Digging dirt

During the period when the Senate convenes to try the president, the domestic affairs of America will be brought to a halt. Mr. Clinton has pledged that he will not be distracted from his duties. But his fellow Americans will certainly focus their attention on the painful process being enacted in Washington, rather than on the grave implications of a downturn in the economy, a widening balance of trade with China and Japan, and the issues of global concern, including the faltering Middle East peace accord, and the fallout from the offensive against Iraq.

Even more confusion is brought to the issue by the resignation of the speaker-elect, Bob Livingston, who decided he could not keep office because a magazine is about to publish details of his own extra-marital activities. If Mr. Livingston's motive was to shame President Clinton into doing likewise, he has failed on two counts.

The President has made it clear that if it is in his hands he will see out his term of office.

Aside from that, the issue is not about sexual misconduct, but about the President's unabashed and repeated lies, under oath, to the country which elected him. The point was made in Congress, and will be made many times more, that if infidelity was a barrier to political office, Capitol Hill would be a ghost town. The same would apply to the parliaments of most governments on the planet.

Because he has had the good fortune to be in the White House during a time of prosperity, and because he has diplomatic skills that have forwarded the cause of peace in some of the world's most intractable troublespots, the American electorate does not wish to see its leader dismissed in disgrace. The public sees in him a morally flawed man, but a gifted statesman, and it fears the effect that an impeachment trial will have on the country's internal harmony.

It is true that the highest office of the most powerful nation on earth requires ethical integrity of a rare order. But the sexual McCarthyism sweeping through government is as injurious and ill-judged as its forerunner, and will spread its poison far beyond the White House.

By lying to his countrymen, Mr. Clinton no doubt merits severe censure, but it would be better for the U.S. and the free world, if punishment could wait until after his term of office.

-- The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong