People are alleging that the president is a sex addict -- is this true?

First of all, I want to get on the record that I am a Clinton supporter in political terms. But I was probably the only leading feminist to have believed Paula Jones right from the start -- from the very moment she emerged in 1994. I felt that the charges that Anita Hill made were far less grave than the ones Paula Jones made against Clinton.

I'm in no way shocked by the latest allegations, but it's pretty clear to me as a theorist of sex that Clinton has more of a mother problem than a woman problem. I feel it's not a conventional sex addiction per se. But from his youth in the matriarchal domestic womb of his very powerful mother figure, Clinton has apparently had problems separating his own identity from that of women. So he has this split -- it's very close to a Madonna-whore split -- between the intelligent woman, the woman who is an equal of his brain and of his political instinct, and the objects of his carnality, which he seems unable to direct except toward slutty types or toward those in some vulnerable, dependent position.

What we're seeing here is an odd continuation of the Michael Kennedy case with the baby sitter. I think the baby sitter became more attractive to Michael Kennedy because she was part of the domestic unit. She was just another egg in the maternal nest! It's almost an incestuous pattern. Similarly here: I just don't understand it when you have a man who is the leader of the free world, who has access to so many women -- they're in the tens of thousands out there! -- who'd be delighted to have an affair with him, why he'd have to create a situation where there's a potential charge of sexual harassment. Why couldn't Clinton adopt the European standard of sophistication -- as with Prince Charles and the French prime ministers -- where you have discreet liaisons with women who know how to keep their mouths shut? And Clinton is someone who has always been on the right side in feminist issues. The point is this girl was available, she was there, she was an adjunct to the domestic nest! The Oval Office, after all, is one big egg, isn't it?

Here's the thing: Clinton's a workaholic. He does deserve credit for the fact that he's nothing but business and has performed indefatigably day after day, month after month. This is the excuse he was trying to make yesterday -- "I have to get back to the mission for which the American people elected me." He's trying to use this as a kind of shield. His workaholism really became a problem for his sex life. He rarely takes a vacation. He hardly visits Camp David. He never gets out of the White House in Washington, even to go to parties on the Georgetown scene -- we all know the Clintons' shunning of that scene, to Sally Quinn's ire! There was never opportunity for the kind of spontaneous, fun liaison that can occur in an upstairs bedroom on top of a pile of mink coats on a bed in the middle of a party -- where you're not bringing sexual pressure to bear in your own hierarchical office environment. It's really Clinton's workaholism that has led to this lapse in judgment.

Look at the Kennedys, for heaven's sake! We've got Ted Kennedy allegedly able to have liaisons with women in cigarette boats off the coast of Monte Carlo, on the floor of Washington restaurants, any place, any time! You get a Kennedy near a warm body, and it's a sexual opportunity! But while Clinton has always been desperately trying to model himself on JFK, he lacked JFK's savoir faire and worldliness. Basically Clinton's a homeboy. He wants to make everything into Little Rock again where there's one big clan of good ol' boys hanging around, shooting the breeze.

Clinton seems to favor a certain type of woman.

It's pretty clear that Gennifer Flowers was a sensualized version of Hillary. Or perhaps we should put it in reverse: Hillary slowly remodeled herself on the blond archetype of Gennifer Flowers. If you look at pictures of the early dowdy Hillary, when she first arrived in Little Rock, she sure didn't look at all like Gennifer Flowers! So Hillary's really transformed herself.

I've gotten in a lot of trouble in my career talking about Hillary Clinton's frigidity as a personality and how our generation of career women (she and I are the exact same age) have had trouble reconciling our ambitious side with our sexual side. I think that she's a kind of refrigerator at home, and that for warm, tender, accepting embraces Clinton has really had to go outside his marriage. In no way is Hillary an all-forgiving mother figure. She's really his severest critic, and he's needed her every step of the way in his career. She provides the discipline.

One reason I believed the Paula Jones story right from the start was because of the allegation that he demanded oral sex from her. Based on my long study of pornographic pictures and videos, I can easily see why Paula Jones would instantly produce a fantasy of oral sex. People kept saying, very ignorantly, "Oh, she's not very attractive -- what would he have seen in her?" Well, I can see very clearly she has this big wide mouth, and a lot of teeth, and there's a sort of slackness about her jaw -- which is what women porn stars develop when they learn how to relax their jaw muscles to perform great oral sex. I think that Paula Jones was at every stage a walking, talking advertisement for oral sex! So I was stunned when I first saw the pictures of Monica Lewinsky on every TV program -- the big wide smile, the nicely relaxed lips with all those teeth -- and I thought, Oh my God, here we go again! We heard years ago that Clinton seemed to believe that he was never unfaithful to his wife as long as he just having oral sex. I think that's what he wanted from Paula Jones and that's what was going on here. In his own mind, he really believes, "I'm not doing anything wrong. All we were doing was having a little fun." He was being sexually serviced during his busy day.

Do you think Clinton will recover from this crisis?

I think the Clintons have shown monumental inability to handle crises. It's really Hillary who's been pushing this strategy of stonewalling right from the start. On every issue, every controversy, it might have been Clinton's impulse just to give in -- he wants so much to be liked. This Paula Jones situation should have been settled out of court a long time ago. But from what one has heard, it was Hillary who rigidly refused any kind of compromise. That terrible misjudgment has led directly to this scandal. Because if Clinton hadn't walked into his lawyer's office last weekend and apparently denied under oath all these many allegations of sexual misconduct, we wouldn't be talking today about impeachable offenses. You could impugn his judgment, but there was nothing indictable about it.

I find very interesting the terminology being used this past week by Hillary and now by Clinton himself. When Hillary was asked how she was handling all this controversy over the Paula Jones case, she said, "I just put it in a little box. That's how I deal with it. I put it in a box in my mind and I just don't think about it." And then yesterday Clinton picked that image up. I was struck by it. Of course the word box is a slang word for vagina! The first time I became aware of that was when I was in college listening to the great Doors song, "20th Century Fox": "She's got the world locked up inside her plastic box." There it is: Hillary's steel-vault box is her steel-trap mind! She also views the White House like a fortress, like a citadel, and she locks out everyone outside of it.

If the Clintons simply had a more rational, more cordial social life with the greater world, if Clinton had followed his natural gregariousness as opposed to her suspiciousness -- which of course he needs in many ways -- then I think that these scandals wouldn't be happening. He's been starved for sensual companionship. He would have loved to carry on like JFK in the White House: Remember "Fiddle and Faddle" -- the secretaries on call to service JFK? But JFK could carry it off. It was also a different period as well. JFK had all kinds of sophisticated contacts in the greater world -- in Hollywood and so on.

By the way, when the scandal with the Lincoln Bedroom broke, I immediately became suspicious about what Clinton was doing with his time. Up to that point, I'd been publicly saying, "Oh, Clinton is clearly following the straight and narrow, he's really cleaned up his act." But the moment I heard that the Lincoln Bedroom had become a revolving door for power brokers and people from Hollywood, I said, I'll bet Clinton has been having flings with women in the Lincoln Bedroom! And I was amazed that the media never brought it up. No one in the major media seemed to make the connection with sexual use of the Lincoln Bedroom. They just said, "Oh, he just likes to have a lot of guests in the house." Well for heaven's sake, it's pretty obvious Hillary would go to sleep at a decent hour, and there's all those stories about Clinton wandering into people's rooms and sitting and talking till 2 or 3 in the morning. People just laughed it off.

So I don't think his problem is sex addiction but just a normal, rather immature man's desire to be petted. He sure doesn't get the petting he needs from Hillary. Hillary got him to the White House, but she doesn't pet him. The moment his daughter is gone -- and here's one of his most shameless appeals for popular approval -- out comes the dog! He even walked out with the dog yesterday. That's the most pathetic part of this. He's desperate for a woman who will pet him and instead he gets a dog!

You've commented in a Salon column that Clinton shouldn't be judged by conventional moral standards. Do you still think so?

My attitude is, I don't care what men or women in public office do in their private life. As a strict libertarian, I believe that's entirely their own business. But what we don't want is a kind of mixing up of the private with the public. Therefore if you're in a position of leadership, you shouldn't be having affairs with your subordinates. If you're in a position of public trust, you should respect the dignity of the White House. JFK certainly did not do that. We're learning that he did not behave in a dignified manner. You can say a lot of bad things about Nixon -- he was a cold fish and certainly wasn't having affairs with anyone -- but he always dressed formally with his tie and jacket on in the White House. He'd never take his jacket off at work -- the same with Reagan -- out of great respect for the building and its history and its high standing as a symbol of American democracy.

All these allegations about Clinton bring the White House down to the level of a frat house -- there's an "Animal House" quality here. Even the Secret Service men were apparently put off by the Clinton crowd's behavior in the White House. It's been alleged that Hillary's foul-mouthed cursing at Clinton in the hallways of the White House was not taken well either by the Secret Service. I think there's been a kind of disrespect from the Clintons right from the start.

In general I subscribe to the European model of life. I believe it is in our best interest to be realistic about sexuality. This American insistence that we must always have a good "family man" in leadership positions is not realistic. A man of power is going to be a man of very high sexual energy. I want that kind of a man. I want a Clinton more than I want a Nixon. I don't want a cold fish! I want someone in the White House who would love to have sex with 10 different people in three days. That doesn't bother me in the least! What does bother me is lying. I cannot stand lying. To me it's not that he's a sex addict. It's that he's a liar! I don't want to be lied to. I think there's got to be a better way to handle tacky crises. If you've made a mistake, admit it! Take the consequences and move on. But it's infuriating that he seems to live in this fantasy world. He thinks he's the aw-shucks naughty boy that women will always forgive because he's so charming.

If Clinton falls as a result of this scandal, how will he be remembered?

People often wonder why the American public constantly forgives Clinton. I believe that he's a genuinely telegenic politician who is a very gifted personality. I believe he really does feel people's pain! I think he has genuine compassion, even though he's also a very shrewd political strategist too. But if he's addicted to anything, it really is to instant gratification, to the life of the senses. His identity is almost too porous -- it's as if he suffers a weird emotional leakage toward women. And it's genuinely tragic, because I think with a little better judgment, his legacy -- particularly in reconciling the polarized extremes of liberalism and conservatism -- is a very substantial one. But now these peccadilloes may overshadow it. I still think that he will be remembered fondly even by those of us who are most critical of his uncontrolled sex life.