THE ENDLESS CAMPAIGN

By CALVIN TRILLIN

Am I one of the people who's worried that Bill Clinton's second term might be destroyed by a constitutional crisis? Well, it's true that I've been wondering whether a President could be impeached for refusing to stop talking about the bridge we need to build to the 21st century.

In other words, what worries me is that Bill Clinton could exhibit a version of what George Bush used to refer to as Big Mo: he might have so much campaign momentum that he won't be able to stop campaigning.

Six months after election night, ordinary citizens have put the campaign behind them. They're grateful that television commercials are back to being for mouthwashes or sports vehicles rather than Senators, and that there are no references to competing mouthwashes as dangerously liberal or to competing sports vehicles as the sort of thing Newt Gingrich might drive.

Bob Dole, a man of his word who promised the American people that he would either go to the White House or go home, is back in Russell, Kansas, living in a boyhood home that has been considerably spruced up by a contractor who specializes in the renovation of single-family photo ops.

Over coffee down at the drugstore, Dole is back to having nothing but contempt for the economic theories of Jack Kemp, who is himself back to being in favor of affirmative action.

Congress has decided that campaign-finance reform is not actually a pressing need. The issue has faded from the headlines, and I'm back to being ignored when I argue that the examination for entrance into political-science graduate programs should be reduced to one question: "It is customary for American corporations to give large campaign donations to both parties competing in an election. Discuss this practice without using the word bribe."

But Bill Clinton is still campaigning. He is still working the rope lines, empathizing like all get-out. He astonished NATO foreign ministers when he answered a question about the long-term military security of Western Europe by saying his Administration had put 100,000 policemen on the street and created 10.5 million new jobs. And Clinton continues to stake out the middle ground by bringing up tiny but symbolic issues like school uniforms--practicing what some analysts call "the politics of miniaturization."

The miniaturization is what made me think that a refusal to stop campaigning could be an impeachable offense. I was driving in heavy traffic in an unfamiliar neighborhood, looking for the right turn I'd been instructed to take. Two-thirds of a block from what might have been my street, I had to decide whether to get into the right-turn-only lane, but, not having reached the street sign, I had no way of knowing whether I wanted to turn right.

"Is this going to be an issue for Clinton?" I said to my wife, as I took a chance and got into the right-turn-only lane. "Because I don't think I can take it if he starts saying, 'If we work together to warn people of the street name before they have to decide whether to get into the right-turn-only lane, we can build a bridge together into the 21st century.'"

It was not my street. I was in a huge traffic jam, going in the wrong direction. Ahead of me was some sort of viaduct, choked with traffic. I couldn't get over the notion that it was the bridge to the 21st century.