Atonement for the Past, Eye to the Future

In four sentences read soberly in the Rose Garden, President Clinton accepted responsibility Friday for “the great burden” his deeds had imposed on the American people, and he looked forward to the remaining 708 days of his presidency.

“Now I ask all Americans and I hope all Americans here in Washington and throughout our land will rededicate ourselves to the work of serving our nation and building our future together,” the president said.

The day the U.S. Senate voted to acquit Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice was marked at the White House in measured steps and muted tones. Mindful that earlier celebrations and partisan gatherings had stirred Republican complaints that the president was gloating, he and his senior aides took care to stay deep within what his press secretary had called “a gloat-free zone.”

Clinton has expressed increasing degrees of apology in the 387 days since the nation learned of his relationship with Lewinsky.

His statement Friday, delivered two hours after the Senate voted at midday, went further. Pictured April 1 banging a drum and chomping on a cigar when Paula Corbin Jones’ sexual harassment case was dismissed, criticized for the bravado he projected Dec. 19 when he was impeached, he expressed sorrow not just for what he had done but also for its cost.

“Now that the Senate has fulfilled its constitutional responsibility, bringing this process to a conclusion, I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events and the great burden they have imposed,” the president said.

He paused between phrases. He bit his lower lip.

As he spoke, a stiff breeze heralding a cold front snapped at budding branches of magnolia trees to his right and left--and at the U.S. and presidential flags on the colonnade behind him. It raised wisps of his nearly gray hair. Within the hour, great clouds of metallic gray, bearing rain and sleet, were rolling toward the nation’s capital.

His prepared statement completed in 82 seconds, Clinton turned toward the Oval Office, then returned to the presidential lectern to respond to a reporter’s shouted question:

“In your heart, sir, can you forgive and forget?”

“I believe,” he said quietly, “any person who asks for forgiveness has to be prepared to give it.”

It was a studied response, delivered with practiced authority.

With that, he walked slowly, step by deliberate step, back to the Oval Office.

In a message dispatched by e-mail throughout the White House, the president later acknowledged the difficult year his aides had endured. He told them:

“I know that my actions and the events they triggered have made your work even harder. For that, I am profoundly sorry. In all this, under the most extraordinary of circumstances, you never lost sight of your first obligation--to serve the people of our nation. For that, I am profoundly grateful.”

The president spent the morning in the White House residence, Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her mother were there. The president spent some time with them, exercised--he often works out on a step machine--and did not watch TV coverage of the Senate votes, his spokesman said. Later, he worked on the statement he was to deliver later in the day.

It was somewhere between the exercise machines and the writing tablet that Clinton learned his job was safe. Chief of Staff John Podesta relayed reports by telephone as the Senate voted.

Concerned that his words not be misunderstood, Clinton did not decide until shortly before he spoke whether he would deliver his remarks in person or simply in writing, Douglas Sosnik, a counselor to the president, said.

Throughout the afternoon and throughout the White House, one word was used to describe the mood: “relief.”

“There’s no great high or low from a day like today except relief that it’s over,” Lockhart said.

“We don’t have the ups and downs you would expect we would with him,” another presidential assistant said. “He’s been pretty even-keel. He seemed relieved and ready to move on.”

Indeed, shortly after he spoke in the Rose Garden, Clinton turned to the next item on his agenda: A briefing, with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and others, about the overnight trip he will make to Merida, Mexico, beginning Sunday.

No one applauded. No one offered congratulations. The topic that had consumed his White House for more than a year never arose.