If Bill Clinton is the central character in the drama that is convulsing Washington, then the man who is writing the script of this autumn's extraordinary events is Newt Gingrich.

Feminists may be preoccupied with Monica and Hillary. Gossip-mongers may be diverted by Matt Drudge and Salon, the Internet magazine. Conspiracy theorists may be riveted by Kenneth Starr and Sidney Blumenthal. These are all fascinating and, in some case, important figures. Ultimately though, they are peripheral. The person who really matters now is Gingrich.

The hunting of Bill Clinton has always been highly political, but until September 11th there were other aspects to it. With the submission of the Starr Report to Congress last week, however, Clinton's crisis became wholly and explicitly political. And since the Congress is controlled by the Republicans, and since the leader of the Republicans is the House Speaker, Newt Gingrich is the playmaker of the Clinton crisis.

Gingrich underlined his centrality in a rare but trenchant set of comments yesterday in a speech to the conservative Christian Coalition. His words made clear that he is prepared to go all the way in driving Clinton out of office if necessary.

"This is a constitutional challenge," Gingrich said. "We in the House will do our duty. We won't do an inch more than our duty for partisanship, and we won't do an inch less than our duty out of intimidation. We will do our duty. We will let the facts lead us where they lead us."

In spite of exceptions such as yesterday, Gingrich is trying to keep out of the limelight as events take their course on Capitol Hill. But in the shadows, Gingrich is plotting that course, and with it the future of Clinton and of Gingrich himself.

As his remarks indicate, Gingrich has been careful to take, or at least to appear to take, the formal and bipartisan high ground in dealing with the Starr Report. He has emphasised that Clinton's potential impeachment is a formal and constitutional question, and has gone out of his way to allow the minority Democrats to have equal access to Starr's evidence and to be consulted about the shaping of the process.

At the same time, Gingrich has tried hard not to appear preoccupied with the Starr process. At a press conference on education earlier in the week, the first question he faced was inevitably about the scandal. "We in the Congress are actually focusing on substance," Gingrich snapped. "Yesterday, I spent less than 45 minutes on the topic that interests you most."

During the months, though, Gingrich has spent much more than 45 minutes plotting the Republican response to the long-anticipated Starr recommendations. Like his senate opposite number, Trent Lott, Gingrich spent the summer vacation reading widely on impeachment and drawing up his strategy. His pose may be of neutrality and business as usual. But his grasp and control of the events that are now unfolding on Capitol Hill is total and unchallenged.

"He calls all the shots," a senior colleague told the New York Times this week. "If tapes are going to be released, it's his decision. If hearings are going to be held, he will decide. He consults with us. He listens to us. But he makes the calls."

NOW that he has got Clinton on the hook, Gingrich's strategy is to play the President on a long line. He is as well aware as the White House that Clinton remains a popular President and that public opinion is opposed to impeachment. But he has decided to pursue a gradual, drip-drip strategy on Capitol Hill in the hope that, over the weeks ahead, the Republican-controlled constitutional process will create a momentum in which public opinion begins to desert Clinton and to conclude that impeachment is the lesser of two evils.

That is why Gingrich was promptly in favour of the publication of the Starr Report - by his beloved Internet. That is why he is now pressing the process - irresistibly but not with overt haste - for the release of Starr's supplementary materials, including the presidential videotapes. That is why it is inevitable that, in a few weeks, Republicans will vote the course that Gingrich wants, a formal impeachment inquiry.

In the short term, the purpose of this strategy is to ratchet up the tension in advance of the November 3rd mid-term elections. Gingrich's pollsters have told him that core Republicans are more likely to vote than core Democrats this year, a reminder that Clinton's popularity in the polls is not a guarantee of Democratic popularity in the elections.

The Republicans have a majority of 11 seats in the current 435-member House of Representatives, and Gingrich is set on increasing that majority this autumn. In the Senate, where the Republicans have 55-45 majority, he aims to push his party towards an unlikely but not inconceivable 67. Gains like these would give Gingrich and Lott a stranglehold on the impeachment process in both houses.

Boosted by electoral success, and with the defeated Democrats even more demoralised than ever, Gingrich clearly believes that the path to impeachment would then lie open before him, provided always that events rather than right-wing partisanship appear to be driving the process.

And if he can pull that trick, then Gingrich will turn his attention to another goal - winning the Republican nomination in 2000 and replacing Clinton, with whom his career has been so deeply entwined for so long.