In denial.

"IN 1959 the poverty rate for elderly Americans was 35.2 per cent," White House economic advisor Gene Sperling tells a packed audience of reporters in the White House briefing room. It's the start of the third week of Monicagate, and no one is there to hear about the President's Social Security plan -- but Sperling perseveres. Helen Thomas grouses from the front row about there being more important topics -- "not that are more important to people's lives than Social Security," counters Sperling. CNN's Wolf Blitzer is reading the Washington Post sports page, while other reporters yawn. Sperling --short, with wire-rimmed glasses, the very picture of a Washington wonk -- continues: "it fell to 15.2 per cent in 1979, to 12.9 per cent in . . ."

When Sperling finishes after half an hour, reporters take up a chant, "We want Joe," meaning Joe Lockhart, the designated scandal spokesman while Mike McCurry is (conveniently) away giving a talk at Harvard. Lockhart, big with wiry hair, a softer version of Bob Bennett, comes ready to bob and weave. Reporters manage to press him into admitting that there is no rule, as the President has maintained, preventing him from commenting about the Lewinsky matter. So did the President mis-speak? "There were several things in his mind that he was talking about." OK, but did he mis-speak? "If that was your interpretation of what he said, that was the wrong interpretation."

This passes for candor among White House spokesmen. It's called the "daily briefing," but as McCurry constantly reminds reporters, "I am not commenting on any of these day-to-day developments." The name of the game is deflection. At his Monday morning briefing, Lockhart repeatedly refers questions to Clinton's personal lawyer, David Kendall. The next day McCurry -- who brandishes the off-hand cynicism of David Letterman -- had recourse to the same dodge, until someone finally pipes up: "Mr. Kendall doesn't entertain questions, Mike." McCurry: "Well, that's a shame."

So it goes at a White House sporting some of the best job approval ratings on record. The deny-deny-deny strategy is not pretty to watch, nor can it be much fun to execute, but it works -- like the neutral-zone trap in ice hockey (which essentially involves tackling opponents). One of the reasons the Administration is prospering under siege is that in 1995 - 96 it mastered an electronic populism that can shape and mobilize popular sentiment without the benefit of any facts or substance.

It was Dick Morris's insight that the traditional powers of the Presidency have diminished, but in the age of mass media, the public-relations power of the White House has dramatically increased. This, then, becomes the chief instrument of policy, a way to shape reality: e.g., health-care costs will go down if you just talk about them going down. It's the primacy of the Big Message, which needn't be wedded to the Big Lie, but in this White House often is. So, to "preserving and protecting Medicare" and "blowing a hole in the deficit," add "getting back to work for the American people."

At a recent rally with Capitol Hill Democrats, President Clinton hugged the theme as if it were an old flame on the rope line. Three "ordinary people" -- really representatives of the Democratic base -- gave warm-up speeches: a black businesswoman, a working suburban mom, and a student subsisting on Pell and Stafford grants. They all, in the words of the working woman, urged the President not to "stop working for us." Clinton himself in his best aw-shucks manner explained: "I'm not exactly a Washington person, you know. I just sort of showed up here a few years ago for work."

It's the perfect pose for the President to strike. In the public reaction to the scandal, there is a strong element of a backlash against Washington and the media. People typically want order and stability in their politics. So what are they supposed to think when they wake up one Sunday morning and suddenly everyone on This Week is saying their President should resign? No one is yet printing "Annoy the Media, Support Clinton" bumper-stickers, but that may be next. Indeed, Clinton benefits most from the simple fact that he is President of the United States, an office with a majesty that presents itself in the most mundane ways.

After Clinton had a meeting with congressional Democrats in Virginia, he helicoptered back to the White House. Marine One lands on the South Lawn, an expanse of grass as perfect as a fairway (in fact, there's even a small putting green), with an up-close view of the Washington monument pointing into the baby-blue sky. The roar of the copter can be heard before it looms into view, a huge shiny bug with fearsome 80-foot blades. As it settles on the ground, the wind it kicks up is so powerful reporters are almost knocked over.

A Marine in a sharp navy-blue jacket leaves the front door, marches in toy-soldier straight lines to open the middle door, and out pops -- career Clinton henchman Bruce Lindsey. Clinton is down to a core of his most zealous supporters -- the likes of former New Yorker writer Sidney Blumenthal, busy compiling a Clinton enemies list --and lawyers. Lots of lawyers. The White House is now effectively run by a gaggle of attorneys who by definition have no interest in the public interest or in the truth, but just in thwarting Ken Starr.

Not that the truth matters much. Even in public Clinton defenders give it barely a nod. In her famous Today show appearance, Hillary Clinton stopped well short of saying she believes her husband's denials: "I think as this matter unfolds the entire country will have more information." At Harvard, McCurry said, "If it turns out what the President has said has not been fair and square with the American people . . ." If it turns out? McCurry flacks for the President every day and he doesn't know one way or the other?

The Administration has gone from asking for the benefit of the doubt to demanding radical doubt. No one knows what the truth is; it's constantly slipping out of grasp. The President gives Monica Lewinsky gifts? It might be a random act of generosity. The President asks his secretary leading questions after he testified? He could just have been refreshing his memory. Clinton denies "sexual relations with that woman"? Well, who knows what that means?

Politics always has about it a measure of bluster and deception. But President Clinton has moved beyond that to something more fundamental. His project now must be to detach presidential power from its moorings in accountability and moral legitimacy. Only the rolling electronic plebiscite of the polls matters -- otherwise there are no restraints of ethics, law, or dignity. That's one reason the truth only makes inadvertent appearances in the briefing room. As when McCurry, deflecting yet another question, says: "I think there's no way of predicting at this point what kind of lasting damage we've done to the institutions of democracy."