Amid all this uncertainty over the president’s future, some in the party are taking temporary shelter in polling figures that show that, despite the fact that a majority of Americans believe Clinton had a sexual affair with Lewinsky and lied about it, they still continue to give the president high job approval ratings.

“I was in Florida doing focus groups earlier this week, and we asked people to assume the worst about the Lewinsky matter, and people just didn’t care,” says Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster. “They really think this is about sex. They disapprove of Clinton’s behavior, but they think it’s between him and his wife. Even on the question of perjury, they think he shouldn’t have been asked about it in the first place.”

If Clinton’s polls remain high, adds Mark Mellman, another party pollster, Democratic incumbents probably will not be punished for the president’s alleged sins in the fall midterms.

But party strategists say they have abandoned any expectation of recapturing Democratic control of the House from the Republicans, and they blame the media’s intense coverage of the Lewinsky affair for their dashed hopes. “The static from this scandal has drowned out all other issues,” complains Garin. “It’s impossible to have an argument about tobacco, saving Social Security, education and health care because the noise from this scandal is simply impenetrable. So it’s impossible to make a coherent political argument why voters should be for Democrats instead of Republicans.”

As the Democrats squirm uneasily through the uncertainty of the weeks and months ahead, party spinmeisters are trying to soothe concerns with some political logic that would have been unthinkable in the past. Says one Democratic consultant: “This is a president who, over time, has completely lost his moral authority. But in almost every other respect, he hasn’t lost a thing. And he hasn’t been an in a situation where he has had to call on his moral authority. So his political importance has not been diminished.”

That wishful formulation already is being challenged in the wake of the
terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam. In such
moments, as counter-terrorism experts begin the long process of finding those
responsible, moral authority is often all a president can bring to soothe the
nation’s agony. And over the horizon, more challenges to the United States are
looming — the deepening economic crisis in Asia, a collapsing Russian
economy, a faltering Middle East peace process and now a new confrontation
with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. If Clinton, as commander in chief, needs
to send U.S, troops into harm’s way, he’ll need the moral authority to make
that decision.

But Democratic strategists no longer appear to be thinking about
Clinton’s political legacy. One prominent consultant, who asked not to be named, spun
out what he described as the probable outcome of the Lewinsky affair: Sometime before Aug. 17 — but no sooner than Aug. 16 — Clinton will make a public apology. After Starr submits his report, Republicans in Congress, facing the force of Clinton’s popularity, their vulnerability should their own sexual escapades come to light and the judgment of history, will opt not for impeachment but for some form of censure. To placate the inevitable Republican uproar in Congress, Clinton may have to apologize again. The final years of Clinton’s presidency will be the same as the end of the Reagan presidency after the Iran-contra affair. That is to say, it will limp along to its conclusion.

“Look, the public is going to think Clinton’s a schmuck,” this consultant said. “But if the economy keeps humming along, they’ll be willing to let him ride out his term.”

That may count as good news to some Democrats, but it cannot be a welcome scenario to Vice President Al Gore as he prepares his bid for the party’s presidential nomination for 2000. Gore’s fortunes are tied to Clinton, and if Clinton, having survived too many body blows, comes to resemble a political cripple in his last two years, Gore will be the big loser, say political analysts. “What counts in a presidential election is whether people are in a mood for a change,” says Mellman. “If they are, it’s obviously not going to be good for Gore.”

Perhaps the biggest fear gnawing at Democrats these days is their concern over another, even more serious scandal looming in the distance — the campaign finance morass.

Republicans in the House and Senate have been pressuring Attorney General Janet Reno to recommend an independent counsel to investigate alleged campaign finance abuses by Clinton, Gore and senior Democratic Party officials — a demand she has resisted so far. In the Senate, moves have begun to compel Reno to act, and in an extraordinary confrontation Thursday, a House committee voted to cite Reno for contempt of Congress for resisting its subpoena to turn over reports from two subordinates, including FBI Director Louis Freeh, that recommend the appointment of an independent prosecutor to look into the campaign finance allegations.

Reno has called the subpoena “a form of political tampering that no prosecutor in America can accept.” She also argues that giving the House the reports, which provide a blueprint of the Justice Department’s investigation, would blow the probe. She had asked for three more weeks to review the reports and has not ruled out a recommendation for an independent counsel. If she makes such a recommendation, Clinton, Gore and others could be asked to explain how money from Chinese intelligence found its way into party coffers in 1996. Even the best Democratic consultants anticipate problems spinning their way out of that one.

“There are not many people in America who believe that their well-being has been jeopardized in any way by the president’s conduct in the Lewinsky affair,” says one prominent pollster. “Sure, there are people who feel they can’t watch the news with the kids, but in terms of real well-being, most people are not affected. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about campaign finance. That’s going to be a tough one.”