AS THE TRIAL TURNS

So what if Republicans vote to call witnesses at the president’s impeachment trial next week? The star witness for the defense has already appeared. During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, President Bill Clinton didn’t argue the facts or the law. He argued, in so many words, that the standard of judgment should be whether a president is fit to serve. He made a powerful case that he is.

Clinton has an uncanny instinct for catching the mood of the country. Right now, Americans are sick to death of the rancorous partisan warfare going on in Washington. It’s Bosnia. People are killing one another for no apparent reason. The public looks on it all with shock and dismay. They want somebody to put a stop to the destruction. But it doesn’t really touch their lives.

Conventional wisdom has it that voters are going to be looking for leaders next year who are morally pure. Nonsense. They’re going to be looking for leaders who are not part of the vicious, pointless war of annihilation. The best politicians understand that. Earlier this month, Larry King asked Elizabeth Dole how she felt about the impeachment controversy. Dole responded, shrewdly, “Larry, I am a sad and distant observer.”

Amazingly, Clinton assumed the same posture last Tuesday night. He distanced himself from the controversy over his own impeachment! It was as if he were saying, “Who is this guy Clinton they’re all fighting about?”

Clinton reached out to Republicans. Literally. The president offered his hand to new Republican House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). When Hastert got elected earlier this month, he urged Republicans and Democrats to work together in a spirit of civility. “Mr. Speaker, let’s do just that,” the president said. He also offered Republicans some goodies, like higher defense spending, tax-favored investment accounts and a tax credit for stay-at-home parents.

The president’s speech wasn’t just something for everybody. It was everything for everybody: tax credits for long-term-care insurance, family leave for small-business workers, tougher education standards, legal action against tobacco companies, more aid to the former Soviet republics to safeguard nuclear materials, a hate-crimes bill, a renewed push for campaign-finance reform, a higher minimum wage, action to preserve green space, a patients’ bill of rights, steps to control global warming, measures to promote free trade, tough talk on Japanese steel imports, prescription drug insurance for senior citizens . . . whew!

The president’s message? “I want you to listen to me. I’m not going to say this again. I did not have . . . Oops, sorry. I mean I do have an agenda. I may be a lame duck. I may be impeached. But dammit, I can give you a thousand reasons to keep me in office.”

It’s not a big agenda in the old Democratic sense, like the New Deal or the Great Society. Clinton tried that with health-care reform in 1994 and got slapped down. It’s more like George Bush’s “thousand points of light.” Only Clinton’s a Democrat, so they all come from the federal government.

Clinton used the State of the Union speech to save his presidency. Not for the first time, either. After the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal broke last January, he used his 1998 speech to refute the widespread assumption that his presidency was over.

It worked. He got a big bounce in the polls. Only “bounce” is not the right term. The idea of a bounce is, what goes up must come down. But last year’s bounce never came down. Clinton’s job-approval ratings have stayed amazingly high--in the 60s--for a year, the highest ratings on record for a sixth-year president.

This year’s speech may have carried Clinton even higher. Initial poll readings show the president’s ratings climbing into the 70s. That’s significant, because for months, one-third of Americans have said they want this president out. If the president’s job ratings go into the 70s and stay there, it means he’s starting to win over his diehard opponents.

Among them: Christian Coalition chair Pat Robertson, who said last Wednesday that Clinton had “hit a home run” with his speech and that the trial might as well be dismissed. “It’s over as far as I’m concerned,” Robertson commented on his television program.

Last week’s speech had another purpose: The president used it to save his legacy. Clinton wants something after his name besides “one of only two U.S. presidents ever to be impeached.” When he first took office, Clinton saw himself as the third great Democratic president in this century. In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt started Social Security. In the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson created Medicare. In the 1990s, Clinton would guarantee universal health care. That didn’t exactly work out. Now he wants his legacy to be that he saved Social Security and Medicare. That would not be an inconsiderable legacy.

The boldest part of Tuesday’s speech was the president’s proposal to devote most of the projected budget surplus to protecting and expanding entitlements. It’s an idea that brings old Democrats (the elderly) and new Democrats (baby boomers) together. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore have been ardently courting their fellow baby boomers for the past seven years. You could see the payoff in last year’s midterm elections. Millions of “new rich” baby boomers have prospered under this administration, and they came out to save their president.

Republicans are going after them with offers of a tax cut. Clinton is offering to protect their retirement benefits. And invest in education for their children. And improve the quality of life in their suburbs by controlling sprawl. Republicans cry “More big government!” But it’s the kind of government those voters may go for: public-investment programs targeted at the middle class, not social-welfare programs aimed at the poor.

Like a good Democrat, Clinton is trying to get baby boomers to believe in government again. “Once again, our government is a progressive instrument of the common good,” Clinton said Tuesday night, reaffirming the party faith. He called it, “a government for the Information Age.” It’s not your father’s government any more. It’s “a modern government, devoted to fiscal responsibility.” Not tax and spend. It’s a government that gives people “the tools they need to make the most of their own lives.” Individual responsibility, not dependency. It’s the New Democratic vision of government.

Now let’s see. Clinton’s got an agenda, public support, a legacy, a vision. What’s missing? Just one thing: acquittal. He’s got to survive the Senate impeachment trial. High poll numbers and even good election results do not guarantee that. Look at what happened last year.

The top priority for Senate Democrats right now is to prevent the Clinton impeachment proceedings from turning into a sensational criminal trial: O.J. II. That could happen if the Senate votes to call witnesses next week.

In a criminal trial, the issue is guilt or innocence. In an impeachment trial, the issue is fitness to serve. Over three quarters of Americans believe Clinton is fit to serve. But almost 80% believe he’s guilty of perjury, and a majority believe he’s guilty of obstructing justice.

How can the public believe he’s guilty of crimes but still fit to serve as president? Because people feel the crimes he committed are just about sex, an essentially private matter that should never have been investigated and that has no bearing on his ability to do the job.

Democrats remember keenly the controversy over Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court nomination in 1991. What started out as a confirmation hearing turned into a trial. Few senators bothered to address Thomas’ judicial experience or his legal qualifications. The debate turned on one issue: whether Thomas could be proved guilty of sexual harassment. If Thomas could not be proved guilty, he had to be confirmed. He was.

The same danger faces Clinton. If Clinton can be proved guilty of lying under oath or obstructing justice, then he must be punished. The only punishment available is removal from office.

It’s not reassuring to see the president try to argue that he’s innocent. He resorts to legal technicalities, infuriating his critics and irritating his supporters. The White House is on stronger ground when it offers what one House manager called the “so what?” defense: “He did it. So what? These allegations do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses. They have nothing to do with the president’s fitness to serve.”

Once witnesses are called, however, the issue of fitness to serve falls by the wayside. Just as it did in the Thomas case. The only things that matter in a trial are the facts and the law.

Last week, Clinton made his case for acquittal to the American people, and they bought it. Even with a full-scale trial, it seems unlikely that Republicans will be able to reverse that judgment. But they seem determined to try.