Bill Clinton may be the most dishonored President in American history, but who is to blame for his ascension to the White House? George Bush, who waged an incompetent campaign for reelection? Bob Dole, tongue-tied and incomprehensible, unburdened by principle? Yes—but the fullest answer is more simple.

At the heart of it, Bill Clinton was elected because he’s us. Sadly, as his sky high job approval numbers show, he is the cultural distillation of what we have become, the microcosm of our nation.

He was elected because he embodies the decadence of American society since the 1960’s, a decadence of leisure and consumption rather than work, of sex freed from procreation, of the yearning for recreation and visual pleasure. In earlier times, commerce served as a ballast. Before the 1960’s, business was square and seemingly getting more so. But then came the upheaval in the “knowledge sector,” the marketing of new ideas and information which has as its goal the unmooring of convention.

It is not coincidental that this sector, fueled by Hollywood, has heavily funded Bill Clinton. He owes his election not just to its money but to the adulation of those subtle and highly dexterous profiteering entrepreneurs whose adoption of the trademark “cool” has given us the situational ethics we admire . . . and in return for which Clinton, the ex-pro-lifer, became the morally neutered abortion and gay rights President.

Since the post-industrial culture we so passionately admire produced Bill Clinton, it is understandable that, in his disgrace, we take the hit for him now. If he lied to us, we yearned to be lied to. We have adopted the shrug as the symbol of our nation. When he came to us as a draft dodger, we shrugged; as an all-but-confirmed uncontrite adulterer, we shrugged. When he rented our national treasure for fundraisers, we shrugged. When he made a fool of his wife and daughter, we shrugged. When he feminized the military, corrupted its fighting forces with unisex cohabitation, we shrugged. He’s us.

He’s us, but please don’t say that he is the “Great Communicator”—better than Reagan or Roosevelt. For those of us with long memories, this is outrageously wrong. He has not coined a single phrase, but engages in lachrymose pandering of unutterable tedium. His shortest speech—four minutes—came when he tried to tell the truth. No, Clinton could not have been elected at any other time but ours and by any other people but us. Any other era would have unmasked his moral false-face. He won because, like him, we are addicted, hooked on pleasure.

In this century, great problems gave us our edge. We survived the Great Depression, won a world war against fascism, and won the Cold War. Now, freed of such tests, we’re re-learning what all civilizations have learned: prosperity breeds self-absorption.

So don’t blame it all on Clinton; we freely bought him. That’s why it’s only right that we should stick with him, not dump him or impeach him. We always said that what he does in private doesn’t matter, didn’t we? Let him serve as our national expiation.