After somehow stumbling into inconvenient alliance with right-wing Republicans on the matter of our slightly reprehensible-but-utterly-indispensable President, I wish to announce that I have seen the light. I am repenting my sins, returning to my Democratic roots, and seeking solidarity with my progressive brethren.

I hereby commit myself to the Democratic credo. I’m not interested in those old, annoying questions: What did the President know and when did he know it? Or what did he do and why did he do it? Or anything else at all. Just don’t wanna know.

Don’t wanna know if he lied under oath. Or how many times. Don’t wanna know if he coached Monica Lewinsky and Betty Currie to lie. Don’t wanna know whether someone else who got caught doing stuff like that would be in the Big House, not the White House.

Don’t wanna know what the Constitution and precedents really say about whether such things are impeachable. Don’t wanna hear any nasty old witnesses–don’t wanna be confused with the facts.

Especially don’t wanna hear that inconvenient Sid Blumenthal. Don’t wanna hear the ”very heartfelt story,” in Blumenthal’s words, that Clinton told him last Jan. 21 (the day the Lewinsky story broke). Don’t wanna hear about Clinton’s telling Blumenthal that ”Monica Lewinsky came at me and made a sexual demand on me.” Don’t wanna hear about Clinton’s saying that when he rebuffed the trollop, she ”threatened him” and ”said that she would tell people they had an affair, that she was known as ‘the stalker’ among her peers and that she hated it….”

I feel better already. I’m a Democrat again!

Of course, I have never been a very liberal Democrat, certainly not a left-winger. But that’s OK; as best I can tell from following the news, there aren’t any left-wingers in Washington. Just lots of right-wingers–mean-spirited, fanatical, extremist right-wingers. Also white right-wingers; somehow it seems to be allowed to sneer at Republicans for the color of their skin. I don’t know why this is so, but I don’t want to know either. I don’t have the slightest interest in thinking about why the big media routinely hang such pejorative labels on conservatives but not on liberals.

Anyway, as a sort of liberal Democrat, I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. I tolerated his whoppers about Gennifer Flowers as mere ”sex lies” (back then, they weren’t even under oath). And, I am more liberal than Clinton on the death penalty, criminal law, civil liberties, treatment of illegal immigrants, anti-poverty programs, and taxes. I’m mainstream, enlightened, compassionate, and hip.

Or at least I was, until about a year ago, when those rotten white right-wingers sucked me into their cultlike, rule- of-law, truth-seeking obsession. But now I’ve broken loose. Really. Listen:

I don’t want to know whether Monica Lewinsky’s testimony would clear up all those arguments about Clinton’s 2 a.m. phone call to her on Dec. 17, 1997. Would she tell the Senate that Clinton had suggested that if she were subpoenaed by the Paula Jones lawyers, she should file an affidavit misleading the court, if necessary? Would she confirm her prior testimony that he suggested then that she claim that her visits to the Oval Office were to deliver letters to him or to see Currie? Don’t wanna know.

Don’t wanna hear what Lewinsky would say if she were asked whether Clinton had indicated that he would lie under oath, in a pinch, and also indicated that he expected her to do the same.

Don’t wanna know any more about how it happened that Lewinsky’s months-long job hunt finally yielded an attractive offer on Jan. 9, 1998–the day after Vernon Jordan had called billionaire CEO Ronald Perelman on her behalf, and two days after Lewinsky had signed her false affidavit. Those eloquent, elegant White House lawyers danced rings around the bumbling, lowbrow House managers on the job hunt chronology. Henry Hyde is such a bore. I know who I’m rooting for.

Don’t wanna know Lewinsky’s opinion on whether Clinton was lying when he told the grand jury on Aug. 17 that he had told Lewinsky that if the Jones lawyers subpoenaed his gifts to her, ”she’d have to give them whatever she had.”

Don’t wanna know whether Lewinsky is credible in saying that Betty Currie called her (not the other way around) on Dec. 28, 1997, to arrange to pick up the subpoenaed gifts that Currie had discussed with Clinton that morning. Don’t wanna know whether Lewinsky can clear up the argument about whether her recollection is corroborated by the cell-phone call from Currie to Lewinsky that day.

And I really don’t want to know any more about the gaping holes in the President’s claim that he was merely seeking to refresh his recollection when he called Currie two hours after his Jan. 17, 1998, deposition in the Paula Jones case–in which he had repeatedly said that only Betty Currie could answer many of the questions–and summoned Currie to the office the next day.

Don’t wanna think about how it could be that, at the meeting with Currie on Sunday, Jan. 18, Clinton was only refreshing his recollection when he encouraged Currie to agree with such statements as ”We were never really alone,” and ”Monica came on to me, and I never touched her, right?”

Most of all, I don’t want to think about whether that second, almost identical Clinton-Currie coaching session (on Jan. 20 or 21) came before or just after Clinton had learned that the whole Lewinsky cover-up–and Currie’s role as Clinton-Lewinsky go-between–was already under investigation by Kenneth Starr’s grand jury.

I do know what an explosive thing it would be if the President were proven thus to have tampered with a witness in a criminal grand jury investigation. And that’s why I really, really, really don’t want to know another word about it. Don’t wanna know who at the White House asked Jesse Jackson–a few days after Clinton-Currie Coaching Session No. 2– to interrupt his much-publicized ministering to the First Family in order to call Currie, who had sent the White House into a panic by missing work to meet with Starr’s prosecutors. Don’t wanna know what Jackson said to Currie then. Don’t wanna know what Jackson and Bruce Lindsey and Clinton said to her during that Africa trip two months later, on which she was feted at every stop. Don’t wanna think about whether all that has anything to do with Currie’s later testimony that she was having trouble remembering some critical events.

Heck, even that mother-torturing, bookstore-subpoenaing, witch-trial-wallowing, jihad-drunk, gestapo-emulating, sexual McCarthyite Starr and his jackbooted thugs didn’t want to know about the Jackson-Currie connection–at least not enough to subpoena Jackson and be accused of trashing the minister-penitent privilege, too.

I don’t want to think about how many lies the President told the grand jury. I’d rather think about how many lies he did not tell the grand jury. He didn’t lie about his age, or his name, or the color of his eyes. He didn’t lie about who won the last presidential election. He didn’t lie about Buddy, or Socks. He didn’t deny the Holocaust. Why, when you think about it, there are literally trillions of things that he didn’t lie about!

Don’t wanna look at that videotape of Clinton paying, what sure looks like, rapt attention in the Jones deposition when his lawyer Bob Bennett told Judge Susan Webber Wright that the Lewinsky affidavit showed ”that there is absolutely no sex of any kind, in any manner, shape, or form, with President Clinton.” If David Kendall says what looks like attention ain’t, well, that’s all I need to know. Kendall wouldn’t lie to us; after all, he’s an officer of the court.

Then there’s the legal stuff I don’t want to know about. I don’t want to hear about James Madison’s telling the Constitutional Convention that impeachment was an ”indispensable” remedy for ”the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate.” Or about Alexander Hamilton’s writing that a President could be impeached for any ”abuse or violation of some public trust.” Or about Clinton apologist Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s assertion in 1973, in The Imperial Presidency, that ”the continuation of a lawbreaker as chief magistrate would be a strange way to exemplify law and order at home or to demonstrate American probity abroad.”

I don’t want to hear a blessed thing more about the votes in 1989 of all 26 of the Senate Democrats who are still in office (plus then-Senator Al Gore) to convict and remove Judge Walter L. Nixon Jr. for the ”high crime and misdemeanor” of grand jury perjury.

There. I’m all better. There’s only one thing I want to know now: When will those right-wingers leave our President alone and let him get on with the people’s business?