Summoning the ghosts of war dead and the judgment of history, House prosecutors wrapped up their opening presentation at President Clinton's impeachment trial on Saturday with a call to restore the "sacred honour" of the presidency, lest it become "deeply and perhaps permanently damaged". After two days of touring the factual and legal foundations of their case, the Republican trial "managers" brought their arguments back to a loftier rhetorical plane on their final day, casting Clinton's actions not as forgivable personal foibles but as an egregious attack on the judicial system itself.
"The matter before you is a question of the willful, premeditated deliberate corruption of the nation's system of justice through perjury and obstruction of justice," Mr Henry Hyde, the lead prosecutor, told the senators sitting as judge and jury in the case.
Acknowledging that their case is "coloured by sex", prosecutors calculated their remarks to counter what both sides consider the strongest element of the Clinton defence - that even if true, the allegations about covering up his affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky do not constitute grave offences against the state that justify throwing him out of office.
Mr Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina), in a folksy, engaging lecture that even Clinton aides grudgingly called effective, cited past impeachment trials of judges who were removed from the bench for perjury even though the lies under oath at issue were not directly related to their official positions.
"You couldn't live with yourself knowing that you were going to leave a perjuring judge on the bench," Mr Graham reminded the Senate about a case it heard in the 1980s. "Ladies and gentlemen, as hard as it may be, for the same reasons, cleanse this office."
As prosecutors concluded what many senators in both parties later called an unexpectedly strong presentation, the juror-judges off the floor were clashing again over whether to call the witnesses eagerly sought by the managers.
The Senate Majority Leader, Senator Trent Lott, made another stab at forming a bipartisan team of senators to head of "any complications" in that dispute, only to run into objections again from the Democrats led by the Minority Leader, Senator Thomas Daschle (South Dakota).
In a strained exchange of "Dear Tom" and "Dear Trent" letters underscoring the frailty of the bipartisan pact on trial rules, Mr Lott asked Mr Daschle to create a joint group to discuss testimony with prosecutors, noting that "the President's representatives have been in contact with your office" on such issues.
"I think it would be proper, for the balance of the trial, that you and I both participate in such conversations," Mr Lott said.
Mr Daschle responded, expressing appreciation of Mr Lott's "desire to continue to work toward a fair and expeditious" resolution, but added that assigning such a bipartisan group "would violate the bipartisan agreement that now governs our process" and puts off the witness question until a possible Senate vote next week.
Mr Clinton remained out of sight on Saturday, mostly preparing for his State of the Union address to be delivered to a joint session of Congress tomorrow night - just eight hours after his lawyers open their defence case on the Senate floor.
As he has throughout the trial so far, Mr Clinton left his defence to his lawyers on Saturday. The White House special counsel, Mr Gregory Craig, issued his strongest attack on the managers since they began opening arguments on Thursday.
"The House Republicans' case ends as it began, an unsubstantiated, circumstantial case that does not meet the constitutional standard to remove the President from office," he said. "The simple truth is that the House Republican prosecutors failed to demonstrate that the will and interests of the American people would be served by nullifying the results of a national election."