Friday, August 14th 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- As the day approaches when President Clinton will give his testimony before Kenneth Starr's grand jury, one is reminded of Frank Capra's Academy Award-winning film, "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur.

Mr. Deeds, a tuba playing "poet," resides in a backwater town in Vermont, pens sentimental postcards for a living. Quite suddenly he inherits $20 million from a New York uncle he's never met.

And so the story begins.

Deeds is hustled to outrageous Manhattan by a seedy law firm which had already embezzled the estate out of half a million dollars. There he is crucified by the press, "arty" society, and betrayed by his lady love. He's called "Cinderella Man" because he feeds donuts to horses, plays the tuba to think, and uses real muscle to confront real insults. He jumps on a fire engine to help fight a conflagration, gets drunk for the first time in his life and arrives home escorted by the police in his underwear. He writes a love poem to Babe Bennett, a tough newspaper woman posing as "just a nice girl" in order to get close enough to Deeds to write "insider" stories for her paper. Her stories are cruel and mock him, painting him as a hick.

Finally, when the greed of those around him overwhelms, he decides to give his fortune away to families willing to work ten acre farms he'll provide. The law firm (Cedar, Cedar and something-or-other), afraid of losing a large client and having their theft uncovered, tracks down another heir and hauls Mr. Deeds before a sanity hearing in the hope of having him committed as a manic-depressive. They fail. And in the end, Deeds is seen hugging Babe Bennett before a cheering throng.

A happier ending one couldn't imagine.

Bill Clinton plays the saxophone. He's from a "hick" town in Arkansas called Hope, and while he may not be a poet he is an orator of notable merit. Mr. Clinton didn't inherit $20 million, but did inherit something more valuable -- the White House. He came to Washington -- perhaps the single cruelest town on earth by a wide margin -- hoping to make things better for the citizens who put him there. Like Deeds, Clinton was mocked as a rube even before he ousted preppy poster boy George Bush in 1992. He was unrelentingly pilloried by a sensation-obsessed press over what seemed one non-scandal after another: "Whitewater", Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, "Filegate", "Travelgate" and now Monica Lewinsky. His wife, Hillary Clinton, was lynched simply because she tried to play a positive role in providing decent health care to everyone in America. Like Deeds, Bill Clinton was probably a bit overwhelmed by his new job. Like Deeds he made some mistakes. But what president doesn't?

In one poignant scene of Capra's film, Deeds says to Babe as they overlook Times Square, "Why do people get so much pleasure out of hurting each other? Why don't they try liking each other once in awhile?" One wonders if Bill Clinton ever asked that question and realized the painful answer.

Like Deeds, President Clinton also tried to share the American pies a little more fairly -- maybe not enough to some minds -- but he managed well and presides over the healthiest nation on the globe. He gets high marks for his leadership, but like Deeds, low marks for his comportment.

In another scene, Deed's PR man discovers Babe's ruse and shouts, "He's the swellest guy who ever hit this town and you crucified him -- and for what? -- a couple of stink'n headlines!"

Like Deeds, Clinton is a victim of a hustling press -- always eager to jump at any attempt to relive the glory days of Watergate or Iran-Contra, latching on to even the slightest suggestion of "scandal" in avid pursuit of ratings points and readership for nothing much more than money and fame.

Perhaps Bill Clinton isn't the "swellest guy" ever to hit Washington -- but few doubt he's been crucified for far more than a couple of headlines.

In the film, the senior partner of the law firm handling the estate -- Mr. Cedar himself -- confronts a beleaguered Deeds at a sanity hearing he trumped up for the benefit of his firm. Deeds refuses to testify until Babe Bennett, realizing she loves him, rushes to the bench and pours her heart out to the tribunal -- outraged at the phony testimony Cedar has cooked up.

Now, certainly the parallels are not all true -- but one cannot escape the comparison of Mr. Starr, a man who has the hubristic arrorgance to claim the mantle to Atticus Finch, to Attorney Cedar. Starr is the de facto "senior partner" of the Republican Party -- a "firm" many of whose most malicious members have been out to nullify the 1992 and 1996 elections from the start. And like Cedar, Starr has managed to bring the President into a sort of sanity hearing, nearly defenseless against the $50 million spent to "seal" his political fate. Starr's grand jury, likely victims themselves, are not presiding over a sanity trial, but rather a political lynch mob at its zenith.

But unlike Mr. Deeds, Bill Clinton has no Babe Bennett who forsakes her career for the love of him -- not this time. Certainly Ms. Lewinsky, although proferring "love" for the man, would rather grab a lucrative book deal than stand up to the court. And her "friend and confidant" Ms. Tripp, the "wired" headline-seeking Judas-ette, isn't going to stand up before Congress and tell them what a "swell" guy Bill Clinton really is.

The micro-managed President Clinton will not take the stand publicly in his own defense as does Deeds in the movie. And Clinton surely won't stand up and punch Ken Starr in the nose to the accompaniment of cheers from the grand jury, as Deeds did to Cedar. Washington is a crueler city than New York. It feeds on weakness. It cuts the
entrails out of a man and gleefully feasts on them.

No. "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" was a fantasy, a real Hollywood tearjerker where boy meets girl and live happily ever after. "Mr. Clinton Goes to Town" is reality -- a tough, unbending type of hellish abyss where leering rumor becomes truth and where common decency gets steamrolled by a mockery of justice.

But imagine this -- can you shut your eyes and visualize Bill Clinton standing up in front of that grand jury, marching across the room and socking Ken Starr in his smirking, smug face?

Now that would be something!

-- Cornelius Cobb