When the histories of the Clinton administration come to be written in the next century, what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan last summer characterized as a “crisis of the regime” will inevitably be the principal focus. Yet central to any future account of this “crisis of the regime” will be a subject which the public—and until very recently, the press—has been notoriously reluctant to confront: the role played by the character of the President himself in creating this crisis. What this public display of a refusal to render a moral judgment on the President’s character has cost this country, and what that refusal has contributed to the political crisis, will also be subjects for historians to ponder for many years to come. For the “crisis of the regime” has turned out to be a moral crisis for the nation.

What the failures of the American press have contributed to this twofold crisis must also ...

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