The bottom line.

• Position: President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and the Whitewater Affair - Includes related articles - Editorial

When it comes to the Whitewater Affair--and it's just an Affair, so far at least, and not a Scandal--let's see if we can all agree on what we can all agree on.

1. We know of no crime that has been committed by Bill Clinton, and certainly no impeachable offense. Hillary Rodham Clinton holds no office and therefore can't be impeached in any circumstance, but we know of no crime she has committed, either.

2. Despite bizarre rumors circulating in Washington, D.C., and reaching even into the hinterlands, there is no evidence that White House Counsel Vincent Foster's death was anything but what it seemed to be--the tragic suicide of a man overburdened by work and frustrated by a confrontational environment, including particularly the hostility of the mass media, for which he was quite unprepared.

3. The Clintons undoubtedly blundered in loading the White House staff with Little Rock cronies like Foster, especially from the Rose law firm in which Hillary Rodham Clinton was formerly a partner--but many other Presidents have brought old pals into their Administrations, forgetting that they are not likely to impart objective, astringent, unwelcome advice.

4. In their zeal to protect the Clintons from exposure of real or imagined misdeeds, some White House officials crossed the line into impropriety and conflict of interest, and others have been more than slightly careless about the truth in their public assertions. Again, these are hardly major or unprecedented transgressions, though they certainly deserve to be brought to the public's attention. At the very least, members of the President's inner circle displayed a degree of ineptitude and outright incompetence that must give pause.

5. As for the speculative Whitewater real-estate venture itself, and the Little Rock savings-and-loan operation with which its finances were entangled, the truth probably lies somewhere between the President's categorical denial--"None of our money was borrowed from savings-and-loans, and we had nothing to do with the savings-and-loan"--and the sweeping innuendos embodied in Republican charges and hyperventilating press reports. What is clear is that when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and Hillary Rodham Clinton was a highly compensated member of a prominent law firm, they associated with some financially unscrupulous operators and took every advantage of available opportunities to turn a fast buck.

6. For reasons that are understandable if not admirable, the...