President Looks The Other Way
The U.S. Senate may be making history by conducting the first presidential impeachment trial since 1868, but the president is determined not to notice.
CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante reports that President Clinton showed off his tango Monday night at a state dinner in honor of Argentine President Carlos Menem.
Mr. Clinton perfected his tango technique with Amanda de Fernandez, the wife of Argentina's minister of the economy,
while Menem escorted Hillary Rodham Clinton to the dance floor.
But it was a tango by actor Robert Duvall that stole the show. In his official toast, Menem pointed to Duvall's chairmanship of the U.S. Tango Academy as an example of the strong ties that connect the people of the two nations.
But in what has become all-too-common an occurrence lately, the president failed to schedule a joint news conference with Menem, as is usually done with visiting heads of state. Reporters were almost sure to raise as many questions about the trial as about U.S. relations with Argentina.
With dogged determination, President Clinton has given the impression that he is all but oblivious to his impeachment trial in the Senate. Instead, he appears to be focusing on running the country.
CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller reports that Mr. Clinton emerged from the Oval Office for an event of one kind or another every day last week to show he was not sidetracked from the nation's business.
On Monday, Jan. 4, the first working day of 1999, the president had new beginnings on his mind as he proposed a $1,000 tax credit for those paying for long-term health care.
"This new year gives us all a sense of making a fresh start, a sense of being able to think anew," Mr. Clinton said at a White House ceremony.
Another day, another event: On Tuesday, Jan. 5, it was a talk on crime prevention.
"It is clear to us that if we're going to continue to reduce the rate of crime, we have to do something to avoid releasing criminals," the president said.
Midweek, the president had news to trumpet about the current fiscal year.
"We will close out this century with the surplus of not less than $76 billion, the largest in the history of the United States," he crowed.
On Thursday, Jan. 7, the day the Senate formally received the articles of impeachment, the president offered up another budget initiative. "We will triple our investment in academically enriched after-school programs," he vowed.
On Friday, Jan. 8, the Senate adopted ground rules for a trial and the president took a walk through the Detroit Auto Show, trumpeting the longest peacetime economic expansion in the nation's history.
"America is working again," he told a group of auto workers. "It's working - not just the economy. The crime rate is the lowest in 25 years. A lot of our social problems are succeeding. It's working again."
This event-a-day strategy is continuininto this week with presidential announcements scheduled Tuesday on the environment, and later this week on health care and crime.