Clinton and Captain Ahab.

• Position: Bill Clinton and Kenneth Starr - Editorial

Here at this magazine, we have never been Bill Clinton supporters. In 1992, his clamoring for capital punishment and his pledge to "end welfare as we know it" marked him as an opportunist of the worst sort. His record since taking office has not impressed us, either. On civil liberties, on Pentagon spending, on NAFTA and GATT, and especially on welfare, he's been a disaster.

These wrongheaded policies trouble us much more than his current sex scandal. They affect people's lives. But that scandal and the alleged cover-up cannot be dismissed as mere rightwing vendettas or media voyeurism, though there is enough of both to go around.

Sex is the least of it. People, even Presidents, have a right to private lives. No one has suggested that whatever he was doing with Monica Lewinsky was anything other than consensual. She is an adult. If Clinton was having an affair with her, that's his business, her business, and Hillary's business. Not ours.

Some say the power imbalance and perhaps the age difference between Clinton and Lewinsky point to an abusive relationship. That's possible, but are we to return to the Puritan days where we regulate who gets to sleep with whom?

And who's going to do the regulating, Cotton Mather?

We do worry, however, that Clinton has a terrible habit of using people. Just as he can employ Harold Ickes one day and dismiss him via the morning paper the next, so he can be cozy with Monica Lewinsky one day and call her "that woman" the next. It is unethical to treat people as instruments.

Clinton's trouble with the truth is also a big problem. Charlie Peters, the editor of Washington Monthly wrote back in 1992 that he was worried about Clinton's facility to tell lies. He was right to worry.

There's not much distance from Mr. "I didn't inhale" to Mr. "no improper relationship." This suggests an incapacity to take responsibility. It's so much easier to blame Betty Currie, his personal secretary, than to own up.

Clinton dissembles, distorts, and lies when it serves his purpose. If it's impolitic to say that U.S. troops will be in Bosnia indefinitely, he says they'll be there just for a year. If it's disadvantageous to admit that NATO expansion could cost up to $120 billion over fifteen years, as the Congressional Budget Office said, the Administration lops off some zeroes and says it will cost $1.5 billion over ten years. Disdain for the truth is not an admirable trait.

And it has put him in Kenneth Starr's sights. After eluding...