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C L I N T O N
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BY GARY KAMIYA | America woke up on Monday morning from uneasy dreams to find itself turned into a gigantic penis. We were long overdue. We'd snorted mega-celebrity murder with O.J. and mainlined mega-celebrity death with Diana, but those were just low-grade buzzes compared to the rush we got from the skankiest drug of all: mega-celebrity outlaw sex. This last week has been one long X-rated movie projected on the national sky, and every seat in the house is good.

We're drawn to this movie for the same reason we were drawn to O.J. Simpson and Princess Diana. In an image-dominated culture, the biggest kicks are when the ultimate images, celebrities, collide with forces bigger than they are. The result is a pornographic explosion in which reality becomes as shocking and addictive as the artificial world. Of course, in our personal lives we know that murder, death and sex are real, but we don't allow them in the magical kingdom of celebrity: They're too scary, too huge. We couldn't take our eyes off the O.J. case because it proved the reality of murder; we couldn't take our eyes off Diana because it proved the reality of death; and we can't take our eyes off the Monica Lewinsky scandal because it proves the reality of sex. As pure cultural pornography, it's unbeatable -- the best X-rated loop ever made. In fact, if the Monica and Bill Show hadn't happened, we would have had to invent it: The story so perfectly epitomizes our quintessentially American blend of Puritanism, voyeurism, legalism and celebrity-addiction.

But instead of thanking Clinton for entertaining us during the always-tedious week leading up to the Super Bowl, people are actually talking about kicking the man out of office. This kind of talk must stop immediately.

Clinton has been a good joke for a week, and he deserves to be the butt of Leno routines and derisive e-mails for weeks to come. But -- aside from whatever Hillary decides his behavior warrants, which is none of our business -- that's all he deserves. Unfortunately, forces that are rapidly moving out of our control are setting up a much darker conclusion. A combination of a self-fulfilling conventional-wisdom realpolitik, which asserts that he is too "wounded" to continue and myopically burrows into fatal legal minutiae, and a hypocritical moralism actually threatens to end the Clinton presidency.

This would be an appalling outcome -- and not just because of its effect on Clinton. If we don't pull the brakes on this runaway moralistic-legalistic train before it gets out of control, our entire society will begin backsliding into theocracy and repression. What will be next -- shunning and shaming? Dunking chairs? Stocks? Court-appointed Bible-clutching mullahs patrolling the streets with whips?

Is this really what we want? Isn't it time to call an end to this enjoyably sordid national parlor game and move on to serious business?

To do that, however, we have to deal with our notoriously schizoid attitude toward sex. America has gone from Cotton Mather to home porno videos just a little too fast, and we've skipped a few vital developmental stages in the middle. We're still adolescents about sex, torn between inward leering and outward professions of piety. One of the consequences of this is that we want our president to be our ideal Daddy, our pure moral exemplar. We no longer demand total rectitude -- if we did, our current randy old goat/august leader would never have been elected in the first place -- but we still project our own sexual uncertainties upon our Big Man to an unseemly degree. We're more obsessed with sex than any other society -- and more repressed. This embarrassing combination has made our sexual mores the laughingstock of the world.

Now, however, the farce threatens to become tragedy. The Clinton sex scandal is a crux, a crossroads. We're either going to grow up fast or regress hideously. Will we finally attain the mature, tolerant attitude of the Europeans and most of the rest of the world and realize once and for all that what politicians do between the sheets is not the public's business? Or will we lock ourselves into a state in which we are permanently shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that people have affairs -- and throw out our leaders if they don't conform to some Norman Rockwell image of paterfamilial devotion?

So far, the public seems to be a lot more European than certain pundits want it to be. Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter piously intoned on MSNBC last week that the American people felt betrayed because Clinton had "implicitly" promised them that he wouldn't have any more affairs after Gennifer Flowers. The Sinai tablets Alter consulted were apparently fakes, however, for polls have so far shown that most people don't care whether Clinton had sex with Lewinsky: They just don't want him to have told her to perjure herself.

Actually, even the pundits, who are normally ready to call for a politician's head if he spits on the sidewalk, have largely managed to restrain their moralistic brayings so far. One would like to think this is due to worldliness, or a modicum of integrity (for, shockingly, some of the members of the Fourth Estate, too, have had their Monica moments) -- but it's probably just caution: They're waiting until the allegations are proven to put on their Jerry Falwell masks and condemn Clinton to roast for all eternity over a slow fire. In the meantime, they're playing the always-popular horse-race game: What are Clinton's odds of surviving (by the circular logic that governs American affairs, the very pronouncement that he is in "grave peril" helps make it a reality)? Should he say he's a "sex addict" and beg forgiveness? What does Starr have? Where's that semen-stained dress? Who caught them in flagrante? Etc.

This is perfectly legitimate reporting/speculation and good Beltway fun, but it begs the only question that really means anything: If it's shown that he did indeed have an affair with Monica Lewinsky, should Clinton be forced out of office? Whether you are a Clinton supporter or not, a Republican or a Democrat -- I'm no Clinton fan myself -- I believe the answer to that should be an unequivocal "no."

Let's look at the main arguments for getting rid of Clinton.

1) Anyone capable of cheating on his wife isn't morally fit to be our president.

King Lear had the right answer for moralists: "Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind for which thou whipp'st her." But let's leave aside the fact that this oh-so-lofty standard would excommunicate half the presidents, senators, judges -- and journalists -- who ever lived. The relationship between a person's sexual behavior and his or her overall morality is completely mysterious. Some of history's greatest figures have had some pretty kinky private lives. (And many archvillains never succumbed to fleshly temptation. Robespierre was "the incorruptible.") Does anyone really care if Gandhi had sex with those young girls he supposedly chastely slept with, or if Martin Luther King Jr. screwed around on his wife to an epic degree? In any event, even if a leader has a shaky personal morality, there is no clear relationship between that fact and his ability to govern. Men who cheat at golf, lie to their friends and screw around can be first-rate world leaders.

2) Clinton can no longer be effective, so he should leave for the good of the country.

This is a question-begging argument. The only way Clinton's effectiveness will be hindered is if the media and the public insist on making his private behavior the criteria by which his entire presidency is judged -- which is precisely what I'm arguing we shouldn't do. Realistically, of course, his effectiveness will be hurt for a time -- enormous sex scandals are always going to stay on the public stage for a while, and he's going to have to endure a lot of jokes. But eventually -- unless the legalistic/moralistic mania runs out of control -- it will all be forgotten, just as Gennifer Flowers was.

3) Clinton's behavior was so reckless that we can't trust his judgment enough to allow him to be president.

Assuming the tapes tell the true story, there's no doubt Clinton was pretty reckless. Getting blow jobs from an intern in a room off the Oval Office when the whole world knows that's exactly the kind of stunt you want to pull -- yeah, that pretty much constitutes jumping off a 5,000 foot bridge with a 4,999-foot bungee. But again, personal recklessness is distinct from recklessness in affairs of state. I'd much rather have a president recklessly cruising interns than recklessly shooting cruise missiles.

4) The fact that Lewinsky was a 21-year-old intern makes his behavior beyond the pale.

Relationships involving big age and power imbalances can be sleazy, but without knowing exactly what went on, it's impossible to judge. Much as our latter-day Puritans might like it, we simply can't outlaw all sexual relationships between powerful older men and younger women. They're going to happen, and -- gasp! -- they don't always have unhappy endings. (Although when "friends" rat on you to Kenneth Starr and tape your conversations, they often do.) As for the fact that Lewinsky was 21, so what? What is the age of consent in this country now, 35?

5) Like it or not, the president is a role model and must maintain higher standards of behavior than the rest of us.

The president's conduct of affairs of state must be exemplary. His conduct of his private business need not be. The importance of societal "role models," whether in athletics, entertainment or politics, is vastly overrated in America.

6) If he lied about having sex with her, he perjured himself and must resign.

If Clinton lied, it was the ultimate justifiable lie. It was no one's business. Do we now expect our presidents to choose between trashing their personal lives or conforming to some legalistic truth?

7) Clinton is sick. He is a sex addict who must leave office to seek treatment.

Laughable. The expression "sex addict" is a meaningless, fake-therapeutic evasion. Condemn his behavior if you want, but don't dress it up in these ludicrous hospital gowns.

8) Clinton has damaged the dignity of the office and must leave so that it can be restored.

Oh yes -- to that great dignity it possessed when Nixon was covering up Watergate and Reagan was turning a blind eye to the undermining of the Constitution? Those are real scandals -- this is just an X-rated soap opera.

Enough fun! It's time to get back to work. It's time to take "Bill and Monica Like You've Never Seen Them" back to the video store. Watching too much pornography, after all, is bad for the character.
SALON | Jan. 27, 1998

Should Clinton resign? Come talk it over in Table Talk's Politics discussion area.

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ILLUSTRATION BY BART NAGEL