COLUMN: Charles Krauthammer

     It all comes down to one last lie. A lifetime of lies and half-lies, dodges and deceits, obfuscations and diversions has been distilled down to one: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
      To believe this is not a lie you have to believe that Monica Lewinsky spent 20 hours in unguarded conversation with a confidante anguishing over an affair that she wholly imagined. As a psychiatrist, I have treated people with delusions. People that delusional are generally found muttering to themselves in the street. They do not hold down jobs and lead otherwise normal lives. They do not get top-secret Pentagon clearance. They do not have their personality publicly deemed "impressive" by a very close friend of the president of the United States.
      To believe Clinton you have to believe he is silent about the nature of his relationship with Lewinsky because he is "gathering the facts." You'd think he was investigating some far-flung executive branch operation in the Burmese jungle. At question here, alas, is the position of the president's own zipper. He already knows the facts.
      Why does the Lewinsky affair have such astonishing power? Because it represents a vast inverted pyramid of corruption narrowed down to a single sorry point. That pyramid has been building for six years as the Clintons have piled one deception on top of another:
      "I didn't inhale" and, "I broke no laws of the United States." The draft letter. Gennifer Flowers. Troopergate and Paula Jones. Fund-raising coffees that are not fund-raisers. Subpoenaed documents that disappear, then miraculously reappear in the Clintons' private quarters. A $100,000 jackpot in cattle futures ascribed to the luck of a Wall Street Journal-reading neophyte.
      And Susan McDougal rots in jail rather than testify whether Clinton was at a Whitewater meeting he has sworn under oath he never attended.
      It turns out now these were all but stage-setters for the big one, the one he told the country a week ago -- eyes to the camera, anger in the voice, jaw clenched and finger pointed: I didn't do it. With that, Clinton raised the stakes immensely. The bounce and distraction he gained with the State of the Union address do not change the central reality: Everything hinges on his denial. As Bob Beckel, a fierce Democratic partisan, says, "If he's lying, he's gone. This is not complicated anymore."
      Both Clinton's closest friends and deepest antagonists don't seem to understand that. Clinton's fate does not rest on any obstruction of justice. It rests with the denial, issued not only on national TV but also, apparently, under oath in his Paula Jones deposition. That lie alone will do it.
      Nor do the president's supporters understand. James Carville takes to TV to make Starr the issue. Hillary Clinton ascribes the affair to a "vast right-wing conspiracy." This is spin. When the presidency hangs on the truth or falsehood of one statement, spin is powerless to affect the ultimate outcome.
      The American people, who twice gave Clinton their trust, are withholding judgment. Clinton's job approval ratings are still high. A Washington Post-ABC poll shows that only 36 percent think he should resign for an act of infidelity. Ominously for Clinton, however, 63 percent think he should resign if he lied about it under oath.
      If it can be shown -- as any sentient person must believe -- that he did, nothing else matters. His presidency is over.
      My guess is, however, that he will never resign. He'd be $3 million in debt, humiliated, powerless, indeed homeless. This gambler did not even leave himself a San Clemente to fly home to. And impeachment over one count of perjury will likely not even be attempted.
      No. He'll try to stay no matter how many party elders beg him to leave. He'll be a dead man walking, an object of ridicule, an Oval Office O.J., denying what everyone knows he did.
     
     Charles Krauthammer writes from Washington, D.C. His column appears Monday.