Quick, name the most influential person in American politics, the individual with the power to steer the republic’s course, the clout to set the agenda, the muscle to determine what gets done and by whom.

President Clinton? Damaged goods. Vice President Gore? Dented. Speaker-to-be Bob Livington, opps, make that J. Dennis Hastert? Think again.

Think Larry Flynt — smut peddler and all-around sterling citizen. His million-dollar bounty for tales of congressional copulation has nailed its first adulterer and, unless the Capitol comes clean, Mr. Flynt stands ready to employ the vast resources of his Hustler empire demonstrating that if the wages of sin is death, the wages of hypocrisy is political death.

The Livingston case is a shining example of why Congress should have heeded the public’s don’t-go-there warning and enough-already plea. The Louisiana Republican was outed by Hustler — four extramarital affairs (but who’s counting?) — and he now says he’s unfit to be speaker or to represent his district.

Let’s see: He was fit when he was just an adulterer; it is only now that his dirty little secrets are out that he is not. So it’s not character that counts, it’s the ability to cover up a lack of character. Glad that’s straightened out.

Regarding Rep. Livingston’s assertion that his case is different from the president’s because he broke no laws — adultery, it turns out, is illegal in Louisiana. Not that a congressman would be expected to know the laws of his home state.

So here’s the score card since the House GOP started its witch hunt: Speaker Newt Gingrich, architect of the disastrous Lewinsky-oriented congressional election campaign, is gone; Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, one of the first to call for Mr. Clinton’s resignation, is exposed as an adulteress; Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, another spokesman for the morally outraged, admits he sired an illegitimate child and fulfills his parental duty by writing the occasional check; Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois is forced to reveal he broke up another man’s marriage and claims it was a “youthful indiscretion” commited at age 41.

And one thing all these commandment-breakers have in common is that all were ratted out by others. Not a one stepped forward with a self-motivated confession. Yes, President Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But what is holding oneself up as morally superior to a transgressor while remaining silent about one’s own identical transgressions if not lying by implying?

So now it’s up to the Senate. The Senate can end the nightmare started by the House. It can balance the two pending articles of impeachment with the knowledge that even good people can succumb to the most basic of animal temptations. It can recognize that the shame that follows can, and often does, lead to lying, even to commiting perjury. It can decide that censure best combines the need to punish with the need to demonstrate understanding and forgiveness.

At the very least, senators can think about Larry Flynt and shudder at what he might find in their closets.