Iowa Electronic Market, 6/27/96
	Vote Share			Winner-Takes-All
	Dole	Clinton		Dole	Clinton
Open	43.5%	50.1%		40.3%	56.2%
Close	43.5%	50.9%		39.2%	56.8%
Pundits' Index
Clinton: 67%, down seven points from last week Dole: 33%, up seven points from last week

Just as undaunted investment in mutual funds has suppressed Wall Street analysts' suspicions that financial stocks are overvalued, undaunted support for Clinton in the polls had suppressed, for more than a month, the pundits' sense that Clinton's political stock was due for a sharp correction. Filegate has now spooked the market out of its complacency, with a few trusty bulls holding firm (Jeffrey Birnbaum waved it off as "fileflap") but most (e.g. Nina Totenberg, Mara Liasson, Eleanor Clift) scaling back their exposure on calculations of a "serious" scandal and a "horrendous" week. Trading volume hit a new high as Filegate and Whitewater engulfed the weekend chat and quiz shows.

Filegate: The bears, spearheaded by Gerald Seib's Wednesday back-pager in the Wall Street Journal , gave four reasons why Filegate will hurt worse than Whitewater: It's freshly discovered; it happened in the current White House, not years ago in Arkansas; it's easy to explain; and Congress will hold hearings on it throughout the fall. Herd metaphor of the week: Watergate.

Whitewater: Embarrassed by their new riches of scandal material, most right-leaners gave the old stuff a rest. Kate O'Beirne conceded voters are "bored to tears" with Whitewater. Left-leaners wished it away on political grounds; Mark Shields said voters were "giving a verdict of 'not interested.'"

Dole: Who? Even right-leaners refused to liquidate more of their shares in Clinton until the other candidate proved himself worth buying. As Jack Germond put it: "People have not made a connection between their distrust of the Administration" and voting for Dole "because the Dole campaign is so out of it." Right-leaners fret that Filegate might sucker Dole into thinking he could win without presenting a positive vision. Meanwhile, neutrals began snoring at Dole's running-mate prospects without Powell (Cokie Roberts: "This is not a list that is going to wake up America").

Has the bottom fallen out of the Clinton market? Not quite. Scandal fatigue persists, and the pundits seem unwilling to panic until they see movement in public opinion. As Evan Thomas put it, to chuckles of agreement from the Inside Washington panel: "The polls show, one, the public thinks the worst about the White House, doesn't believe 'em, thinks they're all a bunch of lying crooks--and two, they're still gonna vote for Clinton anyway." Shields joked: "Two more bad weeks like this, and he'll have a 40-point lead."

Looking ahead: The Yeltsin-Lebed alliance has dissolved fears that Russia's upcoming presidential runoff might restore the Communists and hurt Clinton. Next on the crisis radar is ValuJet. The quiz and chat shows are already simmering with talk of an FAA scandal and the beheading of Transportation Secretary Federico Pea, though the pundits doubt that an anti-regulation GOP can score points over lax federal supervision. And the titillation has commenced over Hillary's "seances" with Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt.

--William Saletan

William Saletan is a Washington, D.C., political writer. He co-founded and edited The Hotline, a daily digest of political news, and is the author of a book on the politics of abortion, forthcoming from the University of California Press.