Clinton: 'It Is Not About Me'

While a key House committee voted on whether to release videotapes of his Aug. 17 testimony before a grand jury, President Clinton said urged Democratic supporters to turn their attention away from his problems and focus on bigger issues.

Speaking at a luncheon fund-raiser in Cincinnati for the Democrats' November election effort, Mr. Clinton said that the party's political agenda should be a paramount concern.

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"This is a democracy. We're all hired hands," the president said. "I'm here today to help these people running for Congress because the choice really is between partisanship and progress.

"It is not about me. It is about the people of this country."

Mr. Clinton was greeted in Cincinnati by two dozen officials and political leaders, including Mayor Roxanne Qualls.

Qualls, the Democrat battling to unseat GOP Rep. Steve Chabot in one of the nation's most competitive House races, was one of the intended beneficiaries of a $200,000 fund-raiser at which Mr. Clinton was speaking.

Mr. Clinton spoke after his host, Stan Chesley, gave a spirited speech in his defense. Chesley decried the media attention given the Lewinsky investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr rather than other issues.

To those concerned about his marriage, the president said, "Hillary and I, we're doing fine."

The president's remarks came after an earlier appearance in Washington in which he sought to shift attention away from independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. There, Mr. Clinton urged Congress to pass his "patients' bill of rights" before a union conference.

Mr. Clinton said the U.S. must make decisions on "partisanship over progress, people over politics" on issues such as election-year tax cuts, Social Security and health care.

From Cincinnati, the president was heading to Boston and a $1-million dinner equally benefiting the Democratic National Committee, and House and Senate Democratic candidates.

Mr. Clinton still hasn't changed his story that he technically didn't commit perjury when he first testified in his deposition for the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Top Democrats have ridiculed this, but his lawyers say it's important he doesn't change it. Otherwise, it will put him in serious legal jeopardy.

Instead, the White House is now saying, as the president did Wednesday, it's important not to get "mired in the details." Senior officials say a key White House strategy is to focus on the apology and insist that the details don't matter, reports CBS News Senior Whit House Correspondent Scott Pelley.

However, the details are likely to be important as the Judiciary Committee decides whether to release the videotape of his testimony to the public, and whether to begin an impeachment inquiry.

Republicans contend that releasing the tapes will give Americans a better context in which to judge whether the president is telling the truth, which they point out, is what Mr. Clinton's lawyers have been touting, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Bob Schieffer.

"The president's lawyers have repeatedly said that the Congress and the country must judge the Starr report in the context of the president's presentation of his side of the story, and that is precisely what this evidence does," said Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif.

Committee Democrats have countered that it's unfair to release the tape.

"It lends itself to a Salem witch hunt. It does not lend itself to an orderly process," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.

Even worse, Democrats are worried Republicans will use it against them in election season ads on television.

However, a recent CBS News-New York Times Poll shows that 70 percent of Americans do not think the videotapes should be released.

Whatever the case, behind the scenes, Senate Democrats continue to explore the idea of some kind of plea bargain for the president in which he would admit he lied to the grand jury, and in return, he would be given some kind of censure and a guarantee that he wouldn't be indicted for perjury.

Democrats are hoping that somehow, the current investigation will backfire on Republicans, painting them as partisan purveyors of smut.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Clinton had the opportunity to focus on his efforts in world leadership when he hosted a glittering state dinner in honor of Czech President Vaclav Havel.

At his joint news conference with Havel earlier Wednesday, Mr. Clinton did have to deal with questions about his conduct. Asked if he had lied under oath, the president avoided giving a direct answer.

"I have said for a month now that I did something that was wrong. On last Friday, at the prayer breakfast, I laid out as carefully and as brutally honestly as I could what I believed the essential truth to be," the president said.

Mr. Clinton sidestepped the question of whether he would consider resignation, returning instead to the idea that the country wants him to stay on the job.

"What I believe the people of the country want is: Now that they know what happened, they want to put it behind them, and they want to go on. And they want me to go on and do my job, and that is what I intend to do," the president said.

Meanwhile, Republicans accused the White House of pulling strings to smear their party after the Internet magazine Salon published a story about the affair the head of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, had with a married woman 30 years go.

The Republicans demanded an FBI inquiry into an alleged "systematic attempt to intimidate" the panel's chairman and others.

White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles dispatched a letter to Hyde pledging to fire anyone involved in prying into the personal lives of lawmakers. "In addition, we have made clear to persons outside the White House that we will not tolerate such conduct," Bowles said.

Speaker Newt Gingrich and the balance the GOP leadership called on FBI Director Louis Freeh to investigate whether anyone "inside or outside the White House had made efforts to undermine the lawful and constitutional work of the Judiciary Committee."

Salon said it did not get the story from the White House, and the former husband of the woman involved said the affair was revealed to Salon by a male friend of Hyde.

Hyde called the article "an obvious attempt to intimidate me" and vowed that it would not affect any impeachment proceeding.