Chipping towards the truth

摘要

As the first family flew in for its annual summer break in Martha's Vineyard, all seemed as normal: the warm embraces for celebrity friends, the practised small-talk for the waiting crowd. But how can it be politics or, indeed, family life, as usual? On August 17th, the day before the family holiday, the president sat in the White House Map Room and spent more than four hours testifying by closed-circuit television before a grand jury and its grand inquisitor, independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The same evening, in a four-minute televised address watched by 68m Americans, he told the people what he had told Mr Starr: that he had lied to them for seven months about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.