WHETHER or not Bill and Hillary Clinton and their White House aides had anything to hide over the long-running Whitewater saga, they still managed to come across as 'the guiltiest-looking bunch of people I have ever seen'.
That recent quote came from the mouth of the Republican Party's national chairman Haley Barbour, and despite being exactly the kind of thing one would expect him to say, had a ring of truth that rose above pure partisan politics.
While it continues to look unlikely that President Clinton will have to take that helicopter from the White House lawn, ending his administration in the same premature vein as Richard Nixon, the awkward fact remains that Whitewater is still ticking away like a time bomb waiting to explode into Mr Clinton's Watergate.
By the time Nixon resigned in 1974, it was two years after the original 'crime' - a break-in at the Democratic headquarters - and the public had forgotten the facts behind the fuss.
What brought the administration down was not the crime but the cover-up. America could forgive Nixon for a bungled attempt to bug his opponents, but it could not forgive him for lying about it.
Clinton spokesmen constantly try to strangle comparisons between Watergate and Whitewater, a sure sign their boss is quite aware of the salutory lessons to be gained from Nixon's ignominious demise. And yet, more than three years after the first tentative mention of a potential Whitewater scandal, the president continues to be plagued by it, and his associates become no less clumsy at dispelling the kind of notions of guilt that Mr Barbour called attention to.
