One thing they’ve been fudging from day one is this: what exactly is Hillary Rodham Clinton’s job in this administration? Obviously, it has involved more than just botching health-care reform. Someone probably should have asked the president about it at his smooth press conference last week–especially after David Watkins’s rather remarkable “soul-cleansing” memo about the White House Travel Office business, in which the Clintons’ erstwhile retainer describes his own mega nervous reaction upon learning that the affair had made it “onto the First Lady’s agenda.” One wonders, what is the First Lady’s portfolio? If I had to guess, it’d be something like: chief domestic-policy adviser and consigliere. Certainly, she has the power to make grown people cringe. Her staff, while fatuously competent and incredibly loyal, is also intermittently afflicted by Tippi Hedren syndrome–they often look as if they are about to be attacked by birds. The panic in the Watkins memo is palpable. The First Lady carries a big stick.

There are plenty of precedents for this sort of White House power nepotism. The president who probably handled it best was John Kennedy, whose appointment of his 35-year-old brother as attorney general was very controversial–but at least it was out there. Bill Clinton needn’t have gone that far; but both Clintons should have been more candid about her authority and responsibilities. Instead, they chose cutesiness–“buy one, get one free”–and fudgery, the same tactics they’ve used every time controversy loomed. Why? Their offenses in most cases have been misdemeanors, not felonies (in Travelgate, the “crime” was attempted crony-ism-a failed effort to throw some air-charter business to their friend Harry Thomason). But the Clintons have responded, in each and every case, as if they were accused of grand theft auto.

The intensity of their denials is fascinating. There is a need to be perceived as pure. They defend their virtue against all reason; they never inhale. In a way, the Clintons are baby-boom guinea pigs. They are showing a whole generation of politicians how not to do this. Their low crimes and misdemeanors are mostly generation-specific. Sometimes they are patently so: draft avoidance, marital squiggles, chemical enhancement. Sometimes, it’s more subtle: they’ve lived the past 30 years as many privileged people of their age have, ensnared by the moral relativism, the assorted seductions and confusions of counterculture America. They experimented–and felt guilty about it the morning after. They bent the rules. They cut comers. Indeed, one senses the First Lady felt empowered to cut corners to serve the greater good. Bill was working for the people, making $35,000 a year as governor and, as she said in the pink press conference of 1994, “we obviously wanted enough financial security to send our daughter to college and put money away for our old age and help our parents when we could.” So she was willing, and perhaps felt entitled; to take “investment advice” on cattle futures from her best friend’s husband (who also happened to be counsel for the state’s largest employer). And she was willing– again, entitled?- to practice law for money, which sometimes meant lobbying state officials appointed by her husband. The First Lady made these admissions grudgingly, belatedly–and they were found wanting. Would she have been given more credit if she’d come clean immediately, released all relevant documents and said, “Like a lot of you, I made some misjudgments in the ’80s”?

There will be others running for office in 1996 who succumbed to the temptations of a self-indulgent time (Bob Dole is already sniping at Phil Gramm’s nonbelligerency in the 1960s). It’s a safe bet that nearly every one of them–us–will be found to have done something stupid at some point. And so, we, the voters, will find ourselves making electoral decisions about personal decisions that we, the boomers, made. The “character issue” will be forever with us. How should reasonable people judge a morally frail generation of politicians?

The answer, I think, is that the quality of the misdemeanor is less significant than the quality of the politician’s response to the misdemeanor. (Felonies are, of course, another matter, as are repetitive patterns of destructive behavior.) The raw material that has passed for “scandal” in recent years has mostly consisted of lapses in judgment and embarrassing incidents, often youthful. An appropriate political response when past adventures are exhumed might be: Lord, we were self-centered twits, weren’t we? Followed by a forthright acknowledgment of the “crime” in question–or a forthright defense of the behavior (as Clinton might have done regarding his draft avoidance, which stemmed from righteous opposition to a shameful war– and as A1 Gore did about pot in 1988). In many cases, a public leap of faith will be necessary. Inevitably, some rectitudinous soul will have to admit, “Yes, I tried snorting cocaine. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do.” And the public will have to decide whether clemency is possible. My guess is that, in many cases, the honesty of the confession will be far more important than the quality of the crime. But the Clintons have never been willing to test that proposition, which is curious: one can, apparently, empathize with the people without entirely trusting them.