By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, March 19, 1999; Page A29

It has been just a month since the great Republican impeachment debacle -- remember the headlines: "Clinton Acquitted Decisively: No Majority for Either Charge" -- and, oh, how the climate has changed. The White House and the Democratic Congressional Caucus are today gloat-free zones, and not out of admirable self-restraint. There is nothing like a credible rape charge to take the bloom off an impeachment victory.

But it was more than just the power of Juanita Broaddrick's charges, or even her son's affecting retelling of the story on national TV, that altered the post-impeachment mood. It was the shame visited upon Democratic leaders who were required, by party loyalty and by the stock they had already invested in Bill Clinton's innocence, to dismiss her charge with "it's just a he-said, she-said" rape story, so "let's move on." One can only imagine the embarrassment, the self-loathing, of those who for years decried the marginalization and victimization of women with stories exactly like Juanita Broaddrick's, now publicly dismissing her with a shrug and a lame plea of agnosticism.

Agnosticism, mind you. Not denial. What was most astonishing about the Broaddrick episode was what did not happen: Not a single person in the White House or Congress or the Democratic leadership stood up to say that this charge is a calumny and a fabrication. The lone exception was the president's lawyer, who is paid to issue such denials.

The Clinton presidency is not under a shadow. It is a shadow. It is insubstantial in the extreme. Oh, yes, Clinton is the champion of standardized design for child safety seats, the kind of thing an assistant undersecretary of transportation might make a major address about. But that is all. On matters presidential, it is difficult to take him seriously.

The erosion is not just due to the Broaddrick story, whose effects are lingering, subterranean. Two other events have served to reverse the post-impeachment mood. They had all the subtlety of the snap of a thong.

One was Monica's coming out. She told her story, her whole story, nothing but Monica's story with lip-smacking relish (stores are having trouble keeping her lipstick in stock) to a Super Bowl-size audience. Her Barbara-fest marked the closing parenthesis to what, in retrospect, was a mere detour in the life of this scandal: the impeachment process. Impeachment was a five-month interlude consisting of Republicans and the law intruding themselves into what the country has insisted all along is nothing but a sex scandal. Monica's reappearance pushed the theatrical legalisms of congressional proceedings into distant history and let the scandal resume its natural -- downward -- trajectory.

The other event was George Stephanopoulos's book. Here is Clinton undone not just by his accusers and paramours but by his closest aides. They now suggest that he is unfit to be president. Stephanopoulos says he would not have helped elect Clinton had he known then what he knows now. Mike McCurry, asked by the BBC about Clinton's fitness to be president, said, "I have enormous doubts." His former press secretary (Dee Dee Myers), his former chief of staff (Leon Panetta), his former senior guru (David Gergen) all agonize publicly over the same question. Even old friend Robert Reich has said, "Mr. Clinton has no presidency to defend."

When his closest aides feel a mixture of embarrassment and even guilt at having helped this man ascend to power, how can the rest of the country salute him with any conviction?

The Broaddrick charge, the Lewinsky tell-all and the Stephanopoulos confession have reset the course of the Clinton presidency after its gravity- and logic-defying impeachment bubble. How? By emptying the stage of the distractions, the foils and the fall guys. No Ken Starr. No Henry Hyde. No Bob Barr. No right-wing conspiracy. All gone.

Check out the country's leading political indicator. On a typical night, Jay Leno will offer a dozen Clinton-the-buffoon jokes. There might be one on Linda Tripp. But Starr and the impeachment bogeymen have all but disappeared.

Impeachment is over. The stage is empty. Clinton stands there alone, ruined.

This is the worst possible outcome for the Democrats. Had Clinton been removed, they might have claimed him as a kind of cultural martyr, a man who, having made no deliberate assault on the constitutional structure of the state, was nonetheless overthrown by a vengeful opposition, a blue-nose lynch mob still mad about the '60s. There are advantages to martyrdom. But Clinton is not the kind of man to consider them. He wanted only survival. He's got it. Hollow, he lingers.