• Another name for Deja Vu is David Gergen, who keeps moving around but never seems to go away. He keeps adopting different presidents to defend/advise/explain. The man has never met a president he didn't like. He has made a career of being a hanger-on, and when that petered out, he has made a career of being an ex-hanger-on.

  One can do that sort of thing in this country. Presidential proximity is an asset that is never exhausted in American culture. Look at how long Pierre Salinger has hung on since Camelot. You just start a statement with "As someone who has worked with and known President . ...'' and some television station somewhere will hire you as a commentator, or at least a university will put you on the faculty. Deja Vu sells.

  A couple of years ago, when the Clinton scandals were different ones, David Gergen solemnly said the president "must talk to the country in an open, contrite manner about the ethical clouds that hang over him.''

  Now that the scandal du jour is named Lewinsky, David Gergen, yep, still wants the president to talk to the country in an open, contrite manner about another ethical cloud. ("As someone who has worked with and known the man for more than a dozen years, I believe that in a crisis, Bill Clinton steps up to the challenge. ...'') The more things change, the more David Gergen stays the same. So does Bill Clinton.

• In foreign policy, it's Deja Vu everywhere. Kosovo, for example, is shaping up as Bosnia all over again. "Thousands of Refugees Flee Serb Mountain Attack,'' said a headline in the New York Times last week. It was over a story that started the same way so many others could have during the past six years: "Thousands of refugees, many of them children, lumbered down mountain trails in wagons and tractors and on foot today, fleeing Serbian government forces but finding no place to hide.''

  Elsewhere, whether the subject is American policy toward Communist China or this country's vanishing ability to prevent a nuclear arms race in Asia, the country's moral authority erodes. And with it, American influence. Saddam Hussein knows he can ignore this president with impunity. For a new dollar diplomacy has taken the place of the old American concern for human rights and human freedom. And disarray mounts.

  As a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put it not long ago, this president has managed to combine the strategic competence of Jimmy Carter with the moral vision of Richard Nixon -- no easy feat. Much as the nation's capital, Woodrow Wilson once observed, manages to combine Northern charm and Southern efficiency. God help us. Again.

  They say G-d looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America. I don't know about the fools and drunkards, but there is no greater testimony to His sheer grace than any successes achieved by this kind of foreign policy, which just asks for defeat and disillusion.

It's not clear whether we're back in the roaring '20s or the demoralizing '70s, or some other period of aimless drift, but the nondescript '90s have a familiar, and ominous, feel. As if we've seen this before. And it's both unsettling and boring. A fellow with mental problems I once knew put it this way: `` It gets boring not having peace of mind all the time.''

The recognition grows that, behind this president's formidable electoral skills and remarkable ability to turn sentiment on and off, a great country is being led by someone whose only great skill is at twisting and turning. Bill Clinton's ways bring to mind not Jefferson or Franklin Roosevelt, his own party's icons, but Harding and Nixon. (Who says he's partisan?) I keep looking for flappers and flasks to make a comeback any day.

If Ron Ziegler suddenly reappears to tell us all how Richard Nixon would have handled this latest embarrassment at the White House -- it lacks sufficient dignity to call it a crisis -- it'll be time to scream. Not that it would do any good. Sometimes it feels as if the news was on a continuous loop. It's as if the story won't stop going round and round till we learn the moral.

8/12/98: The French would understand
8/10/98: A fable: The Rat in the Corner
8/07/98: Welcome to the roaring 90s
8/06/98: No surprises dept. -- promotion denied
8/03/98: Quotes of and for the week: take your pick
7/29/98: A subpoena for the president:
so what else is new?
7/27/98: Forget about Bubba, it's time to investigate Reno
7/23/98: Ghosts on the roof, 1998
7/21/98: The new elegance
7/16/98: In defense of manners
7/13/98: Another day, another delay: what's missing from the scandal news
7/9/98:The language-wars continue
7/7/98:The new Detente
7/2/98: Bubba in Beijing: history does occur twice
6/30/98: Hurry back, Mr. President -- to freedom
6/24/98: When Clinton follows Quayle's lead
6/22/98: Independence Day, 2002
6/18/98: Adventures in poli-speke