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Mr. and Mrs.President

See How They Ran

"No wise person should read these poll numbers as a glowing endorsement of Bill Clinton," Mike McCurry, the president's spokesman, said.

"I don't sit at home at night popping the champagne corks," said Doug Sosnik, a senior White House adviser. "I don't believe that these poll numbers will hold up over time."

The White House expects the stratospheric approval ratings to drop, perhaps sharply, as more of the Monica Lewinsky story emerges. And Clinton's advisers are afraid that when that drop comes, it might build into an avalanche of ill will toward the president.

They are especially worried that while Clinton has said his relationship with the 24-year-old former White House intern was not sexual in nature, it also was not the normal relationship a president would have with a low-ranking employee.

In addition, advisers say that while Clinton's opinion poll numbers are in part a result of his concrete accomplishments on behalf of the American people, this will not save him if it turns out he is lying to them about Lewinsky.

"He can't say, `I'm doing a good job, so cut me some slack about telling the truth,' " McCurry said. "He can't say that. He has assured the American people that he has not had sexual relations with this woman and that he never told her not to tell the truth. But if what he has said ends up not being the straight story, the American people will be troubled. They will await further explanations, but they will want to hear what the deal is."

McCurry also answered a question he has refused to answer in public in his daily briefings: Whether he personally believes the president is telling the truth.

"I believe exactly what he has said," McCurry said. "He didn't have sexual relations with her and didn't ask her to lie. And truth to the contrary would be very troublesome to me, to the press and the American people."

Those close to Clinton say that in the weeks ahead, the American people may be asked to accept that a president, who has been accused of sexual impropriety more than once in the past, spent a great deal of time with a young woman, may have given her gifts and done her favors, but did not engage in any sexual acts with her.

In an effort to boost sagging morale among some White House staffers, the president's lawyers have told senior staff members that Clinton's statement that he never had sexual relations with Lewinsky is all-inclusive and contains no lawyerly escape clauses or weasel words.

Speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Jan. 26 with Hillary Rodham Clinton at his side, the president said: "I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

The president also said that he had never told anybody to lie.

"Everything I have been led to believe by the army of attorneys was that this was a categorical statement," said a senior White House adviser, who asked not to be identified. "But if she testifies to the contrary, I don't know where we are at that point. If she becomes Anita Hill -- she has a story to tell and he has a story to tell -- if that's where we end up, that's not helpful."

Some the president's advisers also believe that current polls showing extremely high public approval for Clinton are being misinterpreted. The polls do not indicate, they believe, that the public cares less these days about morality or honesty on the part of the nation's chief executive.

Peter Hart, whose NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Clinton with an eye-popping 79 percent job approval rating, the highest for a second-term president in the history of polling, is extremely cautious in his analysis of the numbers.

"There is no new set of values or morality in this country," Hart said. "The public is accepting this because they see all this as just more allegations. But if the allegations become facts, the numbers will change."

There is no disputing, however, that Clinton apparently has become more popular since having been accused of having had sex with Lewinsky and possibly asking her to lie about it under oath. And in the trips he has made outside the Washington area since the allegations were made public, he has been deluged with good will.

Considering that Clinton's wife believes he is a victim of a vast "right-wing conspiracy," aides traveling with the president have been struck by the lack of protest signs, catcalls or jeers that he has had to face. When Clinton spoke to a crowd of 12,000 in the University of Illinois' Assembly Hall on Jan. 28, he was interrupted just once, and by a man shouting, "We love you, Bill!"

So have Americans become more accepting of accusations of adultery? Are Baby Boomers, who came of age during the sexual revolution, showing a more relaxed attitude toward traditional morality? Or does the public simply expect less of their presidents these days?

Gil Troy, an American who chairs the history department at Montreal's McGill University and who has written extensively about the presidency, doesn't believe any of those things are true.

"Americans want to be led by a moralistic and good father," he said. "What the poll numbers are showing is that Americans don't want to hear about this. They are frustrated with (independent counsel) Ken Starr and with the media."

McCurry agrees. "These poll numbers are a primal scream from the American public," he said. "The story makes most Americans uncomfortable and they don't want to deal with it."

McCurry also said that while Americans have not lowered their standards as to what they expect from a president, they don't expect sainthood, either.

"They understand that presidents -- all of them -- are human beings," he said. "And human beings are flawed and they are all sinners and always have been."

One Democratic strategist, who does consulting for the White House, believes that if the Lewinsky story adversely affects Clinton, he will use a sinner strategy. "What I think the calculation is, in Clinton's mind, is trying to figure out how much he has to confess to," he said. "He is waiting to see what Starr develops. And at some point, it will be, `I confess my sins, I ask forgiveness and I seek redemption.' "

McCurry believes it won't come to that, but he also believes the current high poll numbers do not reflect a blissful state of public satisfaction with the presidency. "The people are not happy," he said. "They are not discounting these stories and they are not uninterested."

McCurry believes that the polls actually are reflecting public approval for Clinton staying focused on matters such as Social Security, health care, the economy and jobs. "The public is desperate that the people in Washington are going to lose focus on what matters to them most," he said.

There may be another dynamic at work: Faith in government in general has been going down over the decades.

"Probably starting with the bullet that killed Kennedy in Dallas and then Watergate and then believing that the government never lies, we've changed how we view all institutions, including the presidency," Sosnik said. "We want our president to be a little better than us, but not too much better. We want our president to be down with the people."

When Clinton was first running for president in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, he faced accusations that he had had a 12-year-affair with Gennifer Flowers and lied about it, that he had smoked marijuana and lied about it, and that he had dodged the draft and lied about it.

In response, he told New Hampshire voters at a town meeting: "If you want a perfect candidate, vote for somebody else." Clinton came in second in New Hampshire, which was considered a great victory.

Following the 1996 campaign, with many stories having surfaced about questionable campaign fundraising and renewed interest in Paula Jones, who is suing Clinton for sexual harassment, McCurry said:

"At some fundamental level, the race was about character. The American voters decided to put aside doubts about Clinton personally because of the job he had done: The economy was good, he had managed the nation's affairs well, and there was peace and prosperity."

Those realities, combined with the fact that he faces allegations, not proven wrongdoing, is boosting him now. But it may all serve merely to push Clinton up very high, so that his fall will be all the greater. Presidential aides are worried that if slippage does occur -- and they expect it to -- there would be a snowball effect.

"For a second-term president, if you're in hollering range of a 50 percent approval rating, that is good," Sosnik said. "But for us to get down to 50 percent, we would have to drop 30 points. And you guys will write screeching headlines about how we are dropping in the polls."

Historian Troy says that is the double-edged sword of the modern presidency. "We are in the age of the manic-depressive presidency," he said. "The president is only as good as his latest headline. He can go from the highest highs to the lowest lows."