There’s no blinking the truth: Campaign ’98 was not only a bad Republican defeat, it was a personal triumph for the president. Some happy-talk Republicans will want of course to deny the magnitude of the president’s victory. They will point to the exit polls showing that voters still disapprove of his character; they will argue (as Newt Gingrich has) that the media are willfully ignoring the big news of a third consecutive Republican House majority; or perhaps (like Senate majority leader Trent Lott) they will repeat post-election the Democratic pre-election spin that the ’98 results were the product of hundreds of local races rather than one big national campaign.

Well, phooey. Throughout the campaign, the Democratic party made clear that a vote for them was a vote to let the president off scotfree. (At this writing, the Democratic ads are still posted at the party’s Web site, www.democrats.org.) The ritualized condemnations of the president’s “inappropriate” behavior that congressional Democrats unhappily summoned up in August were nowhere to be heard in October. They nailed their colors to the mast. “All Republicans talk about are investigations,” an actress complained in one radio spot. “They are obsessed with getting rid of the president. There is one way to stop this.” “Yeah,” replies a second female voice. “It’s time to get rid of those Republicans.” The last round of Democratic national television ads put the message even more bluntly. Against a background of the Capitol dome, the ads intoned, “This is no ordinary time. Republicans have made removing the president from office their top priority. Vote Democratic and tell Congress we’re ready to move on.”