President Clinton put his hand in a bag of gifts handed to him by a Martha’s Vineyard merchant Monday and pulled out an oversize dog biscuit wrapped with a bow, presumably for the family dog, Buddy.
“Is it edible?” Clinton wondered aloud, then told the merchant, “You’re going to make me a hero.”
Getting out of the doghouse is much on Clinton’s mind as he vacations with his wife and daughter and considers how to repair the emotional and political damage from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
White House officials said one strategy is to find ways to look presidential. The raids on terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan last week gave him an opportunity to do that, and he is thinking of making a trip later this week, possibly to Boston or Philadelphia, to focus on an issue likely to come before Congress this fall.
The White House said Clinton also is pressing ahead with his planned visit to Russia despite the economic and political turmoil after President Boris Yeltsin’s abrupt switch of prime ministers.
Spokesman Mike McCurry said Clinton is getting a lot of advice from his political advisers on how to handle the crisis surrounding his presidency, including making a second speech to the American people to make another, more direct, apology.
Officials for now played down the idea of a second speech, suggested by adviser James Carville on Sunday, and McCurry said the president “hasn’t made any decision of that nature that I’m aware of.” But he noted Carville usually renders “pretty good advice.”
One major question hanging over the First Family’s vacation is still unanswered: What will First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton do to help her embattled husband? The president and first lady ventured out of their compound separately Monday–the president having lunch with close friend Vernon Jordan and then making a brief stop at Alley’s General Store; Mrs. Clinton had lunch and took a boat ride with friends.
McCurry said the healing process in the Clinton family “is going to take time, and they need to work that out. . . . They are choosing to work that out in private, and that’s probably good for them, as human beings.”
What role Hillary Clinton might play in the president’s political strategy in repairing damage from the Lewinsky scandal is the subject of endless speculation, and officials privately concede it will be critical.
Asked what it was like in the house where the Clintons are staying, McCurry said they are “spending time together. . . . They’ve been talking, they’ve been relaxing, they’ve been reading, and they’ve been dealing with what is a personal, private matter.”
Clinton is planning to reach out to Democrats on Capitol Hill who feel burned by his admission that he lied about his relationship with Lewinsky, a former White House intern.
The White House was buoyed by interviews in which House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said it would likely require more than the Lewinsky issue for Congress to press ahead with impeachment. The speaker urged Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to make a full report on other matters he’s investigated, including the Whitewater land development case, the FBI files controversy and the White House Travel Office firings.
McCurry said Gingrich “was certainly suggesting that he would ensure that the House of Representatives and Congress, generally, treat (impeachment proceedings) with utmost seriousness, and that’s very proper.”
During his brief public outing at Alley’s General Store, an old-fashioned variety store, Clinton sipped coffee and chatted with salespeople and visitors. At his side was presidential adviser Bruce Lindsey, who has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury investigating the Lewinsky matter.
After striking up a conversation with a young boy, the boy’s mother came over to talk to Clinton and was overheard saying, “That was a really good speech.” The president thanked her profusely.
Later, the woman, Meghan Staffell, was asked which speech she was referring to. “The second one,” she said, meaning not the Lewinsky speech but the one on fighting terrorism.
Outside the store, the president worked a rope line of 40 to 50 people who exchanged friendly words with him. The only dissenter was a woman stopped in a line of traffic. She gave the presidential motorcade a thumbs down.
