He’s the Bum and We’re the Spouse; What to Do Now?

It’s not like I gasped for air and screamed, “Why, why, why?” after finding out President Clinton had been lying all along. As shockers go, him lying about a girlfriend is not exactly up there with the Jets beating the Colts in Super Bowl III.

Still, his disclosure hurt. His short apology didn’t move me.

Stooge that I am, though, I thought there was a reasonable chance he’d been telling the truth in recent months about Monica Lewinsky. I wasn’t going to bet my 401(k) plan on it, but obsessed men and women live among us and who was to say that the young intern wasn’t one of them?

Let’s not waste time pondering that question.

The more interesting questions, now stuck in our faces once again, are what kind of president do we have and whether we want to put up with his behavior.

So far, the public majority has spoken with a consistent voice. It questions the president’s character but wants him to remain in office.

That shocks a lot of people, but it shouldn’t.

People make similar decisions every single day in this country.

The helpful analogy is to see modern-day America as a giant family, replete with problem children, siblings and parents.

With that as the model, consider our admired but troubled president as Dad and Husband.

We want our dads and husbands to be perfect. We impute to them our best traits--like strength and passion and decisiveness. When they’re on their game, they soar.

Sometimes, though, they fall to Earth.

Some drink. Some yell. Some hit. Some play around.

The confounding thing is that they do these things while performing their other patriarchal duties in fine fashion. There’s the father who reads bedtime stories to his kids on the nights he’s not in a drunken rage. There’s the father who attends every one of his children’s soccer games but gambles away the rent money. There’s the father who’s the president of the PTA but cheats on his wife.

Clinton tests us mightily. He’s the classic breadwinner who’s very good at his job and, when he wants to be, the perfect family man and charming companion.

It’s just that he screws up from time to time in very big ways.

So, why not boot him?

For the same reasons that we Americans don’t automatically eject wayward spouses.

Sometimes, hopeful they’ll change their behavior, we simply forgive them.

Sometimes, we simply rationalize that, in spite of their flaws, life is better with them than without them.

Commentator George Will once delivered the classic observation that Dan Quayle had a “curiously unlived-in face.” Clinton is just the opposite, a flesh-and-blood guy with a life story. Like it or not, the story comes with classic strengths that endear him to us and latent drawbacks that make us want to cuff him on the head.

We put up with Clinton, maybe because most of us know someone like him. And we probably like that person.

Hey, he’s Dad. He’s been a good provider, and he keeps telling us he’ll quit drinking or gambling or staying out late. We want to believe him.

So why, as I’m a Clinton supporter, did his speech Monday night not leave me rallying ‘round?

The family analogy holds: It’s one thing to suspect your spouse is having an affair. Having him or her say it is a whole different thing. You think you’re braced for it, but when the words come spilling out and all the lies hit you right in the face, you have to flinch.

That’s where I’m at, as of this moment, with the president. He made me flinch.

I understand he may have a highly complex psychological profile. The fact that he had a relationship with someone as potentially dangerous as a young intern leads me to a host of questions about what guides his emotional and psychological impulses.

I don’t think he’s inherently corrupt. But I think his “issues,” as they say in therapy, go beyond being a horny devil.

So much so that, if he wants to resign, it’s all right with me.

As someone who twice voted for him and is repulsed by how Ken Starr has handled the Lewinsky investigation, that’s a big leap for me. In trying to figure out where it’s coming from, I’m wondering if I’m not playing the aggrieved spouse whose first impulse on hearing of the deception is to kick the bum out.

If so, wake me up tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see the world in a whole new way and like the big lug again.

For now, I’m just bugged.

Irritated as I am, however, by the deceit he threw in his friends’ faces, the sin doesn’t rise to the level of kicking him out of the house. But if he decides on his own to leave, maybe it’s best for everyone.

Mostly, I think, I just want him to start being a better person.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.