KINDER'S COMMENTARY: EVEN SOME DEMOCRATS HAVE HARSH THINGS TO SAY ABOUT LYING

"First of all, we know he was lying." So says the lead editorial in the current issue of the Weekly Standard about the chief magistrate of the United States of America.

Chillingly, the same editorial continues: "The second thing we've learned lately is that the people closest to the president know he is lying too. They have to know it. They have all the facts that we do, and more. `Everyone who knows Clinton knows he has an Achilles' heel and it's located in his groin,' one White House aide told the New Yorker. `The problem is that what we're hearing sounds true, it smells true.'" (Emphasis original.)

"And the third thing we've learned," the Weekly Standard continues, "is the most depressing. We know he's lying. They know he's lying. They know we know he's lying. But the president's men have nevertheless decided to sign up for the deception. They don't care that we know they're lying. In fact, they want to implicate us in their deception. ...

"The president is lying, lying boldly and fabulously, about something everybody already knows. He has extended this corruption to his colleagues, by asking them to lie with him and securing their cooperation. And all of them together are attempting something unprecedented, almost unimaginable. They are attempting to corrupt the entire country -- to make it complicit, by their acquiescence, in a glaring, disgusting falsehood.

"President Clinton has been searching for a legacy. This will be it."

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The above-quoted remarks are from a conservative magazine and, despite their ring of accuracy, may be discounted by some because of that source.

What say Democrats? Well, there's U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, an independent Nebraska Democrat, former governor and highly decorated Vietnam veteran. Three years or so ago, Kerrey said of President Clinton that he is "an unusually good liar. Unusally good."

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How about other Democrats? How about Chris Matthews, who cut his political teeth 20 years ago as chief aide to former House Speaker Tip O'Neill? Matthews is a syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and a TV commentator on CNBC, where he hosts a fast-paced, five-night-per-week show called "Hardball." Referring to the reaction of "decent-minded Democrats" to the sordid tales emanating from the White House, Matthews had this to say:

"It's they who have felt most disappointed, most saddened and betrayed by this episode."

Matthews concludes with an astonishing metaphor that is at once brilliant and, sadly, chilling to the bone:

"This is the real discovery of the past week. We, 49 percent of us, thought we bought this box of cereal called `Bill Clinton.' Inside, some of us expected to find, perhaps, one of those little plastic toys slipped between the box and the waxed paper.

"Instead, we opened the box one winter day to find not a harmless novelty item but a spider. An eight-legged, hairy bug crawling in what we expected to be a hearty January breakfast.

"We have to live with it, including those who were so hungry for leadership that we heard and discounted, back when we had the choice, that telltale scratching in the box."

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Against this backdrop, how would you like to be one of the brave young Marines this president has just ordered into harm's way in the Persian Gulf?

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.