I spent the week before Christmas in Hobe Sound, an inner citadel of Waspdom in Florida where many members of the Bush administration used to Christmas (if not the last US president to speak that word, Bush was certainly the last to use it as a verb). Until Bush's mother died in 1992, it was his only real spiritual home. It tends to be inhabited by people who find the opulence of Palm Beach, 25 or so miles south, altogether too common - which is why many Hobe Sounders are aghast when riff-raff like Greg Norman, the Australian golfer, occasionally slip through the net and buy homes there (though he was naturally refused membership of the golf club).

Because it is on a secure island with only two entrances and exits, it is one of the best places in the country for a presidential retreat - and Bush did, indeed, make unannounced visits there while in the White House. But, until I was strolling along the beach and spotted a familiar beach-house, it had not fully sunk in that Bill Clinton had done the same. Nearly two years ago, Clinton made a secret visit to Norman's home, where he was due to stay in the tiny guest-house on stilts - until he slipped and badly wrenched his knee, which spoiled the whole adventure. Unprecedentedly, the media were not informed of the presidential mishap for a full two hours after it happened - and later, my Hobe Sound friends tell me, a woman was spirited out of the guest-house and away from the island.

Now far be it from me to engage in gossip. It is up to the likes of Inspector Clouseau-Starr to establish whether such a woman existed and whether she was named Monica Lewinsky. But I mention it to show what a roller-coaster of a time we are in for over the next couple of years. Will Inspector C-S now dispatch his sleuths to Hobe Sound to look for DNA evidence? With people like Clinton and Starr, truth very easily takes such surreal turns. This week, for example, Republicans have been jumping up and down with glee over (as I write, unpublished) allegations that Clinton raped a woman named Juanita Broaddrick 20 years ago - and that Inspector C-S has given her immunity from prosecution to reveal all.

A deeply unappealing 51-year-old Republican Congressman and House whip named Tom DeLay - a former pest-exterminator from Texas, which says all you need to know about him - is especially thrilled by the prospect that these claims (relayed to the Republicans via Inspector C-S) could be the final nail in Clinton's coffin. But all this highly premature triumphalism leaves the 55 Republican Senators very uneasy indeed. They know only too well that voters are firmly opposed to all this impeachment business (Clinton's approval rating soared to a record 73 per cent on Boxing Day).

I'm becoming weary of predicting that there will be no successful impeachment of Clinton, but the likelihood remains that, when Congress reconvenes on Wednesday, the Senate will do its best to bring the matter to as swift a conclusion as possible; the trial may be "adjourned", with the brighter Republicans realising that this option gives them the possibility of resuscitating it if and when more juicy stuff comes along. But with Clinton you never know anything for certain. Buoyed by recent polls, he is now adamant that he will not admit to perjury or deliberate lying; he would far rather go down in history as the second president to be impeached by a partisan Congress than as one who admitted lying under oath.

Meanwhile, though, a Hobe Sound chum (and crony of Bush, naturally) told me something interesting. While the lower divisions of the Republican leadership are working themselves into foaming frenzies with yet more stories of Clinton's sexual shenanigans, the more serious ones quietly believe they have unearthed the smoking gun. Something curious happened in the House Judiciary Committee in the final weeks of 1998: its Republican leadership announced it would explore allegations of a breach of campaign fund-raising law by Clinton, only for them to announce 48 hours later that they would not do so after all. My friend tells me that this is not because the Republicans discovered little of note when they looked at hitherto-sealed documents, but the reverse. They have, he says, unearthed material too juicy to be mixed with the trivia of Monicagate.

We should never underestimate the sheer, blinding stupidity of the Republicans and their ability to FUBAR (a retired army man in Hobe Sound told me that this is US military parlance meaning to "fuck up beyond all recognition"). Two Republican House speakers (or, technically, one speaker and one speaker-designate) have already been brought down by Monicagate. Trent Lott, their 57-year-old leader in the Senate, is especially thick and could blunder down any number of wrong roads - or, accidentally, find himself on the right one. Before Christmas, he blurted out words to the effect that the raids on Iraq were Clinton's diversionary stunt, only to have to withdraw his allegations the next day. He also said that not "a single Democrat" voted in favour of the Gulf war in 1991, forgetting that both Houses of Congress were then controlled by Democrats and that the Gulf war could never have started without the support of 86 House Democrats and ten Senators (including Al Gore).

So where does this leave us? A stubborn 42nd president who will now do anything to redeem his reputation; a rump of out-of-control, leaderless Republicans (with the intrepid Inspector C-S) who will leave no stone unturned in their quest to bring him down; and an electorate whose main concern is that economic blight will not now spread to North America. The makings of a rollicking good script for America '99? Happy New Year.

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