He spent most of yesterday by himself in the Oval Office, quietly signing bills and pondering whether the telephone number he has for Monica is still good. Since Hillary was busy hundreds of miles away in upstate New York, practicing her Yiddish, it would have been a good day to haul out the humidor and repair to the pantry. The presidential flunkies were vague about what else he might have been doing, other than mooning over lost possibilities, and they were vague about how he'll spend the day after he joins Hillary in a Westchester County polling booth. No one can blame him for that. The president poked his head out of his office only once, for a ceremony for the signing of debt relief legislation.
Nothing cheers a Democratic president like signing away other people's money.
The president pouted that it was Al Gore and not himself out there in the cloudy skies, flitting from Iowa to Tennessee to Florida in a frantic sleepless dash to the finish line on the last day of the 16- month marathon to the White House. He was through trying to stir up the party base, even if mostly by remote control because Al won't be seen in public with him. And he certainly expects and hopes that his wife will win. But these are decisions that are in the voters' hands. And, frankly, what we expect here doesn't have much to do with what happens on the ground tomorrow, but we're hopeful.