As he faces Kenneth Starr's prosecutors, President Clinton looks sober, pensive, and dignified.
How ironic that it has taken the release of the long-awaited grand jury testimony videotape to show America this image of its President acting presidential - an image the country had begun to lose sight of.
Unfortunately for Bill Clinton, the words coming from his lips are anything but the normal stuff of world statesmen. The long-awaited artefact from the 18 boxes of Mr Starr's evidence, already dubbed 'sex, lies, and videotape', smashes any lingering doubts over whether the President has been made the central target of an investigation dealing with the grubbiest aspects of sex and adultery.
As Mr Clinton faces the camera, gone are all traces of his politician's winning smile and southern eloquence.
Instead, we see a poker-faced witness, whose lips curl only occasionally in what are the first signs of impatience at questions, and of a man angry at being backed against a wall by his political enemies. But above all, the videotape shows a lawyer's mind working overtime to skirt along the fringes of the English language in a battle of wits with prosecutors.
After the President has read his opening statement admitting to 'inappropriate and intimate contact' with Monica Lewinsky, he does an elaborate verbal tap dance in an attempt to avoid admitting having lied in his January 17 deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit.
His tactic - to continue splitting legal hairs over what kinds of contact he regards as sexual relations - is clearly something he intends to stick to, even as prosecutors try to set one perjury trap after another.
