The Boredom of Proof

By MARGARET CARLSON

A friend of mine joked recently that if somebody told him the President had been driving Princess Diana's car at the time of her death, his first reaction would be, "Didn't we know that already?"

If that's the bar the House managers delivering the case against Clinton must surpass, there's no shame in failing to deliver. With the choreography they chose--all 13 of them getting an hour-plus in front of the cameras--they surely weren't concerned about repetition. Already, the 60,000 official pages, the hundreds of unofficial ones, plus nonstop Geraldo and MSNBC, have seeped into the public consciousness like elevator music. We can hum along with "We were never really alone." "There is absolutely no sex of any kind." "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is."

But these managers dared to be dull for a purpose. Dull was the right antidote to their frothing performance in the House. Dull is good when the Senate has deigned to be host to the poor relations with country manners in the upper house. Dull fits their perverse purpose: to make a case strong enough to vindicate their vote to impeach, but not so strong that the need for witnesses isn't manifest. The only way to pre-empt Days of Our Lives is to get the gold-festooned Chief Justice to ask Monica Lewinsky to raise her right hand. It's their last chance to change the public's mind.

Henry Hyde opened by reading the resumes of the other 12 managers. This reverse voir dire yielded one illuminating fact: they're not just lawyers; four of them served in the JAG corps, which punishes adultery with imprisonment. (Is it just a coincidence that JAG is majority leader Trent Lott's favorite TV program?) They heaped both flattery ("We want you to know how much we respect you") and abuse (each speech duplicated others, with lectures on the law to lawyers, who had to sit there and take it). The House managers are such unknowns that photos were circulated so the Senate wouldn't confuse Bob Barr with George Gekas.

Still, the managers had the undivided attention of the Senators, sitting quietly for what must be record-setting periods. Fatigue was an ever present danger. When I met up with Senator Orrin Hatch in his office at lunchtime, he was eating lightly to forestall his usual midafternoon slump. But that broccoli and baked potato were no match for air on the Senate floor, as recirculated and stuffy as that on a 747. By 3 p.m. his head was nodding. Those scribbling most energetically were not necessarily the most attentive: Senator Byron Dorgan was writing on cream-colored stationery what looked like thank-you notes. John Breaux hunched over two nearly identical briefing books, one on the trial, the other on an upcoming Mardi Gras event. Jay Rockefeller, a compulsive highlighter, covered entire pages in yellow. Bob Kerrey drew a rainbow. Joe Biden kept taking out his pocket calendar, as if it must surely be February by now. Senator John McCain perked up enormously when a page delivered a phone message. What fun, a hall pass! It would be a cheap shot, looking down from the press gallery, to comment on hair. But on a per capita basis, the Senate must contain the largest number of adult gum chewers in the country.

To get within camera range, Senator Bob Smith changed his seat from the third row to the second. The neatest desk belonged to Lott, fitting for a man who presses his shirts after they come back from the laundry. He's so efficient he called for a 15-min. break before poor Representative Ed Bryant had actually finished speaking. The press section, fearing that perhaps we were not witnessing the trial of the century, was relieved when Dominick Dunne, the reporter of record for the previous trial of the century, in Los Angeles, finally arrived.

The trial got so soporific that Senator Tom Harkin's stunt objection over not calling the jurors jurors but "triers" was considered high drama. The best drama was supplied by Representative Asa Hutchinson. Like a sportscaster, he went to the tapes and chose bites of Clinton at his most weaselly. And like the director of a thriller, Hutchinson showcased the week of Jan. 17 with such precision you could see every point at which the perp could have come clean but didn't, that when cornered the President substituted cunning for conscience.

Repetition came even in the quotes from Bartlett's as prosecutors strained for gravitas. Representative Bill McCollum took us with him on his drive to the office as he contemplated the ice on the trees and the geese on the wing and his awesome task. The House managers call themselves historic when all we know for now is that what they are doing is rare. They are characters suited to the Guinness Book of World Records, not Edmund Morris or David McCullough.

As long as McCollum and Barr and Starr are working so feverishly against the President, Clinton's supporters will continue to see their tactics as more of a threat to the Republic than the President. Quiet the extremists, move to censure, and his support will evaporate. And unlike the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, now dismissed by history as a partisan act, Clinton's trial would end in his near universal condemnation, a judgment made by all of us, not one faction of us, that will stand the test of time.