”When we saw Osama bin Laden carry out that bombing attack in Africa, we sent a very strong message by going after his colleagues, and himself, hopefully, in Afghanistan. We weren’t (able) . . . to hit as many terrorists as we wanted, but we sent a message.” So said Defense Secretary William S. Cohen on Oct. 13, to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, with regard to the Aug. 20 cruise missile attack on terrorist camps at Khost, Afghanistan.

As James Risen of The New York Times deduced from this and other evidence: ”One of the clear but unstated objectives of last August’s raid on Afghanistan was to kill Osama bin Laden and as many of his lieutenants as possible . . .”

Meanwhile, President Clinton vowed on Nov. 15 to ”intensify” U.S. efforts to help Iraqi rebels bring about ”a new government” in Baghdad–a consummation most unlikely to occur except over Saddam Hussein’s dead body.

Such statements come a bit closer than ever before to official acknowledgment that the United States has tried to kill a foreign leader for acts of war against this country. This has some in Congress and others wondering whether the 1976 presidential order that bars ”assassination” has become–or should become–inoperative.

The answer is no. But the questions are likely to persist, given that the simultaneous spread of terrorism and of weapons of mass destruction poses an ever-growing danger, one severe enough to sometimes justify the pre-emptive killing of terrorists overseas.

One reason for the current confusion is that the deliberately (and usefully) vague assassination ban has never been as broad or as legally binding as is widely supposed. It has never meant that the United States will not use lethal force in response to attacks by foreign enemies.

The celebrated historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., assuring a House Judiciary subcommittee on Nov. 9 that Congress cannot constitutionally impeach President Clinton for his ”disgraceful” lies, distilled the essence of his scholarly advice into one short sentence: ”Gentlemen always lie about their sex lives.”

Always. Even when ordered by a judge to answer a sexual harassment plaintiff’s questions under oath. Even to a criminal grand jury. Even when the lie falsely brands as a liar and a head case the lady whose reputation the gentleman presumably wishes to protect.

It also appears that sex is not the only thing about which gentlemen lie–or, let’s say (after all, we’re all gentlemen here), fib. Sometimes they fib about history.

Consider the press release issued on Oct. 28 by Schlesinger and two other eminent co-sponsors on behalf of more than 400 (mostly liberal) historians and constitutional scholars. It contained just one assertion of historical fact: ”Under our Constitution, impeachment of the president is . . . explicitly reserved . . . for high crimes and misdemeanors in the exercise of executive power.”

False. The Constitution specifies no such thing. The last six words quoted above–”in the exercise of executive power”– appear nowhere in any of the provisions regarding impeachment. Nor do they appear in any of the records of the constitutional convention. Nor was the impeachment power ever construed so narrowly by leading scholars before 1998, when liberals mobilized to palliate President Clinton’s perjuries and alleged obstruction of justice.

What do liberal causes such as hate-crime laws and the London detention of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet have in common with conservative causes such as the Defense of Marriage Act and harsh mandatory prison terms for drug offenders?

All of these measures are championed by politicians who hope to do well by making certain constituencies feel good. And all of these measures are likely to do nothing–or worse than nothing–for the people they purport to help. All of them have unhealthy side effects. And all, except for the Pinochet snatching, are embraced by President Clinton.

Feel-good politics is not new. But it seems ever more potent at a time when so many voters’ views on public issues come through the quarter-inch-deep medium of television–rather than through reading, reflection and reasoning–and when so many politicians shape their principles by poll results.

Take the current campaign to expand federal hate-crime laws to cover crimes motivated by homophobia. This was spurred by the understandable public desire to ”do something” to express outrage at the sadistic robbery-murder of Matthew Shepard, allegedly by two gay-bashing thugs, in Wyoming.

Largely lost in the noise–on television, at least–were three reasons for concluding that the proposed legislation was an irrational response to the murder: First, there is no evidence that even a single crime would be prevented by new hate-crime legislation. Existing laws are entirely adequate to punish those who murder and assault, whatever the motives; Shepard’s killers could get the death penalty under Wyoming law. And there is no evidence that state authorities anywhere, today, systematically condone crimes motivated by homophobia, as many once condoned crimes motivated by racism.

President Clinton’s lawyers have rested his defense not on any serious contention that he is innocent of the perjuries and other crimes alleged in Kenneth Starr’s report, but on the argument that even if he is guilty, impeachment would violate the spirit of the Constitution.

The Framers, suggest Clinton’s lawyers and an extended gaggle of liberal law professors, excluded such conduct as lying about sex from the category of impeachable offenses. This has a veneer of plausibility: The Constitution lists only ”treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” as grounds for impeachment, and the president’s lies about making it with the office help don’t seem very ”high.”

On inspection, however, this argument falls apart. Nothing in the Constitution, the Framers’ debates, or the precedents justifies reading ”high crimes and misdemeanors” so narrowly as to exclude crimes such as perjury and witness tampering, even if they grow out of private matters.

The impeachment provisions were adopted by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in accordance with James Madison’s assertion that it was ”indispensable” to guard against presidential ”incapacity, negligence or perfidy.” An early draft listed only ”treason and bribery” as grounds for impeachment. George Mason, stressing that this would not reach ”many great and dangerous offenses,” moved to add ”or maladministration.” Madison objected that ”so vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.” Mason then substituted ”treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” And that was that.

Which two people in Washington most dread the possibility of Al Gore’s becoming president through the removal or forced resignation of President Clinton?

One of them is Bill Clinton. The other is Newt Gingrich. If Gingrich is the win-at-any-cost, right-wing partisan the Clinton camp says he is (and I have no reason to doubt it), he would much rather have Clinton hanging around the Democrats’ necks in November 2000 than have a fully empowered President Gore running as an incumbent.

These thoughts suggest the outlines of an unholy marriage of convenience, with Clinton and his diehard defenders working toward the same outcome sought by the most cynically partisan Republicans. That outcome–a crippled president hanging on until Jan. 20, 2001–could be very bad for the country. But it would be arguably good for Republican partisans, and definitely good for Clinton.

Why good for Clinton? Because the current drama has only three conceivable outcomes, the first of which seems improbable now and may become inconceivable within a month:

1. President Clinton survives in office, following some sort of congressional censure, with Congress and the nation agreeing to put his crimes behind us and to support him as an adequate, if personally flawed, leader.

2. The president survives, but in such a weakened state that he can get virtually nothing through Congress and has little hope of rallying the nation to take the kind of difficult or costly steps that may be necessary to meet a crisis. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans press unending investigations into alleged misconduct by the president on various fronts, with high hopes of sweeping the presidency as well as both chambers of Congress in the 2000 election.

As the impeachment pot simmers, the possibility that Vice President Al Gore could also find himself facing criminal charges has some Republicans salivating and some Democrats in a cold sweat.

But the legal clouds hanging over Gore–in the form of two 90-day ”preliminary investigations” now being conducted by the Justice Department–do not, on close inspection, seem all that dark. Despite some ominous suggestions that ”this time, his legal problems may be much more serious,” as The Washington Post put it on Aug. 30, Gore’s real risk of facing indictment or impeachment actually seems quite small.

It is possible that Gore will be assigned his very own independent counsel in late November to look into the narrow question of whether he lied last Nov. 12 to Justice Department officials investigating his dialing-for-dollars from the White House. Such a lie would be a serious federal crime even though Gore was not under oath. But analysis of the known facts suggests that there is no clear proof that he lied. Unless some emerges, any competent independent counsel would quickly decide not to prosecute.

Gore is also one of several subjects of a far broader investigation, into whether President Clinton and the entire top echelon of the Clinton-Gore campaign–and, for that matter, the Dole-Kemp campaign too–systematically schemed to violate various campaign finance laws. Attorney General Janet Reno is under mounting pressure to seek an independent counsel on that front by mid-December. But even if a counsel is appointed, the process seems unlikely to lead to criminal charges against either Clinton or Gore. Nor should it.

Here’s the basis for these conclusions:

A woman asked Benjamin Franklin in 1787 what the Framers had created at the Constitutional Convention. His reply: ”A republic–if you can keep it.”

Franklin’s words resonate today. Two extraordinary events occurred this week. Both shed light on the health of what the Constitution calls our ”republican form of government.” The first was salubrious (if premature): the release of President Clinton’s videotaped testimony before the Starr grand jury, providing a remarkable opportunity for all Americans to judge whether their president had committed impeachable offenses.

The second event was profoundly disturbing (if unsurprising): The instant reaction to the Clinton testimony by media elites–who style themselves guardians of the Republic, educators of the masses, and tribunes of truth–was little short of decadent.

What mattered most in the Clinton testimony and the other material released this week was not the fresh porn that the press so happily deplored–and what dreary, dull porn it was–but the fresh evidence of his criminality. What mattered was whatever evidentiary light was shed on the question of whether he has committed (and is still committing) impeachable offenses.

This obvious point has escaped the press. It has also escaped much of the public, in part because the press abdicated its claimed educational role while implicitly advocating government by plebiscite. Even respected newspapers reviewed Clinton’s testimony not as evidence but as a theatrical performance. Most barely took note of the powerful proof, witnessed nationwide by the American people, that the president had repeatedly committed one of the most serious crimes charged in Starr’s report: perjury to a criminal grand jury.

Perhaps the greatest danger presented by the apparent willingness of so much of the public (up to now) to let President Clinton escape impeachment and trial for his credibly alleged felonies is that this would tear at the already-frayed bonds of the law.

What would it say about our commitment to equal justice under law if the elected official charged by the Constitution with executing the laws was free to commit felony crimes (perjury, obstruction of justice) with virtual impunity? What would it say, for instance, to all the people who are currently serving long prison terms for relatively minor offenses, thanks to the draconian mandatory drug sentences so favored by this president?

A civilized society depends heavily on voluntary compliance, especially concerning the obligation to provide truthful testimony. Law’s insidious enemy is the cynicism that spreads when little people get the message that big people–and who is bigger than the president?–can get away with lawless conduct. Here are three ways in which the rule of law will suffer if Clinton skates:

Undermining sexual harassment law. If a boss such as Clinton can have sex with a low-level subordinate, lie under oath about it in a sexual harassment lawsuit, and then escape punishment, victims of sexual harassment will be the losers in the long run.

A three-year consensual affair–which the female subordinate claimed, after being fired, to have carried on for the sake of job security–was at the heart of the 1986 Supreme Court decision that first recognized sexual harassment as a legally actionable form of sex discrimination, Meritor Savings Bank vs. Vinson.

Let me begin with some concessions and qualifications:
     
It’s true that there is something grotesque about wheeling out the awesome machinery of impeachment to determine whether the stuff of a bad porn flick can give rise to "high crimes and misdemeanors." There is something seriously disturbing about the Congress weighing the question of whether the president or the intern is lying about whether he touched her breasts and genitals "with an intent to arouse or gratify." It’s also true that Kenneth Starr’s report may wallow in such stuff more than necessary to prove the perjuries. Yuck, to borrow a Monica word.

It’s further true that what President Clinton has done to the institutions of democracy is not as bad as what President Nixon did in Watergate. Although the evidence that Clinton has committed crimes is at least as strong as the evidence that Nixon did, a criminal cover-up of a sexual affair is not as bad as a criminal cover-up of a burglary aimed at bugging political rivals. And Clinton’s perjuries and obstructions are not as bad as the payment of hush money to burglars.

It’s finally true that if a majority of the American people demand Clinton’s continuance in office — even in the face of Starr’s evidence, and even after any congressional hearings or Senate trial — then Clinton should not be removed (and won’t be).

But for the time being, as the people and their representatives absorb the detailed evidence and ponder its simultaneously grave and bizarre meaning, there are five key questions to answer: