By definition, the unprecedented nature of President Clinton's speech last night meant that its approach and content couldn't be predicted. Having said that, the president's four-minute nationally televised talk was surprising. By just about any standard, Clinton's remarks reflected an absolute minimum level of contrition and maximum level of defiance, not the mea culpa that most anticipated. While the content of Clinton's remarks were probably enough to satisfy most voters, the defiance seemed to bait Republicans, even those who had remained on the sidelines until now.
What's impossible to say is whether the content of the president's remarks was driven more by political or psychological motivations, or more likely, some combination of both.
First, consider the political. We don't yet know how the president's testimony before the grand jury went. His speech, however, seemed to represent a very carefully calculated gamble to give just enough of an apology to insure his survival in office, but was sufficiently combative that, assuming survival, he would retain more political capital than if he did the full-scale, Jimmy Swaggert-style "I have sinned" apology. While
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