After 200 mostly golden years as a democracy, and the election of 42 presidents, Americans might be expected to know what qualities they require in a leader.
That is not the case. This weekend, at its barbecues and on its baseball fields, at its shopping malls and its bowling alleys, America furrowed its collective brow, bit its nails, shook its head, phoned its mother, talked to the kids, made bad jokes, argued with itself, and tried to decide what on earth to think of this particular man called William Jefferson Clinton.
The news wire services circulated the Zeitgeist-capturing comment of one Janet Lombardi, a woman on the street in Denver, Colorado, who intoned with an eloquence not reminiscent of Alexis de Tocqueville: "He's a moral pig. But he's a damn good President."
The consensus on the moral pig aspect of the President seemed universal. More confusing was Ms Lombardi's second assertion. Indeed, the current public discourse on the future of the Republic can thus be summed up: can a moral pig be a good president? Or do we as a nation insist on some minimal measure of morality in our highest leader?
In Beverly Hills on Saturday, some 1,000 members of the entertainment industry gathered at a television awards luncheon for a major organisation called Women in Film. The Starr report detailing Mr Clinton's affair with Ms Monica Lewinsky had hit the Internet on Friday afternoon. At almost every table in the cavernous ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel it seemed as if one person had read the report, others had heard the details second-hand, but everyone had an opinion.
Now, at this kind of gathering, decorum, politeness and hypocrisy abound. People have no compulsion to offend the person seated next to them who could green-light their next million-dollar film project. These are not table-pounding sessions where people debate religion or politics. But emotions ran surprisingly strong.
"So he made a mistake! How could you even think of impeaching a man who has been such an extraordinary President?," asked Ellen Greene, a well-known television actress. A make-up artist and her husband, a film agent, responded that they had been Clinton supporters, but that this episode was too much.
"I don't care about the sex," said the make-up artist. "Nobody cares about the sex. But this President looked into our eyes and wagged his finger and lied to us. If it's OK for the President of the United States to lie to the American people, and we say it's OK, where do we go from there? How can we ever again have a right to complain if right here and now we say, OK, it's fine, just lie to us?"
No one can say Americans were apathetic about the 445-page report. The US government's first mass communication to the world via cyberspace was a hit. ("This is a defining moment for the Internet, but not necessarily a proud one," Internet guru Esther Dyson told the Los Angeles Times.)
Despite sunny weather, people stayed indoors. Cybercafes across the country, where people can access the Internet for about $10 an hour, were doing brisk business. Newspapers were printing excerpts of the report, but were also advertising its full content on their Web sites. The Miami Herald site screamed: "The Starr Report: Get It While It's Hot!"
At the Brentwood Continental Hair Salon on Wilshire Boulevard, one employee brought in a thick paper copy of the report, downloaded from the Internet. The copy was passed around the older women sitting under hair-dryers. None thought the President should be impeached. But the salon's MiddleEast-born owner, reviewing the more unusual highlights of Mr Clinton's sexuality, said: "I never even thought of such a thing with a cigar."
At the Von's Supermarket, a young box boy also brought the report in on Saturday morning and most of the employees gathered around to read it, or to have parts read aloud. The market manager took the report home and curled up in bed with it.
Across town, Tracey Mandell (26) stood waiting for her dinner order in a takeaway chicken restaurant. She listened quietly while three patrons and the restaurant's Russianborn owner debated and expressed shock. One finally said she hadn't voted for Clinton and the rest acknowledged that they, too, hadn't voted for him.
"That's when I couldn't take it any more," said Ms Mandell. "I mean four out of four people said they didn't vote for him? Well, somebody voted for him. He won in a landslide." Ms Mandell said that it was older people who were disturbed by Mr Clinton's behaviour, not people of her generation.
"Maybe older people are outraged because they remember having a president with some honesty or morality. People of my generation grew up with Reagan and Bush," she said. "We don't expect politicians to tell the truth."
So what would it take for a president of the US to so violate moral standards that she would consider him unfit for office?
"Hmm. That's hard to say. I really can't think of anything. Maybe molesting his daughter or something like that. But I don't know if there really are any moral standards," she said.
Aside from that thorny issue, there is, of course, the matter of what is impeachable, what transgressions constitute "high crimes and misdemeanours" as the US Constitution describes it. Perhaps it is most telling that the talk in the US this weekend was not really about impeachment.
Prosecutor Kenneth Starr feels confident on this issue, but his zeal is thus far unmatched by the Congress or the people. However, what is being talked about, and talked about seriously, is resignation. Phrases like "doing the honourable thing for the good of the country" are abounding from even the President's strongest supporters.
One national political leader who has consistently defended Clinton stood in the hallway of her office on Saturday, reading the report. "It's over. We're finished with him." This official was planning to meet colleagues to discuss calling for Mr Clinton to step down.
The San Francisco Examiner said: "What's good for Bill Clinton no longer counts. He abused our trust . . . As far as we're concerned, he can swing in the wind." The Detroit Free Press said: "Clinton should resign and go home to Arkansas."
Bill Clinton is clearly in a corner, the kind of silent and immobile corner that Gaston Bachelard in his 1958 work The Poetics of Space says possesses a "geometry of indigent solitude".
Mr Clinton has lied to the people who elected him, and while they will almost surely forgive him - it is historically in the national character to do so - they may also hold him accountable. That accountability and the consequences it contains may yet drive him from office, even if Kenneth Starr and his passion for impeachment do not.