AS the fallout continues from a sex scandal involving a senior White House aide, President Clinton stepped up his re-election campaign this Labour Day holiday weekend with a hectic bus tour of four states.
He will be preaching the message from his acceptance speech to the Democratic convention that he has a modernising agenda for a "bridge to the 21st century" in contrast to the Republican contender, 73-year-old Mr Bob Dole, who is "a bridge to the past".
The President and his running mate, Vice-President Al Gore, flew from Chicago to Missouri for the start of the tour after a round of post-convention parties which went on into the small hours of Friday morning.
No cameras or microphones were allowed near the presidential party or Air Force One before the departure so that Mr Clinton would not have to answer questions about the shock resignation of his political consultant, Mr Dick Morris.
Mr Morris was forced to leave Chicago in disgrace on Thursday before the President's acceptance speech when an expose of his relationship with a prostitute in Washington in Star magazine was leaked in advance to a New York newspaper. He is alleged to have allowed her to eavesdrop on a telephone conversation with the President and see advance copies of speeches to the convention by Mrs Hillary Clinton and Vice-President Gore.
The latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll taken this week before the scandal broke shows President Clinton increasing his lead over Mr Bob Dole to 13 points. An ABC poll shows Mr Clinton ahead by 17 points.
The resignation of Mr Morris, and the lurid details of the affair, which will be given further publicity in Star magazine when it appears this weekend, have dominated media coverage of the final day of the convention. There are divided views on how damaging the revelations will be for President Clinton, whose campaign message has been largely influenced by Mr Morris.
The Star has paid the prostitute. Ms Sherry Rowlands, an undisclosed sum for her diary of encounters with Mr Morris and has obtained pictures of them together in Mr Morris's hotel in Washington near the White House.
While Mr Morris has said he will not reply to the charges, which he describes as "the sadistic vitriol of yellow journalism", he has not denied them. He says he resigned to avoid "becoming the issue" in the campaign but White House sources indicated that he at first wanted to stay on and resigned only after President Clinton asked a friend and former aide, Mr Erskine Bowles, to discuss the matter with him.
The breaking scandal seemed to have had little effect on the closing stages of the convention. Most of the delegates interviewed by the media dismissed the matter as of little consequence.
The Republican camp has been privately delighted with the latest scandal to hit the White House after Whitewater, Travelgate and the FBI files, but Mr Dole has been careful not to comment on the "sleaze" aspects of the latest revelations.
He has limited himself to joking that now that Mr Morris has departed maybe President Clinton will revert to being the liberal Democrat he really is. Mr Dole has regularly complained that Mr Clinton, under the influence of Mr Morris, has been stealing Republican policies as part of the "re-positioning" strategy to win over moderate voters who deserted the Democrats in 1994.
The New York Times, in an editorial entitled "The exploding strategist", said that Mr Clinton's luck had seemed too good to last and that has turned out to be the case.
The editorial said that the scandal "reactivates the aura of immorality that has always been a liability for Mr Clinton. At a time when the Republican campaign was sinking again in the polls and seemed to lack a clue as to what to do, the Dale-Kemp ticket has been given an opening."