Clinton's Public Humiliation

Short of his own impeachment, the president suffered his most bitter congressional beating with the Senate rejection of the test ban treaty last week.

Bill Clinton was the first world leader to sign the treaty three years ago, and the pact cannot take effect globally unless the U.S. ratifies it. But by a vote of 48-51, the Senate rejected the president's appeals and arguments. He could not even muster a simple majority - much less the two-thirds vote needed for ratification.

It leaves Mr. Clinton in the politically humiliating position of advocating a treaty to other nations that he could not get ratified in his own country.

At his news conference Thursday, the president denounced the vote by the Republican-controlled Senate as "partisan politics of the worst kind."

Mr. Clinton said the GOP ignored "the advice of our top military leaders, our most distinguished scientists, our closest allies."

The GOP matched the administration with prominent experts, including former secretaries of defense and directors of the CIA, who advocated rejection of the treaty.

Republicans said the treaty was ineffectual, unverifiable, unenforceable and even dangerous.

Mr. Clinton concedes that some Republicans voted in good faith, but he refuses to accept the Senate vote as the final verdict. Declaring that the fight is far from over, he predicts that "when all is said and done, the United States will ratify the treaty."

He does not say whether he will still be president when it does.

But the fight over the treaty bodes ill for Mr. Clinton's hopes of ending his presidency with a flurry of legislative victories. With just over 15 months left to his term in office, the president wants to leave a legacy of policy achievements that he hopes will diminish the disgrace of his impeachment.

Some Republicans in Congress are in no mood to make that an easy task for him.

Case in point: The federal budget.

Two weeks into the new fiscal year, only five of 13 appropriations bills have been enacted.

"We were confronting a level of extremism and partisanship which is truly chilling for the long-term interest of America. Once again, the leaders of the Republican majority are polluting our spending bills with special interest riders."

The bill that has kept the government from shutting down expires on Thursday. If all appropriations bills aren't enacted by then, another bill will be needed. It's an ugly process as the president told a convention of pediatricians.

"You should feel a great personal bond to the work that I do. I mean, Washington is the only place outside of pediatricians' offices where you can hear so much screaming and crying on a daily basis."

The U.S. Secret Service is among the agencies whose budgets have been passed and signed, and the president went to dedicate its new headquarters building on Thursday, which he was allowed to enter through the front door.

"When I go into a buiding, the Secret Service makes me go into an underground parking garage, past all of the garbage, up the service elevator."

The laughter took on a nervous edge as the president needled his protectors by recounting an incident when the White House security alarm was triggered and the building filled with agents and officers running around with semiautomatic weapons.

"So, they're all looking for somebody invading the White House. I come down the staircase, this guy coming rushing up from the second floor. There he is with his weapon pointed at me. I thought, this would be a heck of a note for the secret service. [ laughter ] 'Clinton killed by agent protecting the president.'"

Apparently, that incident was news to top officials of the Secret Service who wished the president would have kept it secret.

Written by Mark Knoller