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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Clinton Must Convince National Jury

Sandy Grady Knight-Ridder

Once a star but now a suspect, he went into the dock of national television with his fate on the line.

Much of the TV audience, though, had already made up its mind - guilty as charged.

Not O.J.

Bill Clinton. Acting as his own defense attorney in Tuesday night’s televised trial, the State of Union speech.

Clinton had always come up big in clutch speeches. But he needed the lawyerly guile of Robert Shapiro and Johnnie Cochran if he was to convince a national jury his presidency isn’t dead, cooked, irrelevant.

Their eyeballs bleary from a network orgy of the O.J. Simpson trial, would Americans click off Clinton’s comeback pitch?

After all, they couldn’t be blamed for thinking noisy, nettlesome Newt Gingrich the real president, Clinton an imposter.

Sure, when Clinton walked into the chamber for his trial by fire at 9:09 p.m., Democrats clapped defiantly. But there were relatively fewer of them than any time in 50 years.

Looking out at the Republican-dominated scene, Clinton joked wanly, “Now I know how some of you felt in 1992 … We’ve heard America shouting. We must all say, ‘I hear you.”’

Clinton did get the congressfolks’ bemused attention, by telling them to clean up their act: “Stop taking lobbyists’ perk. Just stop it.”

But Clinton’s performance split into two confusing speeches: (1) a pale Republican imitation, and (2) a give-‘em-hell Democrat.

Trouble came when giddy Republicans, despite their leaders’ warnings to treat Clinton with respect, whooped sarcastically for anything that sounded like a Clinton surrender.

When Clinton used such GOP buzzwords as “make government leaner, not meaner” and “cut the deficit more” and “give power back to the states,” Republicans cheered raucously.

Grinning behind Clinton like an emperor-in-waiting, Gingrich led the sardonic war whoops.

Republicans were mousetrapped into another outburst when Clinton mentioned their pet, the balanced-budget amendment. They sulked, though, when he added, “But be straight with people, tell ‘em what you’ll cut, how it will affect them.”

I thought the Clinton’s most authentic moment came when he wrestled somberly with welfare reform, one of Gingrich’s hot buttons. Sure, cut people off the dole who won’t work, said Clinton intensely - “but don’t put them in the street, don’t punish children for their parents’ mistakes.”

Then he rallied despondent Democrats by phasing into his Trumanesque, fighting mode.

Clinton said he’d go to the mat for the Brady anti-gun bill and ban on assault weapons: “A lot of people laid down their seats in Congress so police wouldn’t be victims of assault weapons. I won’t let it be repealed.”

Translation: Make my day, risk a veto.

Bruised Dems roused again when Clinton made his case for keeping his national service corps, revisiting health reform and jacking up the $4.25 minimum wage.

Switching to a final grace note, Clinton recalled being hugged by a woman in flooded California and told, “I’m a Republican but I’m glad you’re here.”

Clinton’s homily to the battling pols in front of him: “We’ve got to stop seeing each other as enemies.”

Clearly, Clinton’s “New Covenant” (a dull, lackluster phrase) was a slide back to the mainstream from which he won in 1992. But you wonder if Americans have tuned Clinton out, as a straw-man president.

Did the O.J.-weary TV audience grit its way through Bill’s meandering, 81-minute spiel, the wordiest State of the Union in history?

His speech was so long, Christie Whitman, delivering the GOP reply, almost bumped into such late-night owls as Letterman, Leno and Koppel.

Whitman was crisp, confident and mercifully brief, needling Clinton for sounding Republican and bragging about her tax cuts. Easy to see why Christie may be some Republican’s 1996 running mate.

If this was the most crucial speech of Clinton’s presidency, as Chief of Staff Leon Panetta boasted, it was a noble failure.

Despite the pudding of humility, defiance and promises, there was no dynamic theme: What does Clinton stand for?

“When he reinvents himself three or four times, you wonder who he really is,” said non-fan Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas.

“He showed a split personality,” said another skeptic, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. “One minute he says he’ll cooperate, then he takes a shot at Congress.”

I think his critics were right. Trying to tight-rope the center line, verbose and muddled, Clinton lost his focus and his audience.

Bring back Marcia Clark.

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