The Feinstein Moment
Dianne Feinstein could be Vice President within months if she would but seize the opportunity-by calling for Bill Clinton's resignation.

Right now, Democrats are trapped in an abusive relationship with the President, except that this marriage was entered into without love. They're afraid they can't make it without him. But a President Gore could raise money too. And congressional Democrats' current tack won't work. If they continue to distance themselves from the president, neither rallying to his defense nor pushing the eject button, they will only dispirit their base. They will be setting themselves up for a smaller-scale reprise of 1994-the last time they paid the price for Clinton's sins. Even a government shutdown might not save them: what will they say when House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston (R., La.) says that Clinton isn't being truthful about the budget? House Democrats are privately resigned to the fact that they have no chance to regain a majority in November. Are they willing to fall out of striking distance?

The circumstances call for a far-seeing senior Democrat to do the right thing for country and party. Daniel Patrick Moynihan has been occasionally nominated to play the role of the senator he unseated, James Buckley. But Dianne Feinstein might have a better incentive to fill it.

She is a senior figure in the party. Perhaps more importantly, she is a woman. Were she to abandon ship, a good many other Democrats would follow. It wouldn't take much for Clinton's position to collapse.

Would the public blame her for removing Clinton? Probably not. All the evidence suggests that the public has no deep attachment to him personally, but is concerned about the presidency. Give them a new president, and that little problem is solved.

More seriously: this year should also have taught us that time and repetition can normalize the most astonishing situations. A majority of the public thought in January that Clinton should leave office if he had perjured himself; now a majority knows he did, but is willing to live with it. But this phenomenon is a double-edged sword for the President: the longer impeachment and resignation are seriously contemplated, rather than just fodder for talking heads trying to get attention, the less shocking it will seem.

It's more likely that the public will be grateful to Feinstein for ending this national mudbath. (Those polls asking whether the investigations should end, by the way, are ambiguous and hence meaningless. Everyone wants this over-"this" being defined in our case as this presidency.) Feinstein would then be a threefer as President Gore's veep pick: a woman, from California, who "put her country before her party."

Loyalties
Dee Dee Myers and other White House veterans are asking plaintively how Clinton could have lied to them and let them down. This complaint reflects the typical yuppie subordination of family to career: Clinton betrays and deceives his wife, but is supposed to treat his professional colleagues with dignity and respect? Dick Morris was right: anyone who believed or pretended to believe the president's denials of an affair deserves no tears from us. Instead, anyone debating the scandals with Paul Begala should henceforth ask him why we should believe him on obstruction of justice since his previous assurances turned out to be false.

The loyalists Clinton has really hung out to dry are those who co-ordinated their testimony with David Kendall as part of the joint-defense agreement. Anyone who can, thanks to the testimony of Lewinsky or Clinton or both, be shown to have testified falsely is now open to indictment.

A Likely Story
President Clinton reportedly refused to answer some of the prosecutors' questions on Monday because they offended his delicate Victorian sensibilities.