The Monica Lewinsky scandal emerges

It says here, with deceptive simplicity, the president shall, from time to time, give to the Congress information of the state of the union.

It's hard to think of a sentence in the Constitution that could be plainer or contain less guile. But there's not a phrase in it that hasn't, at one time or another, been interpreted with all the painful literalness of an old-time Methodist parson reciting the text of his sermon.

To give simply the most dramatic example, why didn't the Constitution say, "the state of the nation"? The word "union" was new and precious in the late 18th Century, when the American form of government was invented.

Twenty years before the War of Independence broke out and the revolution was brewing, a commission was set up in the main brewery, the colony of Massachusetts, which reported the commissioners should deliver their opinion whether a union of all the colonies is not at present absolutely necessary for their security and defence.

They decided it was, there would be no point in each colony trying to fight the British on its own and remember, the civil war was fought with one over-riding purpose. As Lincoln wrote it, "if I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do so. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. The thing is to save the union".

And today, through all the swirling distractions of policy and scandal, let's not forget that a great and furious issue that goes on dividing the country and could threaten the union, is whether the English language should be required of all immigrants as a qualification for citizenship, for a job in any community or legislature, for schooling. Whether allowing the nation to slide into a jungle of competing tongues, which somebody called the coming triumph of multiculturalism, whether this process can still guarantee that the slogan on the seal of the United States is a truth or a relic – De pluribus unum, out of many, one. A union.

So this obligation of the president to address the Congress on the state of the union is a serious occasion, a ceremony full of symbolism of what this country is about. How best, as another document says, to form a more perfect union?

Through most of American history, the president sent his address by a messenger to be read to the assembled Congress by a clerk. The new habit of addressing the Congress in person started only with Woodrow Wilson, a university president who'd made his name nationally as a public orator and so was the first president since Washington to go before the Congress and revel in the sound of his own voice.

The three following presidents were uncomfortable with the new custom but by the time Franklin Roosevelt came sweeping in, in the pit of the Great Depression, you may be sure that nobody was more alive to the power, the propaganda possibilities, of the new medium of radio.

By the grace of some unsung scientist, Ronald Reagan had the great good luck to arrive not only after the invention of television, but of what is known in the trade as the wraparound teleprompter, where your written speech can be displayed in large type in three printouts, all played out in front of you on what appears to the audience to be a plain shield of glass.

In other words, the running scripts, which can be seen only by the president, one on the left, one in the middle, one on the right, make it easy for a good actor to fake any degree of naturalness. He can say, "Well I mean I'd like to tell you..." and "this is something that occurred to me only the other evening...", all written out there in front of him.

Mr Reagan, his political gifts aside, came to the presidency as a B-film actor. In the presidency he became an A-film actor and it no longer surprises me to run into people, even, it's happened to a statesman, who was astounded to hear that Ronald Reagan was probably the most nervous and least gifted ad lib, spontaneous talker among modern presidents.

All the most moving, touching, certainly the most memorable remarks of Ronald Reagan, whether before Congress, at an informal party rally, standing on the Normandy beaches to pay tribute to the dead – all written out for him, all able to be read aloud as if it were being thought aloud.

I'm well aware that some, perhaps many, people must be wondering why I seem to be spending so much time talking about the make and the tuning of Nero's fiddle, while all around him Rome is burning up with the smoke of appalling scandal. To put it crudely, because Nero started to play such beautiful music as to make us ignore the smoke.

Consider the president's situation last Tuesday evening, as he left the White House to go up to Capitol hill and deliver his state of the union address. Before the clock struck nine that evening, the four main television networks, forget the other 40 or 50, had broadcast over 600 scandalous items of news. Guesswork, hearsay, rumour and alarming, alleged news about a person we'd never heard of a week ago.

On that day when I sat down here to talk about Fidel Castro and the Pope, I'd heard only the faintest whisper about some young woman who claimed she'd had in the past year or two, a sexual affair with the president in the White House. Next day I had a telephone call from an old friend, an old but still sprightly lady and a Catholic. She said, well you don't have to tell me what you talked about this week.

But I will tell you, I said, I talked about Castro and the Pope. Castro and the what, she cried. Mary, have you ever heard of the Pope of Rome? Oh, God forgive me, she said and I pointed out that whereas it took over a year, after that break-in at Democratic headquarters, for the word impeachment to come to mind when you thought of Richard Nixon, it took only three days after we first got the word that a certain Monica Lewinsky, a former intern – it's usually a college helper learning about government – had had an affair with the president and a friend of hers had taped her story just to protect her if she was called to give character evidence in the case of Paula Jones. Remember the former Arkansas state employee who is bringing the President to trial in the spring on charges of making an improper advance to her when he was governor of Arkansas?

The friend took these tapes to Kenneth Starr, one Judge Starr, the special prosecutor and I'd better clear the fog around him by saying that after Nixon resigned, Congress became understandably suspicious of the justice department, which is part of the president's, the executive side of government, of its ability to police itself, so Congress passed an act setting up a special prosecutor to look into crime and rumours of crime in the executive branch, the president's branch of government.

First he examined the labyrinth of a complicated land deal the Clintons got involved in in the long ago. Since then he's spent over a year looking into illegal financing of Mr Clinton's reelection campaign and now, to the rising indignation of many people – about half the public – he's moved onward and inward to the private life of the president in the case of Paula Jones.

Of course he could have refused to listen to the hair-raising tapes of Miss Lewinsky, but having once done so – they seemed relevant to the ongoing Paula Jones charges – he had to request the attorney general's permission, and got it, to use them in his latest criminal investigation.

The criminal part lies here. Miss Lewinsky is alleged to have said that either the president or a very close friend of his, one Mr Jordan, had suggested she lie about her affair and that at some point it seemed better for her to leave the White House and that Mr Jordan helped her to get a job with an important cosmetics firm.

So he did, by the way. He came before the press within 24 hours and said he often tried to help promising young people. Now if Mr Jordan or the president had, has, lied, either about the affair or had told the young woman herself to lie, both of them could be indicted for perjury and for obstruction of justice.

Both of which come under the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanours" necessary to file impeachment charges.

All this was on the President's mind – it was on everybody else's mind – when the Speaker of the House, according to custom, announced, I have the great honour to introduce the President of the United States.

As the President acknowledged a wave of applause, we'd been told from reporters who had screened the Senate and the House members, that the Republicans would sit on their hands and the Democrats, not a single one of whom, by the way, had risen to defend the President's private life, the Democrats would offer polite applause.

What happened was that over 80 times, 100 times by some counts, his words were flooded by applause, many times by a standing ovation. Why? Bill Phoenix rose from the ashes of his presidency in just over one hour.

His speech was a dazzling display of confidence, eloquence, covering a vast array of issues, domestic and foreign, information and hope for all generations about the state of the past, the present and the future, a blueprint for utopia.

His aides say that he has a great gift for compartmentalising, keeping apart the troubles on his mind. I can only say, as he totally ignored every whiff of scandal and urged us to press on with the reform of welfare, beating crime, extending Medicare, facing up to Saddam, I can only say that if he is guilty of the Monica Lewinsky charges, he's the most marvellous actor in the history of the presidency.

He may have committed adultery, but he appears more like a man in pursuit of the Holy Grail.

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