The quotation for Thursday, Aug. 20, 1998 on my coveted “365 Stupidist Things Ever Said” desk calendar is “I Have Lied In Good Faith” and I am thinking, boy, the publisher of this thing — which must have gone to press, what, a year ago? — was really ahead of the curve on President Clinton’s nationally televised spin-control job of Monday night.

Turns out that the immortal remark was allegedly uttered not by our accomplished Fibber-In-Chief in Washington, but by French politician Bernard Tapie after his sworn alibi fell apart in court, where he had been accused of fixing a soccer match involving the team he owned.

No matter. Since sworn alibis are falling apart all over the place these days, the situations are interchangeable. Whether it be a Frenchman fixing a soccer match, or the misleader of the free world attempting to fix a tawdry Oval Office sex scandal involving a star-struck young intern, the important thing when the jig finally becomes up and you get to snooker the prosecutors is to lie in good faith, giving answers that are “legally accurate” while taking care not to volunteer information.

Lie in good faith and summon up your most sincere lip-bite for the television cameras, and the polls show that 65 percent of the suckers that P.T. Barnum claimed are born every minute in this great country will follow you anywhere, believing that your problems are all the product of a vast right-wing conspiracy.

It is not easy to come up with some fresh observation on this ever-deepening White House scandal when others have picked over the carcass for days before you get a shot at it. On Thursday, for example, reader David M. Del Camp of Castine unwittingly trod on one of my prospective approaches to the subject in a letter to the editor.

Commenting on Clinton’s scheduled appearance before a grand jury considering charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and the subornation thereof in the President’s illicit affair with Monica Lewinsky, Del Camp wrote, “There can be no more accurate reflection on this administration than Monday’s front page headline in the Bangor Daily News: `President Will Tell Truth, Lawyer Says.’ I can remember a time when telling the truth was a basic, unilateral expectation of our elected leaders…”

My notes to myself, scribbled intermittently throughout the week, show David Del Camp and The Old Dawg to be on the same wavelength, however scary that thought may be to the gentleman from Castine. “Telling the truth! Gee, what a novel concept,” reads the note I wrote after getting a load of the BDN headline. “No wonder the White House lawyers make the big bucks…”

Odds are that many of us are in the same boat when it comes to discussing Monday evening’s Grand Performance five days after the fact. The same things that occurred to the alleged experts after witnessing the spectacle occurred to us, as well, but make those points now and we are thought to be mindlessly parroting the others.

I am sure, for example, that you observed every bit as quickly as did the pundits that Clinton did not once utter the word “apologize” in his four-minute speech. And that he confessed to “misleading” various people, but not to lying to them. And that, to him, it’s all someone else’s fault. And that no matter how much he might wish the squalid affair and its compounded trickle-down adverse effect on innocent bystanders to be a private matter, it is anything but. You may even have come away with the most astute observation of all, well ahead of the pack, which is that this presidency has been mortally wounded and this president must resign.

The sordid details emerge daily, and now we’re told about the ties that bind. Reportedly, on a couple of occasions when the president wished to signal to Miss Lewinsky that she should hang tough in her grand jury testimony and not incriminate him, he wore neckties that she had given him as gifts. You are still close to my adulterous heart, my little chickadee, was the implication. So remember our deal and don’t do anything stupid, hear?

One can just picture the newspaper editorial cartoon possibilities the necktie caper will inspire. Unless, of course, events rapidly overtake us and the cartoonists have to put the job on hold while they prepare the ultimate cartoon concerning this Machiavellian president.

That would be the one showing a cooked turkey, drumsticks pointing skyward, ready to be carved up by the electorate. “Stick a fork in him,” the caption will read. “This bird is done.”

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport.