Washington - It's never pleasant when the big boss urges you out on a shaky limb and then saws it off; pulls the rug out from under you; makes you look a fool.
It's doubly difficult when your boss happens to be President of the United States, the Leader of the Free World, and he does all this in full view of the known universe. Yet that describes the mortifying mess in which President Clinton and his most loyal defenders now find themselves mired.
As the Monica Lewinsky scandal reached its tawdry nadir, members of Mr Clinton's cabinet and senior staff - who have spent the last seven months eloquently affirming that he didn't have sex with the former White House intern - were coping with widespread reports that the President was admitting to doing just that in grand jury testimony before independent counsel, Mr Kenneth Starr. Mr Clinton's most impassioned protector, his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was simply coping. In his televised speech on Monday he denied perjuring himself but admitted misleading his wife, among others, about "a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate".
"There has to be a bond of trust so that you know your boss is not going to stab you in the back," said former White House chief of staff, Mr Leon Panetta.
"He did put them in an incredibly awkward position, completely by virtue of his own actions," said former White House press secretary, Ms Dee Dee Myers, who joined Mr Clinton's first presidential campaign in 1991. "The President has to apologise to them for all of them to go forward."
The evidence suggests that the President made misleading statements about his relationship with Ms Lewinsky - not only to the American people ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman"), but also to his wife and daughter, his cabinet, his lawyers and his top staff - not to mention in his sworn deposition last January in the since-dismissed Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.
But since the scandal broke, such Clintonites as the Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, the White House communications director, Ms Ann Lewis, advisers Mr Rahm Emanuel and Mr Paul Begala, and, notably, Mrs Clinton, have taken to the airwaves to deliver stirring defences.
Today many of those denials and defences are, in the lingo of a previous White House scandal, "inoperative".
Long-time Clinton political guru Mr Dick Morris, who was banished from the White House after a sex scandal of his own, said: "I feel badly for Hillary. I do not weep any tears for his staff people. The staff are like blockers in a football game. Their job is to get beaten up. And any of them who were dumb enough to actually believe Clinton's stories deserve what happens to them."
Former presidential adviser, Mr George Stephanopoulos, who has become a critic, erupted in an unprintable epithet when his onetime rival's comments were read to him. Quoting a former Lyndon Johnson aide, Mr Stephanopoulos said: "All presidents consume their staffs like fuel."
Ms Dee Dee Myers added: "I don't want a convoluted explanation. I want him to take responsibility for his behaviour, for what he's put people through, for what he's put the country through, and for what he's put his family through."
Is there anyone to whom Mr Clinton does not owe an apology?
"Ken Starr," Ms Myers replied.