Which two people in Washington most dread the possibility of Al Gore’s becoming president through the removal or forced resignation of President Clinton?

One of them is Bill Clinton. The other is Newt Gingrich. If Gingrich is the win-at-any-cost, right-wing partisan the Clinton camp says he is (and I have no reason to doubt it), he would much rather have Clinton hanging around the Democrats’ necks in November 2000 than have a fully empowered President Gore running as an incumbent.

These thoughts suggest the outlines of an unholy marriage of convenience, with Clinton and his diehard defenders working toward the same outcome sought by the most cynically partisan Republicans. That outcome–a crippled president hanging on until Jan. 20, 2001–could be very bad for the country. But it would be arguably good for Republican partisans, and definitely good for Clinton.

Why good for Clinton? Because the current drama has only three conceivable outcomes, the first of which seems improbable now and may become inconceivable within a month:

1. President Clinton survives in office, following some sort of congressional censure, with Congress and the nation agreeing to put his crimes behind us and to support him as an adequate, if personally flawed, leader.

2. The president survives, but in such a weakened state that he can get virtually nothing through Congress and has little hope of rallying the nation to take the kind of difficult or costly steps that may be necessary to meet a crisis. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans press unending investigations into alleged misconduct by the president on various fronts, with high hopes of sweeping the presidency as well as both chambers of Congress in the 2000 election.

3. The president is forced out sometime in 1999, after a plunge in his polls prompted by a merciless inquiry into the Clinton-Lewinsky cover-up crimes and demands by Democratic leaders that Clinton resign (or face removal) both for the sake of the country and to save the Democrats from becoming known as the party of lying and l aw-breaking.

Option 1 will happen only if the Democrats score such dramatic gains (like taking control of the House) on Nov. 3 as to suggest a clear popular mandate for ignoring Clinton’s crimes; Republicans may then be cowed into sullen cooperation with a newly empowered president.

That would confound virtually all of the experts, most of whom expect at least modest Republican gains. It therefore seems probable that by Nov. 4, if not before, Options 2 and 3 will emerge as the only realistic possibilities. Then the outlines of the Clinton-Republican axis may emerge more clearly.

The president’s passionate insistence that he will ”never” resign–which seems more sincere than most of what he says, although President Nixon reneged on a similar vow–suggests that Clinton would much prefer Option 2 (a crippled presidency) over Option 3 (early exit). The conventional wisdom is that Clinton would not voluntarily resign even if necessary to save the Democratic Party from destruction. Conventional wisdom is wrong at least as often as not, but this judgment seems sound, given Clinton’s track record of sacrificing congressional allies, subordinates, friends and family to his own ambitions and appetites.

The president’s survive-at-any-cost instinct appears to be in perfect sync with the hopes of many Republicans that a crippled Clinton, twisting slowly in the wind, will serve their partisan objectives far better than would an early exit.

Transcending these Republicans’ disdain for Clinton is their desire to amass power by winning big in 2000 as well as in 1998. And a Republican sweep in 2000 is more likely to occur if the Democrats have to campaign in the shadow of the scandal- plagued Clinton than with the comparatively clean Gore as president, running with all the advantages of incumbency.

This may help explain why many Republicans want to prolong and broaden impeachment hearings to include Clinton’s pattern of deception ”in Travelgate, Filegate, the David Hale loan, Castle Grande, Webb Hubbell’s hush money, wandering billing records, John Huang, Charlie Trie, and threats to women who have reported encounters with Bill Clinton” (in the words of an Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal editorial). The Clinton camp accuses Gingrich of trying ”to string this matter out forever and ever,” in the words of recently departed Press Secretary Mike McCurry.

At first blush, a string-it-out strategy may seem calculated to force Clinton from office as soon as possible, whether by turning up some new smoking gun that cannot be trivialized as ”lying about sex” or by pounding Clinton with more and more allegations until something sticks.

But in reality, the string-it-out strategy seems less likely to force Clinton out than to perpetuate him as a crippled president, by diverting attention from his proven perjuries, his alleged obstructions of justice, and other efforts to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky, which are sufficient grounds for impeachment by themselves.

Instead, there would be months of hearings like those already conducted by various congressional committees into matters such as Whitewater, the travel office firings, the FBI files. All have also been investigated by Kenneth Starr’s office, excepting the campaign finance abuses, which involve alleged violations by the 1996 Democratic and Republican campaigns alike.

History suggests that independent counsels are more competent than congressional committees at digging up evidence and proving crimes. It therefore seems likely that unless and until Starr comes forward with more ”grounds for impeachment,” none will be found by Congress either.

Those Republicans who seek to broaden the impeachment hearings must be aware that this may well make it less likely that Clinton will be forced out. And so must the Clinton strategists–who will, I suspect, secretly be delighted if Republican partisans succeed in seizing the reins from Henry Hyde, the statesmanlike House Judiciary Committee chairman, and thereby divert the focus from the Clinton-Lewinsky crimes. Thus is an alliance of corrupt interests born.

But if the crippled-president option is better for Clinton and the GOP than the quick-exit option, it is suicide for the Democratic Party–an assisted suicide, with Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton sharing the role of Dr. Kevorkian. Why, then, are so many Democrats rallying around the Clinton camp’s unpersuasive claim that the calculated course of perjuries and other crimes alleged in Starr’s Sept. 9 referral are not ”high crimes and misdemeanors,” and thus do not warrant impeachment? Have they looked down the road on which they are embarked?

The Clinton-camp strategy is also bad for the country. While forcing any president from office obviously involves pain and disruption, the question is whether that would be worse than the risks to the nation–as well as the heavy damage to the rule of law–that are inherent in keeping a crippled, crime-committing president in office for another two years and more.

The trade-off might seem a close call if the vice president were an unacceptably weak leader, or if he were likely to work radical changes in administration policy, or if this were a safe, placid world with no need for strong presidential leadership.

But Gore is a seasoned politician, with policy views so close to Clinton’s that the president’s removal would produce nothing remotely like the imagined ”overturning of a national election,” against which the Clinton camp warns. Gore would also be a far more effective proponent of the Democratic agenda than Clinton, whose former Labor secretary, Robert Reich, wrote this in a Sept. 14 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: ”Lacking trust, Mr. Clinton has no presidency to defend, and we have no president to lead us.” Meanwhile, the world seems more dangerous every day. Suppose that the spreading Asian economic crisis spins so far out of control as to threaten a global depression. Or suppose that Saddam Hussein buys enough nuclear material in Russia to be on the verge of building a truck bomb with which he threatens to blow up New York City.

If suddenly we need a president capable of rallying the Republican Congress and the nation to respond to such an emergency–whether by a $ 500 billion bailout of our trading partners, or by invading Iraq, or something of similar magnitude–who would be more likely to pull it off? A crippled Clinton, who is viewed as an untrustworthy liar by those who control Congress? Or a newly empowered Gore?

Perhaps it’s too much to hope for Democrats to focus on such as-yet-unrealized risks to the nation while they and their most loyal supporters are understandably inflamed against Republican partisanship.

But before it’s too late, Democrats should focus on this question: If a crippled Clinton’s survival in office helps the Republican partisans, how can it possibly help Democrats too?