First the Starr report. Now President Clinton's taped grand jury testimony. "The People's Panel" met again to talk about the scandal that won't go away - the big ugly thing stuck to the nation's shoe. This time a new panelist, Nance Jacobs, joined us, and the chat took place over coffee and bagels - sorry, no spinach dip - in the kibitz room at Seymour Attman's Deli on East Lombard Street.

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Moderator Dan Rodricks: My 8-year-old son brought home a joke from school: This guy dies and goes to heaven. He notices a lot of clocks. He asks St. Peter about it, and St. Peter says, "The clocks show us the time remaining on Earth for each person." The guy asks, "Why do the hands on some clocks move faster than others?" St. Peter says, "If you lie, the clocks speed up." "Where's the president's clock?" the guy asks. "Oh," says St. Peter, "we keep it in the back; we use it for a fan." The Bill-and-Monica story has trickled down to at least third grade. Jason, last week, you said the president should "continue to lead." Do you think he's done anything wrong?

Jason Wilson (musician and radio producer): I do think he's done something wrong, and what your son's telling you is sad. It proves this is how Clinton will be remembered - not for what he has done for the country, but for this.

Rodricks: Should we punish the president?

Wilson: I feel more strongly about it now than I did last week. I think, after seeing the president's testimony on TV, that he should stay in office. I think he has done something wrong, but I don't think it is the business of the country.

Rodricks: Lying under oath?

Wilson: He was under oath because of this affair, because of the Paula Jones case. I don't think this is something that should have been brought out to begin with.

Nance Jacobs (medical assistant and teacher): If [Clinton] had told the truth immediately, the whole thing would have stopped right there. If I were to go into a courtroom, I would totally honor what I raised my hand to because I'd be swearing by my life and my God that what I was saying was the truth.

Rodricks: Even if the question was about a relationship outside of your marriage?

Jacobs: Yes. Truth is easier to deal with in the long run than all the falsifications that build up around untruths.

Bob Knatz (Democratic precinct pol): I don't pretend to be a student of the Constitution. I am not a lawyer. I'm worse, I'm a real estate broker. (Laughs) I believe some of the responsibility should rest on Kenneth Starr and his extreme desire to get at this president, without even thinking of what it is doing to this country.

Rodricks: Should a prosecutor - someone supposedly independent, free to pursue suspected crimes - consider what impact it might have on the country?

Jacobs: His concern is to check out the law. To make sure what happened is illegal or not.

Knatz: Mr. Moderator, you called him the prosecutor. He is appointed as a special counsel. I believe that is an important distinction. He has come off as a messenger of the far right, as a prosecutor getting this president, whatever the cost.

Rodricks: About that grand jury testimony on video. The question - if Clinton lied under oath or not - turned on a definition of what "sexual relations" means, or meant. The legal definition.

Jacobs: For some reason, [Clinton] feels the rest of us are stupid.

Rodricks: You think it's pretty cut and dry? He had a sexual

relationship with Monica Lewinsky, what they did . . .

Jacobs: Everything that he did fit into that definition.

Rodricks: It was a restricted definition.

Jacobs: Well, it covers everything I know. (Laughs)

Rabbi Martin Siegel: Clinton is trying to lawyer us into thinking that he can get away with it. But just to save his own skin seems selfish. The sin that I see in him, that he needs to overcome, is self-centeredness and selfishness.

Jacobs: And arrogance.

Siegel: A kind of intellectual arrogance: "I can outthink you." And that would be a terrible message to send to your kids - to show that a person who is clever can get away with it. Now he has the chance to overcome that himself. You know, there is a whole industry that Clinton has created to defend himself. And if he was truly repentant, he would pull away from all of these guys and try just to come to a place like [Attman's] . . .

Rodricks: I'll invite him, Rabbi.

Siegel: He should come and talk to people like us, without all the spin doctors. There was some stuff in the tape that sounded real. Like when he said, "I care for Monica Lewinsky. That sometimes I felt bad, you know." So, there was a humanitarian element. There was compassion. And that was very attractive. I would like to see more of that, instead of this whole apparatus of people created by him to hide his dark side.

Jacobs: As a parent, if your son comes to you and starts spinning things, and he will, around 12, 13, or 14, what would you do?

Rodricks: I would go back to a basic: Be honest with me. You get in more trouble by lying.

Jacobs: Right. Integrity is the word I kept pushing with my kids.

Rodricks: You didn't vote for Clinton in either election?

Jacobs: No. But there is no joy in watching this now. This is pathetic. This is the lowest vision that we can give the world of what our country is.

Rodricks: The president got a standing ovation at the United Nations the other day.

Wilson: Citizens of other countries are saying, "What is the big deal about this?"

Jacobs: But say you are negotiating something with Japan or some other country; they have to trust our word. And if you are a person who plays with the words all the time, what kind of contract do you set up with another country? Can they trust us?

Siegel: Our president is part of me. And I want him to represent the best of me. I want to teach my children the best I know. Our president is us, and we want something better from him.

Rodricks: Do you feel that way, Nance? Bill Clinton is us?

Jacobs: He, the man, does not represent me. But I honor the office of the presidency. I took classes in to see the White House. I don't think I would look at it the same way anymore, you know, the Oval Office or anything like that. The presidency needs a new paint job.

Rodricks: Grand jury testimony from Monica Lewinsky was graphic, very sexual, explicit stuff. Yet, the polls show a majority of Americans still think Clinton should stay in office. What does this say about our views on sexual conduct?

Elayne Smith (administrator at a counseling center): That it's personal.

Jacobs: It's an indication of a bigger problem. When two people get married now it's no longer a commitment for life. It's whatever.

Knatz: You can't blame that on Bill Clinton.

Jacobs: No, no. I'm just saying this is the bigger picture. It's a sad road we're heading down, because we don't commit to one another.

Wilson: One thing I found in the video was a hounding of Clinton to the point where he was answering questions four or five times.

Jacobs: Have you been in a court of law? For the people on jury duty, it's a boring procedure.

Wilson: My feeling was, "Come on, he answered the question." It was a desperation to get something from him.

Siegel: There was something to get. Do you really, bottom line, prefer that he be able to do this behavior without consequences?

Jacobs: No.

Wilson: I don't think [impeachment] is the consequence we need. There is consequence in his personal life.

Jacobs: But he wouldn't deal with it.

Siegel: This is his opportunity to deal with it.

Jacobs: He would push the limit and push the limit. And eventually, if we didn't draw the line, he was totally out of &L; bounds and heading for big, big trouble.

Smith: It finally caught up with him.

Siegel: I do counseling of the spiritual nature, and I deal with people all the time who have a dark side and a better side. And it is a struggle, sex being the major issue they often deal with. So he is like all of us. We all have done some things.

Jacobs: But there are choices you make.

Siegel: And there need to be consequences to one's choices. We do have an issue with sexuality in our culture, an addictive, self-centered relationship with sexuality. I think that needs to change. And he, as the great teacher of culture, can help change it.

Smith: My daughter is older now, [but] I have a grandson who I can tell what I think and not rely on the president to teach my children.

Rodricks: (Holding front pages of Monday and Tuesday's Sun) Well, you've got this - Cal Ripken, and Bill Clinton. The photographs of these two guys hang in my kid's bedroom. This one (nodding toward Clinton) is ridiculed as a liar now.

Smith: And children pick their heroes. But I still have to instruct at home. I can't rely on Bill or Cal to instruct my child.

Rodricks: Does it matter that the President was having sex in the . . .

Smith: It does matter, and I think it's wrong. But when I spoke to my grandson - he's 8 years old, and I've been trying to find out what he knows about it - he said, "That's what the president gets for lying and doing other stuff."

Rodricks: Other stuff?

Smith: He never told me what the other stuff was. So, I'm not sure if he even knows. He knows something, but he's not quite sure.

Siegel: People are hurt. It's kind of like something in your family that you don't want to talk about. People are ashamed. My kids are older. They justify their behavior based upon certain media personalities. So this one did this, Madonna did that, and so on. But the president is supposed to represent something that we can emulate. He's so diminished. When I see him doing presidential things, the image that comes to me is, It went on in the Oval Office. And how can you respect that? How can you believe in Hail to the Chief?

Smith: I don't see the chief any different than myself. I only see the chief as a human being.

Jacobs: His position is greater than mine.

Smith: It just pays better.

Rodricks: We know a little more about Monica Lewinsky this week, from her grand jury testimony.

Smith: I think her relationship with this man was a groupie mentality. I think she approached him first. I think she knew this man's reputation, as we all thought we knew it, and [thought] it would probably be quite easy.

Wilson: If you are a 21-year-old intern and the "most powerful man in the world" is like having encounters with you, it's an overwhelming thing.

Rodricks: You make it sound like he went after her.

Wilson: She probably said to herself, "Try it." She probably didn't think anything was going to happen. And once it did, she was like, "Oh my goodness, this is actually a reality for me." And then the fantasies . . .

Jacobs: She knew more at her age than I did.

Siegel: One of the poignant aspects is that she had the kind of relationship with him personally, after sex, that he didn't have with anybody else. He said to her, according to her testimony, "I am empty," or "I have something missing in my life." In other words, he found with her something he didn't find with anybody else - certainly not with his wife, unfortunately. So, Monica talked to him and gave him something he needed. The sex was kind of the expression of something deeper. At some level, he is a very lonely person.

Wilson: I think people are seeing him, at least I am, as a flawed human being. I mean, I have done things within relationships and for love, within that context, that I would never do in other situations.

Siegel: But the danger is when we make the flaws into the norm. We need to see them as flaws.

Jacobs: My son is 26. I went to visit him in New Orleans. Since he is close in age to Monica, I was trying to pick his brain as to where he and his friends stood. He says, "My friends don't do this. We are close and we build each other up." In fact, they tend to have group dates as opposed to single dates.

Wilson: That's their choice. I would not judge your son on his sexuality. I would never tell him he is a poor systems engineer because of his dating habits or sexual habits.

Jacobs: You would say you can compartmentalize - as the president supposedly does - your morality here and it never, ever slides over into here?

Wilson: I'm not saying that it never, ever does. I just think that, in this particular situation, this thing with Monica Lewinsky should not be a statement about what he has done as president.

Jacobs: But it was a reckless kind of behavior. I would think that same kind of recklessness could jump over . . .

Wilson: I hear that. But I don't think that the act itself is relative to his presidency.

Jacobs: I think it is. My son works with ship engines. If he took a lot of short cuts, if he bought inferior parts to repair a ship engine, and that ship is out in the middle of the ocean and it breaks down [or] tips over . . . His moral attitude can affect his job.

Siegel: We've raised the expectations for public people and we've raised the capacity to have information about what goes on in private areas, and we've lowered the standards for sexual behavior or behavior in general. So, our country is at a dead end. Will we ever get out of it? That's why I feel so strongly that Mr. Clinton has the opportunity to lead a change, to send a different message. He can be the repentant sinner, and a repentant sinner has some credibility. So I think that's what will save him. Not only save him personally, but also save his role in history.

Knatz: We'll get out of it.

Siegel: How? Let him lead us.

Knatz: We will get out of it on the foundation of this democracy, and that is the basic common sense of Americans. And the basic common sense of the American people says: Let this president finish out this term. Get over it, and let's move with dignity into the 21st century.

L Jacobs: But if you say move on, you are saying that it's OK.

Rodricks: So you want congressional hearings on this?

Jacobs: Yeah, but I don't need to have more gory details. I think the president needs to remove himself, either on a temporary basis or permanently.

Rodricks: I'll invite him to Attman's for bagels with us.

THE PANELISTS

Elayne Smith, 48, lifelong Baltimorean. Administrator of a counseling center in Cockeysville. "Children pick their heroes. But I still have to instruct at home. I can't rely on Bill or Cal to instruct my child."

Bobby Knatz, 68, Reisterstown. Commercial real estate broker, self-described "old Democratic precinct politician." "The basic common sense of the American people says: Let this president finish out this term."

Jason Wilson, 25, of Columbia. Musician and freelance radio producer and recording engineer. "If you are a 21-year-old intern and the most powerful man in the world is having encounters with you, it's an overwhelming thing."

Rabbi Martin Siegel, 65, led the Columbia Jewish Congregation for 26 years. Runs institute for spiritual healing. "When I see him doing presidential things, the image that comes to me is, 'It went on in the Oval Office.' And how can you respect that?"

Nance Jacobs, 57, of Annapolis. Medical assistant, teacher, homemaker, native New Yorker. "I don't need to have more gory details. I think the president needs to remove himself."

Pub Date: 09/25/98