, though. I had seen
her do that sort of thing numerous times.

So you will forgive a modest proposal: Bring on Hillary. Bring her into the
well of the Senate and let her, lawyer that she is, sum up the case for the
president, her hubby. Let her do what none of Bill Clinton's lawyers have
yet been able to do -- rivet the nation, end this most-cinematic of scandals
with a Darrowesque summation that we wouldexpect of a good/bad movie. Let
her what no one has yet done: turn to the House managers and their odious
gumshoe, Ken Starr, and demand, ``How dare you?''

How dare you bring a case so weak, so slight, so personal, so dirty, so
intrusive, so rotten, so ugly, so without constitutional merit and so
removed from any question of abuse of power? How dare you tie up Congress,
the nation, the presidency and the government in a matter that only involved
a man's personal life? How dare you invade my home, my marriage -- expose
matters that should be between husband and wife? Who are you people and what
gave you the right to do this to us?

Hillary Rodham Clinton could ask such questions. She might want to concede
that her husband has acted like a fool, that he indeed did lie and -- this
is important -- he never acknowledged the moment when a private
embarrassment became a public scandal about a president. He might not have
owed us the truth, but he certainly owed it to the grand jury.

The true crime, however, is the attempted assassination of the president's
character, a crushing of his person, an evisceration of his inner life so
that the details were set out to be picked over on television, tsk-tsked by
the Sunday sorts who mistakenly thought that the scandal was what Clinton
had done and not what was being done to him.

Hillary Clinton could make these points. She could make us understand the
true abuse of power here, not anything Clinton did but the relentlessness of
Starr, and how he was given all the money and time in the world to get a
single man. The charge ... well, what was the charge? Oh, yes, it was being
unworthy: a dope smoker, a draft dodger, a philanderer, a pretender to the
presidency, a member of the Woodstock nation.

But it doesn't warrant impeachment. Hillary could make that case.