Currently on the first floor of the U.S. Capitol there’s an exhibit of newspaper sketches made during the 1962 filming of Otto Preminger’s movie “Advise and Consent.” This is the movie’s plot line:

U.S. Sen. Brig Anderson, caught in the middle of a power play between Congress and the White House, is blackmailed about a homosexual encounter. He commits suicide rather than shame his office. Edward R. Murrow denounced Preminger for giving foreigners this twisted view of American politics.

How tame the city used to be. The women in the sketches wore skirts down to their ankles. Walking away, I found myself face to face with another time capsule, the entry to Ed Muskie’s old Senate “hideaway” at the end of a corridor banned to tourists.

A quarter of a century past, the political business of Maine was conducted in this small windowless office with a fireplace. There, in relaxed surroundings, Muskie would summon GOP Reps. Bill Cohen and David Emery, and fellow Democratic Sen. Bill Hathaway, to thrash out state delegation policy. These deliberations were so tame and nonpartisan I was invited behind closed doors to report on the proceedings.

How far, we’ve come.

Bill Clinton, Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Larry Flynt, Bob Livingston. This was the cast of the X-rated movie that gave America a two-year season in hell.

What must the world think of us now, Mr. Murrow?

Al Gore has become the sacrificial lamb atoning for that national stain. Polls brand him “unelectable” because of something called “Clinton fatigue.” Republicans also are paying a price for obsessing over the seamy side of politics. Maine’s right-wingers want to purge Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for voting against Clinton’s impeachment and crossing party lines to side with Democrats on some issues.

Recently in Washington, North Dakota Democratic Sen. Bryon Dorgan horrified the White House by threatening to personally tie up the Senate in a filibuster if GOP leadership did not immediately bring up the nuclear test ban treaty. It was an airheaded play and prompted Republican leader Trent Lott to do a terrible thing.

He gave into Dorgan’s demand.

An aghast Clinton promised not to play politics with the treaty, if only Lott would delay the vote. Burned by prior White House double-crosses, Lott demanded a written pledge. Clinton refused. The man who lied to a grand jury would not be “humiliated” on this issue of truth-telling.

So the Senate voted down an important treaty. To gain his revenge on Republicans for capitulating to a Democratic senator, Clinton reportedly is gearing up for another budget crisis that — despite the current $11 billion surplus — may once again shut down the federal government. National turmoil, afterall, is Bill Clinton’s middle name.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had the president admitted his zipper problem back in January 1997 instead of wagging his finger and lying to the country. Had Clinton resigned then, Al Gore would be the seasoned incumbent president of the United States heading into the Y2K election. Gore would have fought and won the war in Kosovo. Today he would be presiding over the cornucopia of economic growth and budget surpluses.

Clinton would have passed into history as a martyr, like Sen. Brig Anderson in “Advise and Consent” — a flawed man who put honor ahead of dragging the country into a seamy scandal. That’s a better legacy than the one Clinon will leave.

A senior Republican senator, I presume, now occupies Muskie’s hideaway. Doubtless it’s a war room.

Once upon a time, Republicans and Democrats handled their business without malice and the obsession to destroy opponents. In 1976, some polls showed that Bill Cohen could have ousted Muskie from the Senate. Cohen declined to run, saying the state would be poorer if he won.

There was a time when Republicans could vote with Democrats once in a while without being labeled “traitors” to the GOP. Because there are times when the Democrats are right.

There was a time when politicians came to Washington to serve the voters, rather than engage each other in political warfare like machete-wielding gang.

A time long past.

John S. Day is a Bangor Daily News columnist based in Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is zanadume@aol.com.