BOB ABERNETHY: Now, Perspectives on the Monica Lewinsky story, the ethical nightmare everyone overwhelmingly in and out of Washington wishes would go away. How can it be ended? E. J. Dionne is a columnist for THE WASHINGTON POST and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author most recently of the book COMMUNITY WORKS.

E. J., welcome. How do we get this mess behind us? What are the options?

E. J. DIONNE Jr. (THE WASHINGTON POST): Well, the problem is there is no easy way to get out of this mess. It's not like somebody can go to a friend or a spouse or a congregation and say, "Well, gee, I'm sorry for this or that," and the thing can end. You've got a political process all mixed up with a judicial process. Ken Starr has to put out a report that will still take some time. Most members of Congress really are reluctant to deal with this before the election, precisely because they know the country is so uneasy and divided about this. Representative Barbara Cuban, a Republican of Wyoming, said it well. She said, "It would not be good for the country to deal with this running up to an election." But what's happening now is not good for the country, either.

ABERNETHY: What if the president made the speech that so many people have already written for him, the mea culpa speech - "I confess everything," ask forgiveness. Would that end things?

Mr. DIONNE: You know, there's a rule, I think -- when all of Washington agrees on the wisdom of a strategy, you have to question the wisdom of the strategy. And I think that at some level there would be some people satisfied with that, in part because they've already forgiven the president, if you judge from the polls. They've said, "Okay, we've had enough of this, we want it to go away." But there are a lot of Americans who feel very strongly about this, either for political reasons or because of their feelings about the president or because of moral reasons. I'm not sure they will be satisfied with that. It's also not clear exactly what he should apologize for. Should he apologize for his private behavior, should he apologize for the effects his private behavior has had on public life? And the other question that would arise, if he can apologize now, why didn't he do it six months ago?

ABERNETHY: You talked about the effects. Let's tick off some of the costs so far. They've been enormous to the country, to the all the people involved.

Mr. DIONNE: You've had huge costs to the presidency. I think we are going to revisit what we've done to Secret Service agents. We want presidents to want Secret Service agents near them after what we've gone through. I think we're also going to look at how can the president get good advice when he gets into a jam without having everybody subpoenaed? That's a difficult issue, because you don't want to protect people who are committing crimes, but at the same time you want a president to get honest advice. And then I think the president himself had a huge opportunity at the beginning of this year. If you think back to the day before this scandal broke, he was in very good shape. He wanted to talk about some issues the country cared about -- child care, education, health care -- and all those issues have gone away, and we've been talking almost nothing but scandal in this city since then.

ABERNETHY: And so that opportunity that he had is gone forever?