Tuning In D.C. for the Holidaze

Wednesday morning.

Like a bad TV movie with a predictable script, President Clinton’s champions were in place, and the speech-making, rigidly partisan members of the House Judiciary Committee were on their way to making a public decision on impeachment that they had already made privately.

About the time a witness was exploring “substantiality vs. materiality” with the committee, and you were hoping Jack Kevorkian would arrive and put you out of your misery, Katie Couric was celebrating Christmas in the White House with Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It was one of those surreal TV moments when realities clash and overlap.

While Los Angeles viewers of CNN, MSNBC, the Fox News Channel and C-SPAN watched Clinton’s friends and foes debate impeachment, viewers of NBC saw a videotape of Couric, the first lady and the president engage in yule small talk as if the Republican drive to depose him over the Monica Lewinsky matter were occurring on Jupiter.

The nation’s capital is a city where appearance matters, “Nightline” correspondent Chris Bury noted on ABC late Wednesday night. “The appearance of holiday cheer by a White House in peril. The appearance of debate by a committee that had already made up its mind.”

This White House in peril?

“Today” viewers saw staffers and volunteers decking the halls like Santa’s elves. They met the White House pastry chef and saw his gingerbread castle. They met the floral designer and the cake designer and her edible sculptures of sugar as part of a “winter wonderland” theme created by New York designer Robert Isabell.

Nearly everyone was present but Frosty the Snowman.

Then entered the stars of this production, the first couple.

“Are you all looking forward to the holidays?” Couric asked.

“Very much,” Clinton replied. “Chelsea will be home pretty soon, and we always love it.”

Couric wondered if they had big plans.

“Well,” said Hillary Clinton, “our idea of a big holiday is to go nowhere and do nothing.”

They have “a tree of our own on the second floor,” she added. “And then our family starts coming in, and we’ve got these two little nephews who are just fabulous, and getting smarter and brighter every day and year. And so we just hang out. Y’know, we eat too much and hopefully sleep a little bit more to try to catch up on the year’s deficit, and just have a good time together.”

Bill and Hillary could have passed for Ozzie and Harriet.

It was another remarkable performance by two of TV’s best actors in a city of actors, and an example of how even an embattled president--one who many in Congress hope will soon become an ex-president--can still command the camera.

Actually, Couric’s White House chat with the president and first lady was taped last weekend when the Clintons were wearing formal attire and Hillary Clinton looked especially radiant in her black gown. And before ending it Couric did try twice gently to get the president to comment on the House Judiciary Committee’s “big week comin’ up.” But he declined.

Meanwhile, as a Democratic member of the committee was grousing about its GOP majority’s plans for a “vote on impeachment of the president of the United States on Saturday,” Couric was mentioning to the Clintons, “This is a time of year when people count their blessings and reflect on . . . the things they have to be thankful for.”

She asked them: “Anything in particular that leaps to mind for you all this year?”

These days, because everything connected to the Clintons is presumed to have layers of meaning, you tend to read between the lines of both the questions asked them and the responses they give. So what was Couric trying to get them to say with her question about “blessings,” and what was Clinton telling the nation with this portion of his reply?

“I hope that next year we can continue to do well. I’ve done what I could to try to calm the turmoil elsewhere in the world, and I hope we can keep our economy going and keep making programs.”

Forever more, in fact, everything the Clintons say or do will push the public’s memory buttons. At one point, when Couric commented to Clinton that “your wife looks incredible,” you wondered if she looked incredible enough to keep him from philandering.

When Couric noted that Hillary was “wearing the dress you wore on the cover of Vogue,” and her husband added, “Yes, this is the Vogue dress,” you thought of Lewinsky’s historic semen-stained blue dress.

And your mind went back to the gifts exchanged between Clinton and Lewinsky when Couric wondered if the Clintons had done their Christmas shopping, and Hillary replied, in part: “Many of us give too many gifts, and we certainly receive too many.”

Her response was framed broadly to urge generosity to the nation’s neediest, of course, but your brain framed it narrowly, as a double-entendre.

Meanwhile, back in the judiciary pit, someone was making “a unanimous request consent.” And then Republican Chairman Henry Hyde was saying, “The gentleman may finish his answer.” And someone else was saying, “I respectfully submit” in a charade of civility mixed with acrimony leading to the Republicans drafting four articles of impeachment even before Wednesday’s session had ended.

The tragedy of all this happening was evident enough in an arena that “Nightline” host Ted Koppel that night would accurately title “mundane” and “inglorious.” The smaller tragedy was that so few Americans were watching it and witnessing the machinations of this committee, some of whose gentlemen and gentlewomen earned being sent to the head of the list for personality transplants.

More surrealism.

The committee’s Wednesday ended publicly with a jolting tirade against Clinton by Rep. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. The Clintons’ day ended publicly with them on TV lighting the national Christmas tree at the White House.

The impeachment agenda went forward Thursday, both behind closed doors and on TV, as Democratic minority counsel Abbe Lowell began his comments by challenging the committee’s constitutional grounds to proceed, and viewers saw videotape excerpts of Clinton’s deposition and grand jury testimony in the Paula Jones case.

Whether the president’s various sins, perceived and otherwise, rose to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors remained to be seen. As did whether the crucial actors on this stage would rise to the level of the public trust placed in them.

Maybe the latter will happen. And maybe there is a Santa Claus.