If Clinton Still Isn’t Resigned to His Fate ...

Amid the emanations from scandal-absorbed Washington is that our president might attempt another speech to salvage his tenure. Such talk follows the underwhelming embrace of Clinton’s post-grand jury Arbitron-buster of Aug. 17. Like a 300-yard drive that lands in the bunker, his speech was all postage and no address.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was “disappointed in not being told the truth.” California’s senior Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein, angrily said: “My trust in his credibility has been badly shattered.” Even Sen. Barbara Boxer--normally Crazy-Glued to Clinton’s hip--wasn’t buying: “I think he should have told us the truth seven months ago. . . .”

These responses by loyalists to what has been wickedly called “a lot of mea and very little culpa” can be analogized to the way coal miners used canaries to warn of deadly underground gases.

Daschle, Feinstein and Boxer are, for Clinton, canaries in the coal mine. The canary-in-chief was thousands of miles away in Hawaii on “vacation.” Many expected Al Gore to say there was “no controlling legal authority” governing his leader. Instead, the vice president emerged with the single most telling presentation of all when he said: “I am proud of him because he’s a great president.” You had to be watching because as Gore spoke those words, his eyes were glued to a script--reading them. The putative leader of the free world could not even muster a personal response. Instead, he recited his support from talking points faxed over by spin central on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now what? Clearly, a dispirited corps of advisors yearn for the sultan of slick to take another swing for the fence. Curiosity triumphs; what might he say this time?

As one who wallowed in Watergate as a junior White House staffer in 1973 and 1974--and as a former speech writer--I offer this advice to Mr. Clinton: Don’t even try.

On more than one occasion, President Nixon attempted to get Watergate behind him with a major national address. On April 30, 1973, Nixon announced the resignations of key staff members, appointed a new attorney general with broad investigative mandates and acknowledged that “Watergate represented a series of illegal acts and bad judgments--by a number of individuals.”

The hunt continued.

Just over three weeks later, Nixon issued what we on his staff thought was the definitive statement of facts--a lengthy recitation of explanations and denials while giving “full support” to “see the truth brought out.”

He disavowed the invocation of executive privilege for any of his staff’s testimony.

The hunt continued.

The White House produced documents. The president responded at press conferences. In his 1974 State of the Union address, he pledged cooperation with the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry but argued, “The time has come to bring . . . investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.” He thought it was enough; we thought it was enough. But the hunt continued.

We never got ahead of the facts and could not slow the momentum of all the inquiries. Nor was there any possibility of putting out every fire that erupted. It was then as it is now--day after day of newscasts and newspaper stories beginning with the words: “New details have emerged . . . “ or “Sources report new revelations . . . “

If the president’s spinners could suspend their denial, they would realize the overwhelming likelihood that there has been released only a portion of the enormity of the record. It is about to wash over all that Clinton has said and all his defenders have shouted. He and they cannot staunch the hemorrhage that soon will flow.

In all probability, no speech, short of resignation will work. But if he wishes to try, he might use these phrases:

“I came to the edge. . . . I would have to say that a reasonable person could call that a cover-up. . . . I let down my friends. . . . I let down my country. . . . I let down our system of government and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government, but think it’s all too corrupt. . . . I made so many bad judgments . . . mistakes of the heart rather than the head. . . . A man in the top job’s got to have a heart . . . but his head must always rule his heart.”

It was nearly three years after Richard Nixon resigned that he spoke those precise words.