REPUBLICANS say it won't fly. But many Democrats, opinion-makers, and poll respondents say they like the idea of censure. They are reluctant to remove a President from office, but they don't want to approve of perjury and cigar parties either. Censure sounds good, and it means nothing: a perfect punishment for the age of Clinton.

On only one occasion has a house of Congress voted to censure the President. Is that because the penalty is so fierce, or so feeble? In 1832 Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, and a year later he withdrew the Federal Government's deposits. The Senate, controlled by opposition Whigs, deplored both Jackson's goals and his methods, and in 1834 found him "in derogation" of the Constitution and the laws.

Did Old Hickory hang his head? The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1946), still the standard work on the period, devotes two sentences, out of 545 pages, to the Senate's rebuke. In 1836, Martin Van Buren, Jackson's Vice President and heir apparent, won a comfortable victory to succeed him, and the Senate, now in Democratic hands, expunged the resolution from its records. The first censure left no mark on politics or on history, though it does suggest that Rep. David Bonior should be asked whether he will vote to undo the censure if his party retakes Congress in the fall.

The Constitution discourages the branches of government from spasmodic intermeddling in one another's business. The House and the Senate, which are under no such restraints in regard to their own members, do censure congressional misbehavior now and then. But the penalty is either a wrist-slap (Newt Gingrich) or the last thrust at an already stricken bull (Joe McCarthy). Though the Founders were no mean wordsmiths, they knew that governing was about more than words. When rulers break the law, they must be punished. The issue is not our feelings; it is their power, and whether they are fit to retain it over us.

This is not to deny that the choice between censure and impeachment has extralegal ramifications. Censure is a non-punishment appropriate to President Clinton's non-repentance, and to the non-forgiveness he seeks from us. With one face, tear-stained, he tells us he has sinned, while with another (belonging to David Kendall) he still denies ever having had sex with Monica Lewinsky. Meanwhile Americans, between gagging and gags, tell pollsters (some of them at any rate) that it is all a private matter. The President is conducting a slightly higher-toned Jerry Springer show. He weeps; Kendall, Ken Starr, and Congress throw chairs; we hoot. Sen. Joseph Lieberman gives the Final Thought. Mr. Clinton's metaphor for these tawdry simulacra of powerful deeds is the "journey." On September 9, he asked Democratic supporters in Orlando "for your understanding, for your forgiveness on this journey we're on." On September 11 he told a National Prayer Breakfast, "I have been on quite a journey these last few weeks to get to the end of this, to the rock-bottom truth of where I am and where we all are."

How to react to this? In the first place, the President should leave us out of it. He is the Commander-in-Chief; he is the Big Creep. It was his office, his employee. We haven't done anything—yet. More important, we must understand what he means by a "journey." At the Prayer Breakfast, he suggested his "journey" would end with the rock-bottom truth. But surely he knows the truth already. He was, after all, there. If he doesn't know it yet, he will never discover it. In his mouth the notion of completion is sucker bait. He does not envision any destination, whether of transformation or recovery—only an endless fumbling from scene to scene, dictated by the audiences he must placate and the emotions he must simulate. Goethe's Faust, Cavafy's Odysseus, all the Romantic heroes who equated life with unfolding experience, find their shriveled reduction in the Man from Hot Springs.

Without mentioning President Clinton, psychoanalyst Jeanne Safer discusses the phenemonon of sham emotions in her forthcoming book, Forgiving Intimate Betrayal. "Colluding with insincerity breeds insincerity, until no one can recognize or experience genuine emotions. Forgiveness then sinks to the level of psychobabble, where it joins other formerly serious concepts like 'healing' and 'sharing.' This sort of forgiveness has about as much connection to the real thing as fruit-flavored LifeSavers do to fruit, or to saving lives." I have been able to read Dr. Safer's manuscript because she is my wife. She is also a liberal Democrat, who voted for Clinton—once.

There is one last factor to consider in the question of censure: What will happen after it is voted? However battle-fatigued they are, Team Clinton will muster some sort of celebration. Why not? They will have missed the A Train (A for Annihilation) one more time. Soon—perhaps that very night—-the President will seek solace in his accustomed way. Next on his schedule: a trip to a convention of teachers to explain a bill to encourage teen abstinence. He will be very moved by this problem, and will ask us to join him on the journey to solving it.

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