In the short run, President Clinton won big–in both legal and public relations terms–when Judge Susan Webber Wright threw out the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit.

But in the long run, Wright’s ruling will actually hurt Clinton, and help Kenneth Starr. Here’s why: The Jones lawsuit had already become a sideshow–a useful distraction, in the minds of those seeking to divert attention from Clinton’s own alleged lies and cover-up. The main act is Starr’s investigation of those alleged crimes. And that will now be the entire focus of public attention.

The argument about Paula Jones–and the secondary question of whether she is entitled to monetary damages as a matter of civil law–is over, unless she wins on appeal a year or two from now. The argument over whether Bill Clinton has corrupted his office by orchestrating a cover-up is now under way in earnest.

Sometime in May, Starr will (it seems likely) submit to the House of Representatives a copiously documented public report detailing grand-jury testimony and other evidence that implicates Clinton and his aides in as many as several dozen alleged perjuries and in efforts to encourage perjury or conceal evidence. Starr will state that the evidence is serious enough to require him to refer to the House anything that ”may constitute grounds for an impeachment,” in the words of the independent counsel statute.

Starr will argue that Judge Wright’s ruling has little or no legal relevance either to Clinton’s guilt or innocence as a matter of criminal law or to possible impeachment. And Starr will be right.

This is not to say that Wright’s ruling has no political relevance. Impeachment is inherently a political process, and it is driven far more by public opinion than by technicalities.

That’s why the conventional wisdom is that in any PR war with Starr, or with Republicans in Congress, Clinton will always win.

Part of what I believe with all my heart,” Hillary Rodham Clinton said in her famous 60 Minutes appearance with her husband on Jan. 26, 1992, ”is that the voters are tired of people who lie to them.”

That sounded right at the time. After all, the Nixonian cover-up of the third-rate burglary at the Watergate in 1972 had reshaped American politics. And the lies and alleged lies by Presidents Reagan and Bush and many of their appointees were a source of constant, carping commentary.

But recent events–including the public’s weary reaction to another 60 Minutes interview, on Sunday, with Kathleen Willey–have cast doubt on whether most voters really do care much about lying by politicians.

Nor does political lying, or even lying under oath, appear to outrage most Washington journalists and other inside- the-Beltway deep thinkers (not to mention the cover-up- facilitating lawyers), except when they happen to already dislike the alleged liar for ideological reasons. Indeed, so starkly do the Clinton scandals exemplify the tolerance of lying that pervades our politics that the denouement will be of immense and lasting cultural import.

This tolerance of lying is reflected in the persistent characterization in the press as a ”sex scandal” of legal proceedings that in fact center on powerful evidence–including the sworn testimony of more than 10 witnesses–implicating the President of the United States in dozens of perjuries, efforts to obstruct justice and cover up not only sexual advances to various women (two of whom accuse him of sexual assault), but also his Whitewater financial dealings.

Miffed as I am by Kenneth Starr’s pattern of ignoring previous suggestions in this column–such as my modest proposal that he resign–I have some more free advice for him.

To enhance his credibility with the public (which pollsters now rank near Saddam Hussein’s), Starr should announce a series of decisions clarifying where his investigation is headed, showing that an end is in sight, smoking out Attorney General Janet Reno and adopting a policy of openness–to the fullest extent permitted by law–in describing his progress and responding to critics. Starr should: * Offer Bill Clinton full immunity from criminal prosecution, in light of the harm that any criminal trial of a sitting President would do the country and in light of widely shared doubts about whether a prosecution would be constitutional.

* Make it clear that his office is not investigating anyone’s sex life except to determine whether Clinton or someone else has committed or encouraged perjury or obstruction of justice.

* Seek the President’s sworn testimony, by May 1, to help determine whether Clinton or others have committed any such crimes with regard to Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, the Clintons’ Whitewater investment, or the looting of Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan.

* Specify that the investigation has only two possible outcomes: a report will either explain why no action should be taken against the President or detail grounds for the House of Representatives to consider whether to impeach the President.

* Stress that he would push the impeachment button only if he is prepared to present Congress–soon–with powerful evidence of serious crimes by the President.

* Promise an interim report to Congress by May 15 and vow to close his investigation (except for any pending judicial proceedings) by Sept. 15.

To a degree that is hardly apparent from the slow pace of events–but is central to the White House strategy of delay– Kenneth Starr is in a desperate race against time.

Starr’s evident desire to present Congress with the strongest possible legal case for impeaching President Clinton is at odds with Starr’s need to move before the political calendar makes any such case irrelevant.

The reason is that the closer Starr comes to Jan. 20, 2001, without taking action, the more his investigation–which started four years and $ 40 million ago, under then-independent counsel Robert Fiske–will look like the pointless pursuit of a man well on his way to lame-duckery.

As a result, each passing day is a victory for the President and a defeat for Starr–whether Starr’s prosecutors have spent that day grilling Vernon Jordan before a grand jury, fencing with White House lawyers over executive privilege, trying to get Secret Service agents to say wh at they saw Clinton do, fending off rumors about their own sex lives, or investigating who leaked what to whom.

Starr’s investigation has only three possible outcomes, as far as Clinton is concerned. 1) The independent counsel could make a final report detailing what he has learned and why it does not warrant any type of proceeding against the President. 2) He could seek to have the President indicted and put on trial. And, 3) he could invoke Section 595(c) of the independent counsel statute, which states: ”An independent counsel shall advise the House of Representatives of any substantial and credible information . . . that may constitute grounds for impeachment.”

What might have been one of Kenneth W. Starr’s better weeks has turned out less well than it should have–in PR terms, at least–thanks to a prosecutorial bungle that spurred delighted Clinton surrogates to cry, ”Gestapo!”

An egregiously overbroad Starr subpoena accomplished the improbable feat of making a 1st Amendment martyr out of Sidney L. Blumenthal, a former journalist who had recently gone to work at the White House, amid hoots from pressies that he’d been working there all along. Blumenthal, a confidant of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s, has been busily hatching conspiracy theories–some call him G.K., for Grassy Knoll–and masterminding attacks on Starr.

The subpoena for Blumenthal was hastily drafted by prosecutors furious about a barrage of Clinton-camp smear tactics, including rumors about two of their colleagues’ sex lives. The subpoena raised legitimate concerns about the danger of prosecutors’ persecuting their critics, especially those who act as sources for reporters. The press went into a predictable 1st Amendment frenzy, diverting attention from at least three revealing White House moves, all of which may prove more important in the long run:

Kenneth W. Starr has done almost everything right, as best I can tell, ever since Linda Tripp dumped the Monica Lewinsky mess in his lap on Jan. 12.

Starr and his staff are not part of a ”vast right-wing conspiracy,” as Hillary Rodham Clinton has charged. Nor is there any evidence to support the Clinton camp’s suggestions that Starr is seeking to manufacture false evidence to get the President. As for suggestions that Starr has authorized the (illegal) leaks of grand-jury secrets, they seem less credible than the long-ago claims that independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh (now a Starr critic) authorized grand-jury leaks during his six-year Iran- contra investigation.

Starr–who is, like Walsh, fundamentally an honorable man–does not deserve the trashing he has been taking, especially from people desperate to divert attention from the evidence implicating Clinton in serious federal crimes.

So why am I calling for Starr’s resignation?

Because that single, swift stroke would slash through the Clinton camp’s diversionary tactics and put the focus back where it belongs: on whether the President lied and coaxed others to lie.

If Starr does resign, it seems likely that the three- judge special court responsible for replacing him would display more sense than in the past and would choose someone with the credentials and qualities to bring the investigation to a quick and resounding close.

That person would have strong prosecutorial experience; no significant Republican affiliations (an apolitical Democrat would be best); no other political baggage; and a well-earned reputation for talent, toughness, integrity and wisdom. He or she would be young enough to work 100-hour weeks and old enough not to be swayed by ambition.

President Clinton’s defenders are quite right to note that the leaks dribbling out from (or about) Kenneth Starr’s investigation do not prove that Clinton has lied to the nation, lied under oath, encouraged others to lie, or obstructed justice.

Clinton’s presumption of innocence surely survives reports of Monica Lewinsky’s tape-recorded allegations that she repeatedly performed oral sex for Clinton. And it survives her reported claims that Clinton encouraged her to avoid giving truthful testimony in the Paula Jones case; get rid of Clinton gifts that had been subpoenaed by Jones’s lawyers; say that her 30-some visits to the White House over the past 21 months had been to see his secretary Betty Currie, not him; and move to New York to duck her subpoena.

After all, Lewinsky could have been lying or fantasizing when she gave her stunningly vivid accounts to her erstwhile confidante Linda Tripp (who taped more than 20 hours of their phone calls) and to eavesdropping FBI agents (during a three-hour Tripp-Lewinsky meeting on Jan. 13). Lewinsky’s own lawyer has implied that this ”responsible young woman who speaks the truth” sometimes doesn’t.

Nor is Clinton’s presumption of innocence dissolved by his loyal secretary’s reported statements to investigators. So what if Betty Currie contradicted Clinton’s own reported sworn testimony suggesting that he had not been alone with Lewinsky in the past 21 months? So what if Currie said that Clinton and Lewinsky met in or near the Oval Office repeatedly, as recently as Dec. 28?

And so what if Currie disclosed that the President called her to the White House on Sunday, Jan. 18 (her day off)–the day after his testimony–and took her through a series of leading questions about Lewinsky, some of which did not match her own recollections? Questions along the lines of: ”We were never alone together, right?”

As the battle for history begins, here’s a dissent from the prevailing view that the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, unlike the great and glorious Watergate adventure, is devoid of heroes.
     
Actually, there may be more heroes now than there were then. While The Washington Post’s early Watergate work took guts, the bandwagon-jumping in 1973 and 1974 by legions of other reporters, prosecutors, and legislators was hardly the stuff of heroism, in the Nixon-hating climate of establishment Washington.

Some of my heroes share my view that President Clinton should be removed from office; some do not. But all have had the guts to take facts and law seriously.

I’ll dwell first on Democratic heroes, those who stood against their party’s descent into hypocrisy and dishonesty.

As of this writing, just three of the more than 250 Democrats in Congress have shown real courage in this affair: former Rep. Paul McHale of Pennsylvania (who did not seek re- election in November and went home to Bethlehem) and Sens. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Russell Feingold of Wisconsin.

McHale stands out from the four other House Democrats who voted to impeach Clinton, both for his thoughtfulness and for his place in the moderate mainstream of the ideological spectrum. His strong prior support of Clinton made his defection especially embarrassing — and especially offensive — to his fellow Democrats.

”There is no improper relationship.”

Into those five, carefully chosen, classically Clintonesque words– delivered to public television’s Jim Lehrer in an interview on Wednesday–President Clinton inserted two escape hatches. See if you can spot them.

What remains to be seen is whether this Houdini of nondenial-denials can slip through the tightening web of allegations of perjury, suborning perjury and obstruction of justice that have grown out of Paula Jones’s lawsuit charging the President with sexual harassment.

The evidence is not all in, and what’s known so far might not be enough to cripple a politician with Clinton’s survival skills. But this is clearly not just another ”bimbo eruption.” Clinton’s alleged sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, now 24, and his alleged effort to cover it up, have fused the Jones case with the criminal investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr–and conceivably opened a legal avenue to impeachment.

Lewinsky was a starstruck 21-year-old when the President allegedly commenced an intimate physical relationship with her; she was allegedly pressed to deny the relationship both by Clinton and his friend Vernon Jordan; she subsequently denied it in a sworn affidavit prepared by a lawyer recommended by Jordan, who took her to the lawyer’s office in his car; and the allegedly false affidavit was filed Jan. 12 in federal court in an effort to quash a subpoena by Paula Jones’s lawyers.

Clinton was referring to Lewinsky when he said ”there is no improper relationship.”

Escape hatch No. 1: By saying that there ”is”–a word he used three times in the interview–no improper relationship, Clinton avoided saying whether there ever was such a relationship. The use of the present tense was noted by the news media, prompting Clinton to use ”was” in two later interviews.