Nixon had his Watergate. Ronald Reagan had Iran-Contra. George Bush shared in some of the Iran-Contra fallout, and had his own troubles with Iraqgate. And now Bill Clinton has what Washington's optimists call Whitewatergate, after the ill-fated investment of 1979 in the Whitewater holiday resort venture in the hills of Arkansas. The pessimists call it Hillarygate, since all the various strands of this complex affair lead back to the first lady.


The Arkansas scandals, part financial and part sexual, have now given way to far more serious allegations that the staff and the powers of the White House have been used, improperly, to protect the president and Mrs. Clinton, and to obstruct the course of justice.


The scandals, mainly concerning the use and abuse of power and influence by a governing family in a small Southern state, are now sapping at President Clinton's ability to govern in Washington.


The old Watergate questions now loom: What did the president (and his wife) know? And when did they know it? Just as in the original Watergate, top White House aides like the president's counsel Bernard Nussbaum have been sacrificed, tossed from the White House sled. Six White House aides have been ordered by legal subpoena to testify this week before a grand jury on their efforts to monitor the legal inquiries of bank and Treasury regulators into the Clinton investments.


Pity poor Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia, and spare a thought for Ukraine's Leonid Kravchuk. Their big moments in the White House last week, and even their press conferences, were overwhelmed by the baying of the White House press pack, hunting a new presidential scalp.


More than just distracting the embattled White House, the intensity of the Whitewater affair in the supercharged atmosphere of Washington has overwhelmed the international agenda, and imperilled all other political business. Forgotten for the moment are the health care, welfare and crime reform bills, the highlights of Clinton's buoyant State of the Union address only six weeks ago.


The heart of the White House, the tight-knit team of Arkansas loyalists who run the personal and political staff, is now so consumed by the subpoenas and the need to scramble to hire personal lawyers that little other of the nation's business is being done.


And at the heart of the affair stands the most prominent and powerful first lady ever to occupy the White House. Every strand of this affair leads back to Hillary, the woman whose loyalty steered her husband past those other shoals of sexual scandal, and who now requires his political fidelity in return. The Republicans are deliberately transforming Whitewatergate into Hillarygate. But the original sin here has less to do with her, or with the Little Rock mafia, or even with the Whitewater files so mysteriously removed from the office of Vince Foster, deputy White House counsel, after his suicide last July. It is all based on the perilous vulnerability of American politicians in their desperate need for campaign funds, and their lack of caution in accepting them.


Because all the politicians are guilty, it comes as a relief for many of them to target such a prominent single scapegoat as Hillary Clinton. But the question now is how does the system demand the head of an unelected first lady, without harming the president, and the presidency, in the process?