KINDER'S COMMENTARY: PRESIDENT'S DEFENDERS HAVE WRITTEN THEIR NAMES IN DISHONOR

Former California Gov. Jerry Brown ... says there is no question what lies ahead for President Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat. "It's not a question of `if,' it's only a question of `when'" Clinton is forced to leave office, Brown said. -- From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 11

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As this is written, the contents of independent counsel Ken Starr's report on L'Affaire Lewinsky are unknown to most of the world, a circumstance that certainly won't be the case by the time this is published. Even before publication of that historic report, though, we can note the dishonor of President Clinton's most vociferous defenders.

As observed here before, defenders of this president who have chattered away on the cable talk shows these last eight months have literally written their names in dishonor. Eleanor Clift of Newsweek. Susan Estrich, late of the 1988 Dukakis presidential campaign. Lanny Davis, leading White House spinmeister. Paul Begala of the White House team. The reptilian James Carville, dubbed by one brilliant observer "the president's snapping turtle." Margaret Carlson of Time magazine. Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School. Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal and CNN's "Capital Gang." Geraldo Rivera. Dick Morris. White House communications director Ann Lewis -- truly, as National Review called her, "a comic shill." Lewis' brother, Mass. Rep. Barney Frank. And anyone else who has maintained these last months that perjury in a civil case doesn't count when they know that truth-telling is the basis of our legal system. And all the rest of their disgraceful, corrupting lies.

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It was way last fall, months before we knew of Monica, that this writer took considerable guff for opining that this administration is the most corrupt in American history. A better question might be, "Exactly what has Bill Clinton touched that he hasn't corrupted?"

His longtime business partners and friends are felons. His administration, his marriage and his very life are one gigantic, utterly shameless lie. Why aren't we justified in concluding, "Every word Bill Clinton says is a lie, including `and' and `the.'"

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In that regard, allow this writer to second the point made by George Will that this scandal has been far more corrupting for our nation and our culture than anything we went through in Watergate. The key point here is that in all of Watergate, no one in the Nixon administration succeeding in corrupting the nation's fundamental standards. That is to say, even in their violation, Nixon and Co. didn't seek to obliterate the idea of right and wrong as a standard of presidential conduct. But this has been the essence of the Clinton defense.

Consider some ancient wisdom from a French philosopher named La Rochefocould: "Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue."

That pithy sentence stands for the proposition that even a hypocrite can -- in violating a standard of right conduct -- pay tribute to that standard by the very fact of his hypocrisy. That is to say, he doesn't seek to obliterate the standard itself, merely to violate it and suffer the hypocrisy.

The pathological Bill Clinton presents us with a new challenge. He and all his defenders named above have sought to "define deviancy down," in Sen. Pat Moynihan's memorable phrase -- to obliterate the very idea of any standard of right and wrong. We will be years cleaning up the wreckage the Clintons have dumped on us all.

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Clinton will rank among the 10 worst presidents. -- Former U.S. Sen. Tom Eagleton