Molly Ivins July 30

AUSTIN, TEXAS — When last I wrote an entire column about the Monica Lewinsky affair, which I am proud to say was more than six months ago, Washington had reached such an advanced state of tizz that one yearned for trite old Rudyard Kipling's manly man — the one who kept his head when all about him were losing theirs.

We are once more in the tizz soup, but I do not see that we have advanced one iota beyond where we were in February.

To the best of our knowledge, what we have here is a case of consensual sex of some sort between adults, which is none of anyone else's business. That a private affair has become the subject of a legal inquiry, a political disaster and more coverage than the O.J. Simpson trial speaks volumes about what has gone very wrong with the special prosecutor system, American politics and the media.

The last time sex did this much damage was probably the fall of the Irish leader Charles Parnell 108 years ago, brought about by his affair with a married woman — although the comparison is probably unfair to Parnell, who was a far stronger leader than President Clinton.

The curious route by which all this was fed into the hands of Clinton's political enemies is still the oddest part of the entire tale. I suppose we shall be forever grateful, as it were, to the astonishing conduct of Linda Tripp, who it now seems may have played an even more egregious role than we previously thought.

But the hounding of Clinton long predates Tripp's appearance on the scene. In the current issue of The New York Review of Books is an excellent essay by Lars-Erik Nelson on the recently published books by Jim McDougal and Webster Hubbell. As Gene Lyons, the estimable Arkansas political reporter, and many others have been trying to point out for years, the problem was always a combination of ignorance of and condescension toward Arkansas politics. (Shall I ever forget the portentous announcement by a noted television journalist that the real story was "the confluence of money and politics in Little Rock"? Dum, de dum-dum ... duuummm. Gee, I never of heard of anything like that happening in Washington, did you?)

Just to update you on "the endless Clinton scandals," as one television commentator said just the other night:

Travelgate has been exhaustively investigated, and the bottom line is the Clintons did nothing wrong. Filegate has been exhaustively investigated, and the Clintons did nothing wrong. Whitewater has been so exhaustively investigated that the sheer disproportion of elephant to mouse in the case is mind-boggling — and the bottom line is that the Clintons did nothing wrong.

Vince Foster's suicide was a suicide.

Paula Jones' lawsuit was not tossed aside lightly by the Republican judge in the case — it was thrown aside with great force. Yet no one in the special prosecutor's office, the media or the Republican Party has had the grace to utter a simple announcement to this effect. I keep waiting for the Emily Litella Moment at which they will say, "Oh — never mind," but apparently hating Clinton means never having to say you're sorry.

Four years and $40 million later (and that's for Starr's office alone — the innumerable congressional investigations stagger on), we are left with all the reputation-damaging, trust-destroying cliches: Where there's smoke, there's fire; "everybody knows" he's a crook; "everybody knows" he's slick, tricky, dirty, morally bankrupt, etc. As Steven Brill relentlessly exposed in his magazine Brill's Content, the Washington press corps has behaved with all the responsibility of high-school gossips. Why would that surprise anyone who watched what they did to Jimmy Carter?

That leaves us with the thoroughly bipartisan fund-raising scandals of the '96 campaign. As you will have noticed, the political will to do anything about campaign finance — the only one of these matters that actually rises to the once-dignified title "scandal" — is nonexistent for the simple reason that it will hang the Republicans just as high as the Democrats.

In a disgusting display of hypocrisy, the Republican congressional leadership is even now attempting to kill off the last meaningful effort to do anything about the system that has corrupted American politics to the core — while pretending it is solely a Democratic problem.

And we are left with Lewinsky. Sex? None of our business. Perhaps lying about it under oath? A problem. Perhaps encouraging others to lie about it? A bigger problem. But there remains something so unseemly about Starr's pursuit of this matter — which, after all, would never have become a legal problem for Clinton or anyone else had the man's political enemies not been bent on destroying him. Starr's investigation is so bizarrely disproportionate — using tactics that would be questioned if he were pursuing some Mafia overlord guilty of ordering innumerable hits and masterminding gambling, extortion, prostitution and drug rings.

Meanwhile, out there in the real world, economies are crumbling all over the globe, while Congress has yet to fund the International Monetary Fund. Nothing at all is being done about global warming (except Congress tried to pass a law preventing people from talking about it).

More than a third of the public schools are in desperate need of repair. Health, safety and the environment are all being mangled by this Congress. But all Washington can talk about is what Ken said about what Monica and Bill did.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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