Private Affairs and Public Business Make Strange Bedfellows

Lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped anyone from commenting on President Clinton’s current predicament, so why should I wimp out? I know as little as anyone else, so why not dive in? After all, if Gennifer Flowers can be elevated to pundit status, as she has this week on various TV talk shows (“Gennifer, in the 40 seconds we have left, what do you think will happen in this case?”), why should I be self-conscious?

All I bring to the table, however, are dueling observations: a) 50-year-old men, even against their better judgment, have been known to be attracted to women in their early 20s and engage in inappropriate sexual relationships, and b) women in their early 20s have been known to become obsessed with 50-year-old men and create fanciful scenarios that distort the reality of the relationship.

Either of those scenarios, along with variations too numerous to mention, could apply to President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. My hunch as to which is more likely to be true is like my hunch about Sunday’s Super Bowl--I don’t know which way to bet.

But just as with the Super Bowl, bombs will fill the air fairly soon. If it turns out that, at minimum, the president had a sexual relationship during the last couple years with Lewinsky, now 24, when she was a White House intern, some serious national gnashing will ensue. And if the story advances to the next level--that Clinton or an emissary encouraged Lewinsky to lie under oath about the affair--then we’re talking about a national referendum on Clinton’s suitability for office.

It’s a referendum the American public loathes. Excepting the self-proclaimed moral absolutists among us, the country doesn’t like to grapple with questions of sexual propriety or behavior. It’s a debate littered with all kinds of opportunities to be hypocritical, illogical and unresolved.

If President Clinton had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky, most of us would agree it’s inappropriate, but then what? What is the proper punishment for such presidential behavior, given that Clinton already is verging on three-strikes territory?

The conundrum: Here’s a man who has a handle on his job. No one can argue that anything, including alleged sexual affairs, is keeping Clinton from his appointed rounds as president. He’s as conversant on virtually any issue as any president we’ve seen. By most of the historic measures of presidential success, he is one.

But what about the President’s PMQ (Private Morality Quotient)?

Americans for 200 years have mythologized the office of the presidency to such an extent that we’ve blurred the connection between a president’s private morality (read: sex life) and ability to handle the job. In our heart of hearts, we know there isn’t a great connection; still, we have too much Puritanism inbred in us to let the question drift away completely.

That forces us to ask whether an affair is a disqualifying event for a president. That question vexes millions of Americans, who know friends and relatives who have had affairs and who often cut them slack. In Clinton’s case, the public already looked the other way when it elected him in 1992, in spite of the Flowers allegations early in the campaign.

Clinton now tests us again. Only this time, with a twist.

There is the alleged affair and the additional allegation that he asked Lewinsky to cover it up under oath. I saw an Average Joe on TV saying he could forgive the president for the affair, but not for lying about it or for encouraging Lewinsky to lie.

That kind of response always strikes me as comical. The affair is the lie, my friend. Affairs tend to have devastating consequences on many people; therefore, people lie about them.

I suspect there’s something more fundamental at work here. The American people don’t want to deal with this. They don’t want to debate whether an affair should cost Clinton his job, or whether the threshold is an affair-plus-perjury.

Gennifer Flowers was thrown into our faces in 1992, and everyone was happy when she went away and took those knotty marital morality problems with her. Now, she’s back and so are those kinds of questions.

Only inveterate Clinton-haters want the allegations to be true. That’s not necessarily out of any particular love for the president. It’s just that if they are true, we’ve got to brace again for public debate over sexual morality and its consequences.

If you really know us, Mr. President, you know how much we hate doing that.

Even worse for you, you know how much we’ll dislike you for making us go through it again.

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