The opposite of lust

Last week the online magazine WorldNetDaily.com reported thatpeople inside the White House have been downloading pornography fromthe Internet.

Computer consultants hired at the end of last year by the WhiteHouse to ensure that its computer system was impregnable found thatporn videos had slithered through the firewall and onto executivebranch hard drives. And while most of the videos were downloaded inthe Old Executive Office Building, some went next door, directly intothe White House.

This news was reported in the melodramatic "All The President'sMen" spirit that now accompanies every scooplet of dirt dug out ofthe White House. "I can say, yes, West Wing" people were involved,said WorldNetDaily's Deep Throat source. "There was gay andbestiality stuff, too-donkeys, goats and dogs," he added.

I can think of several possible defenses the White House mighthave offered against these new charges. The press officers could havelied and claimed they were pure fabrication. Or they might havepretended that such questions are beneath the dignity of the WhiteHouse-though this strategy is less plausible than it used to be.

They might even have argued that there was nothing wrong withpornography-hey, a little bestiality never hurt anyone. At the veryleast, they could have pointed to the long history of fondnessbetween the donkey and the Democratic Party. Had their lust objectbeen an elephant-now that would be hypocritical (if impressive).

Instead, White House spokesman Joe Lockhart told the WashingtonPost: "We've had occasional transgressions by some people here."Translation: We're guilty as charged. (Lockhart added that the peopleinvolved had been disciplined, and that no West Wing personnel wereimplicated.)

There are several things to say about this, but maybe the mostrelevant is that it points to the weakness at the heart of Al Gore'spresidential campaign. Even as Vice President Gore's White Housecolleagues played pin the tail on the donkey, Gore campaign spokesmenwere generating conspicuous moral outrage over DemocraticCongresswoman Loretta Sanchez's plans to hold a fund-raiser at thePlayboy Mansion. The Playboy Mansion! As naked goats flashed ontoWhite House computer screens, Al Gore was stripping a woman of herspeaking slot at his convention because she dared to associatepublicly with a magazine that publishes photos of naked women.

Of course, it wasn't very long ago that Playboy was considered afriend of the Democratic Party. It was to Playboy that PresidentJimmy Carter confessed that he had committed adultery in his heart.Hugh Hefner himself, Playboy's founder and editor in chief, has givenmoney to the Gore campaign. As Richard Rosenzweig, the executive vicepresident of Playboy Enterprises, said, "I would never have expectedthis from a party that we have supported financially and editoriallythrough the pages of the magazine for many years."

But there is no place in the newly puritanical Democratic Partyfor these old sentiments.

For Gore to get elected-his campaign seems to believe-he must runon Clinton's record and against his behavior. "Behavior" in this caseis a code word for "trying to have sex all the time." If you had toboil the Gore campaign down to a single sentence, that sentence wouldnot be: "I am the best man for the job." The sentence would be: "Ihave no interest in having oral sex in the Oval Office."

Even in the best of circumstances this is a tricky message todeliver, as it isn't a message at all but an anti-message. The goodnews for Gore is that he is uniquely suited for the task-which isperhaps why he has been so good a beard to Clinton these last eightyears. The man's mere presence virtually shouts: "I don't know whatoral sex is nor do I care!"

When Gore enters a room, lust exits. And onto his own cold showerof a personality, he has now sprinkled Joseph Lieberman's saltpeter.For the next three months Cold Shower and Saltpeter will race backand forth across America, deadening the American sex drive.

The bad news for Gore is that he is doomed to be tailed whereverhe goes by the great Captain Horndog. Anyone truly outraged by aparty at the Playboy Mansion would presumably be even more outragedby a married president seducing a 23-year-old intern in the executivemansion. But whatever outrage Gore felt toward Clinton's behavior, hekept to himself after the affair was disclosed.

Gore's behavior has borne little relation to that of a man intenton setting a moral example. It's been much closer to a man intent ongrooming his political career.

Moral outrage is harder to pull off when it is rooted in coolcalculation.

Michael Lewis, the author of "Liar's Poker" and "The New NewThing," is a columnist for Bloomberg