At the end of one of the strangest days in American politics, President Clinton delivered an upbeat State of the Union address within hours of the opening of his defence in the Senate impeachment trial.
In his speech, President Clinton highlighted US diplomatic efforts in Northern Ireland which helped to achieve "the landmark Good Friday agreement". He reaffirmed his support for the full implementation of the agreement.
The impeachment and trial of Mr Clinton have not prevented his poll ratings remaining at near-record levels. Less than six hours after the 100 senators had listened to the White House counsel, Mr Charles Ruff, describe the prosecution case as "a witches' brew of charges", they reassembled on Capitol Hill to listen to Mr Clinton himself lay out ambitious plans stretching over the rest of his presidential term.
The senators who joined the members of the House of Representatives to listen to the President must have been acutely aware that his political fate is now in their hands. If they convict him, with a two-thirds majority, of the impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, Mr Clinton will be removed from office and replaced by Vice-President Gore.
Mr Ruff, who opened the President's defence from the wheelchair he has used since his youth, deliberately shortened his presentation so that the trial session would not end too close to the President's speech. Among those in the public gallery were the actors Whoopi Goldberg and Frank Langella.
The White House had to drop a plan to have Democratic members of the House of Representatives join the White House lawyers in the defence of President Clinton following objections from senior Democratic senators such as Senator William Byrd. The White House aim had been to try and show that the impeachment in the House had been handled in a very partisan way.
One of the House members who was to have been called was Mr John Conyers, who had described the independent counsel, Mr Ken Starr, as "a federally paid sex policeman". The White House spokesman, Mr Joe Lockhart, had earlier said that the aim of bringing in the House members was to explain to the Senate how the impeachment had "moved forward in a very partisan way and in a way that was not fair to the President". There was also a change of tactics in the White House defence when Mr Ruff queried the role of Ms Linda Tripp, whose secret recording of her conversations with Ms Monica Lewinsky triggered the investigation by Mr Starr. Mr Ruff said that Ms Tripp "was able to play this oddly multifaceted role" to assist lawyers of Ms Paula Jones and Mr Starr's investigation at the same time. Mr Ruff said it was inexplicable that Mr Starr had allowed this to happen.
Behind the scenes the tussle over the calling of witnesses such as Ms Lewinsky is continuing. Republicans have been insisting that she and other witnesses are needed to resolve conflicts of interest, but Democrats say this is just to prolong the trial and embarrass President Clinton.
A vote on whether to call witnesses is expected early next week, with the Republican majority in a position to win the vote. The Senate Democratic leader, Senator Tom Daschle, has said that witnesses could lead to the spectacle of 100 senators watching Ms Lewinsky "point to where the President touched her". Mr Ruff, who served as a prosecutor in the Watergate impeachment of President Nixon, attacked the case made by the Republican prosecutors last week. He called their efforts "nothing more than a rush to judgment".
Criticising the impeachment articles accusing Mr Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice, Mr Ruff said that the prosecutors "in essence treated these articles as empty vessels to be filled with some witches' brew of charges". "There is not a court anywhere, highest to lowest, that would hesitate, if they were confronted with an indictment written like these articles, to throw it out," Mr Ruff said. "William Jefferson Clinton is not guilty of the charges. He did not commit perjury. He did not obstruct justice. He must not be removed from office," Mr Ruff declared at the opening and end of his presentation.
A new poll shows that two-thirds of the American public want the President to remain in office. The survey by the independent Pew Research Centre taken between January 14th and 17th shows that 69 per cent said that the trial had not changed their opinion about whether President Clinton should stay or go.
Clinton focuses on country's needs: page 13