Frock Watch
Results of the DNA test on Monica's dress are in: it was OJ.

Checkers Clinton
There's growing sentiment among Clinton allies that the President has a small window of opportunity between now and August 17, when he testifies for Ken Starr's grand jury, to perform some kind of public mea culpa regarding his alleged relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Assuming he lied under oath last January and that Starr has tucked away a small mountain of damaging evidence, several White House political advisors believe an emotive address to the nation, full of pursed lips and one almost-but-not-quite teary moment in which Clinton gets a bit choked up about wanting to protect his family, just might save his presidency from universal scorn or worse. If that dark lord Richard Nixon could pull off the Checkers speech, goes the thinking, then surely Slick Willie can score on this one.

There's a fundamental problem with Clinton giving a Checkers speech: Nixon didn't apologize for anything. In 1952, when Nixon was the GOP's vice-presidential candidate with Dwight Eisenhower, he delivered a half-hour televised address to contradict reports about a secret political slush fund supposedly established for his personal benefit. The reports were essentially false, and in denying them Nixon chose a strategy of not only presenting the exonerating facts of the case, but also making a play for the hearts of voters. (He said he wouldn't give up a cocker spaniel puppy named Checkers that he received as a gift because "the kids, like all kids, loved the dog.") All the fuss about the family dog obscured an important fact: Nixon told the truth. That's very different from admitting a lie, as Clinton's so-called Checkers speech would require.

Alger Clinton
The White House may be thinking about Checkers, but no matter what Clinton does, it certainly doesn't want the media to engage in too many Nixon comparisons. Here's a comparison they may find even more unflattering, but which will prove inevitable if Clinton denies an affair with Lewinsky and Starr presents evidence showing otherwise: Alger Hiss.

Clinton could easily become a Hiss for the 21st century, with a core of deluded supporters defending him for many years after everybody else knows the basic truth. Hiss went to his grave swearing that he wasn't a spy for the Soviet Union. (Sen. Nixon of California, incidentally, played a key role in exposing him.) Like Clinton, Hiss also faced a not-entirely-reliable witness who presented compelling physical evidence (Whittaker Chambers). Hiss became an icon for the Left during the Cold War. Despite plenty of contemporary evidence demonstrating his guilt, he became a poster child for red-baiting run amuck. The image was false; in recent years new information from Soviet archives shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Hiss was a traitor. Clinton's alleged relationship with Lewinsky isn't nearly so serious, but the Hiss analogy could stick.