President Clinton's emphatic denial on television of a sexual relationship with Ms Monica Lewinsky back in January, when he wagged his finger and said: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" proved to be a hostage to fortune.
It has been replayed endlessly to show that he lied to the American people. There will be undoubtedly some choice moments in the Grand Jury tapes that will go into the archives to be trotted out as visual shorthand for the Clinton presidency in an age where images sum up the man as much as weighty biographies.
Mr Clinton's January denial was an effective blast against his critics and helped stop the sense of drift and helplessness threatening to paralyse the White House. So useful politically at the time, that pivotal video moment, combined with the latest flurry of images, may sink him.
President George Bush, Mr Clinton's predecessor, knows all too well the feeling of being hoisted by your video clip. In his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination in 1988, Mr Bush brought the house down with his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. That was the highlight played on the network news. That line and that speech - scripted with the help of Reagan speechwriter, Ms Peggy Noonan - began Mr Bush's comeback in the campaign after being 17 points down to Michael Dukakis. In its campaign ads, the Bush team used a video of Mr Dukakis riding in a tank with an oversize helmet that made him look silly.
What sounded so good in 1988 became an albatross for Mr Bush two years later, when he agreed to a rise in taxes after all to keep the budget deficit from ballooning out of control. Mr Bush's acceptance of tax hikes in June 1990 hurt him badly with Republican right-wingers and put him on the defensive when he ran for re-election. It's worth recalling the build-up to the "read my lips" line as it was about as emphatic as Mr Clinton's denial of sexual relations with Ms Lewinsky. "Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no, and they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them. Read my lips, no new taxes," Mr Bush thundered.
President Reagan had his own scandal, the Iran-Contra arms for hostages saga. But his videotaped testimony was never released - it was at another time - so the public never got to see Mr Reagan squirm and sweat the way it will Mr Clinton. A former B-movie actor, Mr Reagan could really turn it on for the cameras.
In one his triumphal moments, Mr Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate within view of the Berlin wall in 1986 and said: "General secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate. Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
It was Mr Reagan at his best, reading his lines with panache. Unscripted, Mr Reagan could be the despair of his aides. When he was asked about his decision to visit the Bitburg cemetery in which Nazis SS troops were buried alongside German soldiers, Mr Reagan replied: "They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps," in one of his less stellar video moments.
President Richard Nixon gave us the famous Checkers after it emerged that wealthy California businessmen were secretly supplementing his senatorial income. He said that he would not give back the family dog Checkers. "Regardless of what they say, we are going to keep it." Initially dismissed by the pundits as ridiculous, the speech saved his political career and President Eisenhower did not drop "Tricky Dicky" as his running mate in the 1952 presidential campaign.
Mr Nixon went on to become the first president to resign under the threat of impeachment. On August 8th, 1974, he appeared on television to announce his exit. "I would say only," he declared, "that if some of my judgments were wrong - and some were wrong - they were made in what I believed at the time to be in the best interest of the nation..."
It is a formulation that could come in handy for Mr Clinton at some point.
Congressman Henry Hyde, the man leading the panel that will decide whether to pursue impeachment proceedings, offered to resign following reports about his own sexual infidelities 30 years ago, CNN reported yesterday.
The Republican leadership in Congress, however, rejected Congressman Hyde's offer.
Two of the most influential US newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have called for a solution for President Bill Clinton's wrongdoing that does not require resignation or impeachment.
On the day before the release of Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony, a Washington Post editorial severely criticised Mr Clinton's behaviour with Ms Lewinsky, saying the president "bent the entire government out of shape for months to sustain" his "lie."
But the Post, which broke the Lewinsky story in mid-January along with the New York Times, said it did not believe Clinton now needed to resign or be impeached.
The editorial in the New York Times, which has consistently advocated a solution that allows Mr Clinton to keep his job, wrote: "A settlement short of impeachment, such as Congressionnal censure, would suffice if Mr Clinton stopped mocking the law and admitted that he lied under oath.