Whitewater's Haunting Campaign Implications: Dangerous New Orbit

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The three convictions won by independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr have sharply escalated the seriousness of the Whitewater scandals that have threatened Bill Clinton's presidency ever since his election.

The persistent and deeply troubling issue of the president's character was already being raised by his political opponents when the jury handed down its guilty verdicts in Little Rock last week. Now the convictions of James and Susan McDougal, his former business partners, and Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, have lifted the issue into a new and more dangerous orbit for the Clintons.

The White House insisted the president was not in any way implicated in the trial. But a key prosecution witness in the trial, David Hale, testified that Mr. Clinton pressured him to give an illegal Small Business …