What a sad moment it was on Monday evening to watch the President of the United States give a televised four-minute address on the themes of personal responsibility and moral leadership. Sadder still, because most people already knew that four minutes was probably longer than Bill Clinton would require to exhaust his personal command of these topics.
The fact that most Americans, according to polls, do not expect their President to be honest, and that they have long accepted that this President is a philanderer, is one of the more cynical and disturbing realities of political life here. But now another more seemingly personal question is emerging: what does Mrs Clinton know and why does she stay with him?
By default, she has become a political and personal fulcrum. Americans, searching for a moral compass, are waiting to see that if Hillary accepts Bill Clinton's behaviour, perhaps they should, too.
It is Mrs Clinton's public contention, dispatched from the White House in a press memo marked "Urgent" that she did not know of Mr Clinton's relationship with Ms Lewinsky. "She was misled. She learned the nature of his testimony over the weekend," said Mrs Clinton's spokeswoman, Marsha Berry, this week.
Her approval ratings are strong, sympathy for her is at all time high, and indeed the resolve and dignity she has displayed is unusual in our age, and in sharp contrast to her husband's defensive demeanour.
Nonetheless, the current manifestation of Mr Clinton's personal failings, and both his wife and the American public's reaction to it, is not a story about the sexual relationship of Mr and Mrs Clinton.
Nor is it a story about hysterical or Victorian sexual mores in the United States, as some European observers have understandably posited. It is not a story about a young seductress named Monica Lewinsky. (Or as Proust once put it, "He could just as well have befriended a settee".)
It is rather a story about cynicism, a cynicism that is increasingly and some say dangerously and freshly rooted in the American psyche, and one which is perfectly captured and represented by Mrs Clinton's posture toward her husband's latest shenanigans.
Perhaps a little walk down the White House bedroom corridor is in order.
By most scholars' count, at least 14 American presidents, beginning with George Washington, have had to deal with accusations of sexual immorality. In 1888, opponents of President Grover Cleveland's reelection effort chanted at rallies, "Ma Ma, where's my pa?" in reference to Mr Cleveland's fathering of an illegitimate child. Cleveland supporters countered with "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!" Cleveland was defeated, but acknowledged paternity and returned for a second term.
Dwight Eisenhower's mistress, Kay Summersby, wrote a book detailing their affair in 1976. John Kennedy's affairs are exhaustively documented. Lyndon Johnson's Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, Robert Caro, has said Johnson carried on numerous affairs. Johnson historians say they are respectfully waiting until the death of his widow, Lady Bird Johnson, to offer up more specifics.
Even George Bush was not unscathed. In 1992, reports surfaced that a woman named Jennifer Fitzgerald, Mr Bush's long time aide and ultimately White House deputy chief of protocol, had been his long-time mistress. Ms Fitzgerald disappeared from view and no proof ever emerged. But observers considered it significant that Mr Bush decided not to use any allegations of marital infidelity against Mr Clinton during the 1992 campaign, less a matter of taking the high road than a mutual agreement by both camps that they were both vulnerable. So what is different now? Why is independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, so determined, and why is the American public, despite their support for Mr Clinton's job performance, so interested in this story? (And make no mistake, they are. Despite public protestations of media saturation, they are glued to this drama. CNN's rating have skyrocketed to the levels of interest last seen during the death of Princess Diana. Time magazine, keen on newstand sales, may be rushing out an early issue.)
Part of what has made Mr Clinton so vulnerable is sheer numbers. This is not one mistress. The numbers of women with whom he has been alleged to have sex outside of his marriage are in the double digits. Moreover, Mr Clinton has been daring, and some say reckless. ("How," asked the New York Times, "someone of such surpassing intellect and such protean political talents could indulge in such conduct at a time when he knew a special prosecutor was already scrutinising his administration and when his own re-election hung in the balance remains the most puzzling question about William Jefferson Clinton.")
The media will often ignore certain charges, as they largely did in the Bush affair; they will not ignore flagrant behavior. (Presidential aspirant Gary Hart, a US Senator, painfully learned this after he dared reporters to "follow" him during the 1988 campaign. They did, finding him on a boat called Mon- key Business with his mistress. Thus ended Hart's political career.)
These revelations have also come in the context of Bill Clinton's second administration, a presidency whose considerable accomplishments have been diminished by halftruths and legalistic evasions. In denying his use of marijuana he said he had never "broken the laws of my country". It turned out he was in England when he smoked grass.
In 1992, Mr Clinton denied a 12-year affair with Gennifer Flowers. During the deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit, he conceded the affair but said his denial was accurate because it didn't actually endure for 12 years.
His attitude toward truth is evidenced during one his tape-recorded conversations with Ms Flowers, who was being pursued by the media at the time. If "everyone hangs tough, they're not going to do anything. They can't run a story like that unless somebody says, `yeah, I did it'," Clinton said.
Here is a new paradigm of public dishonesty. Few voters will condemn Mr Clinton's private sexual politics, however personally repugnant. The question is how much lying in public and private life is acceptable. Americans are grappling with that issue and so, perhaps, is Mrs Clinton.
DAVID Boren, a former US senator, is now president of the University of Oklahoma, and teaches a class in US government. When discussing the scandal with his students, most responded that they thought Clinton was lying, was unfaithful, but was a typical politician in that regard.
"To me, it's deeply disturbing," Mr Boren told the New York Times. "In times of crisis, times of hardship, a level of trust between the American people and their government, particularly their leader, is an essential element . . . We have passed from anger about what's going on in our political system to cynicism and alienation. And to me, cynicism and alienation are more frightening than anger." On so many levels, this is a sad moment for Mrs Clinton. For 23 years her marriage to Mr Clinton has been a political partnership, driven in part by her commitment to public service, her conviction that "in a very moral sense that you should do whatever you can do" as her long-time friend, Ann Lewis, told the New York Times.
The true nature of she and Mr Clinton's relationship is a mystery to outsiders and may always remain so. But back in January, Mrs Clinton took to the airwaves, defending her husband, although even she couched her defence in the lawyerly language of proof, saying the Lewinsky allegations would not "be proven true", as opposed to saying they simply weren't true.
Now, even her credibility is strained. A Newsweek poll in March found that 33 per cent of Americans thought she believed her husband's denials, while 52 per cent said she was only saying what she did to protect him.
A respected author and social critic, Barbara Ehrenreich, typified one weary response. "There is a strange mutual dependency between them," Ms Ehrenreich told the Boston Globe. "He has adventures and she will clean up after them. Maybe the country doesn't mind a dysfunctional first family as long as the economy is good, but it gives me the creeps."
But while some criticise her for staying, others see that Mrs Clinton's sad acceptance of her husband's behaviour is reflected in American women's cynicism about fidelity. A poll to be published in the September issue of Ladies Homes Journal, a major women's magazine, shows that 46 per cent of American women would forgive their husbands an affair.
A 1991 poll by the same magazine showed only 12 per cent of women would overlook an affair.
"She may not be behaving as a first wife should behave, but women believe she is behaving like a first lady should behave - loyal and dignified," magazine editor in chief, Myrna Blyth, told the Washington Post.
When her husband's term is ended in two years and five months, Mrs Clinton will be 53 years old, an astute lawyer and experienced public policy expert.
As of today, her husband's reputation for honesty and integrity hangs by a bare thread. As of today, hers is frayed but intact.
The challenge for Mrs Clinton, for the remainder of his presidency and with a view to her own future, will be to keep both reputations intact.