"This is no time for evasions, denials or alibis," Jackson intoned. "I fully accept responsibility and I am truly sorry for my actions."

President Clinton, Newt Gingrich and Linda Chavez, among others, could take a page from Jackson's honest and direct statement, in which he neither blamed his enemies nor tried to downplay his bad behavior. (Mimicking Chavez, he might have brought a parade of single mothers he's helped over the years, or female Rainbow Coalition members he hasn't hit on.) Jackson took responsibility squarely on his shoulders, with a classy apology that acknowledged the pain he'd caused his family and the damage he'd done to the causes he believes in, as well as the love he feels for his baby daughter. He was also right to announce that he is taking a self-imposed leave from public life to "reconnect" with his family.

Of course Jackson's defenders will point suspiciously to the timing of the National Enquirer's 2-year old "news" story. Rumors that Jackson fathered a daughter with Karin Stanford, who ran his Washington office, have raged through Washington political circles for months; why is it exploding in the headlines now? Jackson is fresh off one of his biggest public triumphs, his crusade to publicize the story of voter disenfranchisement in the Florida election debacle, a cause he was about to take onto the streets of Washington on Inauguration Day, and the civil rights leader promised to be a thorn in the side of the unelected Bush administration for the next four years.

The fact that the Enquirer story debuted on the Drudge Report Wednesday, the same place the Monica Lewinsky scandal burst forth three years ago this week, only reinforces those suspicions. And it seems no accident that the African-American man people were talking about all day Thursday was Jackson and not Ronnie White, the Missouri jurist "Borked" by John Ashcroft who was testifying against the attorney general-designate while the cameras were trained on Jackson.

The National Enquirer denies that politics played a role in the timing of its Jackson exposé. But even if it did, Jackson has no one to blame but himself. The civil rights leader's womanizing has been legendary for years; he was a ticking sex scandal ready to explode. And it's tragic: Once again, the nation loses a public leader because of his private misbehavior. Jackson's leadership will be missed by those who were rallying to the cause of voters' rights.

Many liberals will say that the exposing of Jackson's private transgressions is an outrage, that they should have no bearing on his fitness to be a civil rights leader. But I think it's not that simple. I believe strongly that public figures deserve private lives. And, as President Clinton reminded his interrogators during his videotaped Monica Lewinsky testimony, the human heart is complicated. What's remarkable, and disturbing, about the sex scandals that have hobbled so many public men in recent years -- Jackson, Clinton, Gingrich, Gary Hart -- is the way each insisted on making his private affairs public.

What is this penchant among powerful men for romances that will inevitably be discovered? From Hart challenging the media to follow him as he romanced Donna Rice, to Clinton preying on a big-mouthed intern he confessed ruefully he "knew" would eventually talk, to Jackson dallying with an activist who wrote the unfortunately titled book "Beyond the Boundaries: Reverend Jesse Jackson in International Affairs" (apparently she became an expert on his boundaries and his affairs), then putting her in charge of his Washington office; clearly we're enduring an epidemic of sexual recklessness in high places.

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