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Many Americans, of course, disagreed as they partook in this national conversation. The President's impeachment forced us to grapple with the complicated mix of morality, governance, and faith. Whatever the overall legacy of Bill Clinton, this piece of it holds lessons for the nation but especially for the church.

1. Reject the separation of personal and public. While 1999 polls seemed to affirm that Clinton's sexual escapades were his own business, the year 2000 was less charitable. "Clinton fatigue" set in. Memories of his infidelity and duplicity kept hobbling his attempts to "move on," seriously impeding the President's political effectiveness. Former presidential adviser David Gergen gave us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the personal was beginning to take a political toll. In his book Eyewitness to Power, he reported that the exposure of Clinton's infidelity damaged his conjugal bonds and so depressed him that he and the first lady were unable to work together on domestic policies. In addition, Hillary Clinton decided to run for the Senate at the same time. No relation between private and public?

Furthermore, the "character issue"—the weight of one's word when a finger is wagged or public testimony given, how one treats another human being, one's faithfulness to vows taken before bar or altar, and sexual responsibility—marked both Democratic and Republican campaigns this fall. In selecting Joseph Lieberman, a high-profile critic of Clinton's behavior, my own Democratic Party acknowledged that deep down in the soul of the American electorate the personal is inseparable from the political.

And while policy questions were given priority, surely the issue of character was a subtext in the Bush campaign. As presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has said on television, the Clinton scandals gave Bush the character issue, significantly influencing the voters.

One part of Clinton's legacy is that we will scrutinize his successors to make sure there is coherence between personal behavior and public professions of piety and virtue. Prediction: Future presidents will be held accountable because women reporters and a newly voiced female citizenry will no longer let male sexual adventurism pass.

In an ironic twist, the "separatists"—who insisted that government had no business mixing the personal with the political—campaigned to pass a congressional resolution declaring Clinton's personal conduct reprehensible. Of course, the congressional rebuke functioned partly as a ploy to show moral outrage while deflecting impeachment. But it was also an admission that the faithful execution of public office requires the personal virtues of trustworthiness, truth-telling, and fidelity.

2. Understand two "conversations." How often we saw President Clinton proceeding from church with Bible in hand. How pious were his prayer breakfasts, visits to congregations, and consultations with clergy. Sooner or later, he had to account for disparities between his professions of piety and his practice.

Two conversations go on with presidents about matters of personal morality. The first conversation has to do with the public's need for moral standards in public office, based on data everyone can inspect in accord with universally discernible norms. Being caught in lies and infidelity weakens a presidency. When the public was having this conversation with Clinton, it escalated into congressional scrutiny of his "high crimes and misdemeanors."

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January 8 2001, Vol. 45, No. 1