Attacks boost Clinton support

WITHIN AN hour of President Bill Clinton's announcement that he had ordered the strikes on targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, the political support that had been ebbing away so conspicuously since his admission of adultery and deceit less than 72 hours before came welling back.

From both sides of the congressional divide there was vocal approval: almost everyone wanted to be in on the act of a strong America exerting its power against the evil of international terrorism.

The change was most striking and immediate among Democrats, notably those with presidential aspirations. The House minority leader, Dick Gephardt, who had been incommunicado to the point of rejecting a US network's offer of a satellite truck to broadcast his support for Mr Clinton from France earlier in the week, materialised to "commend the President" for protecting "American lives and interests".

His sentiments were echoed by Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, who had earlier expressed his "disappointment" with the President's conduct in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Republicans, including the crusty chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Jesse Helms, also seized the chance to back a decisive projection of American power abroad. Had they not been urging the US to be tougher, with Iraq, with the embassy bombers? How could they not be supportive now?

Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who had withheld comment on Mr Clinton's personal discomfiture, said: "The US did exactly the right thing."

Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, who had pleaded with Mr Clinton to apologise to save the Republican majority Congress the embarrassment of having to impeach him, then called his admission "pathetic", was eloquent in his praise.

In so many respects, Mr Clinton's military strikes on indeterminate terrorists worked their predictable magic on a weakened leader and on recalcitrant politicians. Mr Clinton - shorn of authority in the White House Map Room on Monday - recouped his power among the flags and leadership totems of the Oval Office on Thursday, and Congress rallied round.

The Republican right, which had been assembling an anti-Clinton constituency of the morally concerned to press for his resignation, found itself back out on a limb. Did they want a strong America? Of course. Did they want a flawed president? Well, no, but, as one put it: "We only have one President, and I support what he did."

With one (or two) flights of missiles, it seemed, Mr Clinton was free, or was he? He had reminded the world of America's military might and the President's capacity to use it. Absent or mealy-mouthed before, the Secretaries of Defense and State, the National Security Adviser and the Chief of the Joint Staffs of the armed forces, appeared on cue to praise and defend the President's action.

This time, it was the response of the public that exposed his continuing weakness. It was people in workplaces across America whose first reaction to the attacks was a smirk of recognition.

Meanwhile, video shops in Washington have been struggling to keep up with demand for Wag the Dog, the film about a fictitious war "fought" to save a president. "It's been renting like crazy," said one store manager.