What's in a lie? Do lies matter? PNS editor Richard Rodriguez writes that even though lying is the first sin mentioned in the Bible, and that lies invariably self-destruct, Americans don't take lying very seriously. Rodriguez is author of "Days of Obligation" and "Hunger of Memory," and an essayist for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Perspective page and the PBS "News Hour with Jim Lehrer."

We Americans don't seem much troubled these days by liars or lies. Polls suggest that the majority of us are content with a president we assume to be a liar. Maybe it's because we don't believe in truth -- whatever that might mean.

It's true, no one wants to be around someone who tells the truth all the time. We all admit to the necessity of "little white lies." We say, for example: If the president were to tell us that, in order to protect his wife and his daughter, he lied under oath, we are prepared to sympathize.

Politicians from both parties concur. In little sound bites on the evening news, they plead with the silent, brooding president: "Just tell us you lied, so we can put the matter behind us."

But lying is no easy matter to dispense with. Lying matters. Not for little reason is lying the first sin in the Bible. Satan lies to Eve. And then lies beget lies.

As any architect knows, a lie can make an entire building collapse. Lies subvert reality -- what the author of Genesis would call "The glorious order of God." Lies bring disorder.

And then they self-destruct. Which is why, as children, we were warned by our parents, "Don't lie or else no one will believe you when you tell the truth."

That's Monica Lewinsky's dilemma precisely. Ms. Lewinsky, with typical passionate abandon, has been caught on tape admitting (to her former friend Linda Tripp) that, "I have lied all my life." If her statement is logically true, then it is also logically false.

The liar ends up trapped, even as she would try to extricate herself from her own lies. It becomes a case of Monica versus Monica. One day she tell us that x is y; then (after her lawyers manage to secure her immunity from her own words) she tells us that x is not y.

There are not many great tragedies written about liars. More often, liars appear as figures in comedy. That's because liars become a joke -- well known as liars to everyone around them.

The only one who is finally fooled by the liar is the liar himself. The perpetual liar ends up victimized by his own bad habit, never supposing that the entire world sees through his earnest smile.

There is madness in lying. Lies make one lose touch with reality. The liar needs (as Mark Twain remarked) a very good memory to remember what lies he told in the past. And then the liar ends up unable to distinguish the true and the untrue.

When he is discovered, the liar seeks escape both in ambiguity ("I didn't mean that exactly") or in literalism (hair splitting -- "I meant only what I exactly said"). President Clinton is famous for both rhetorical tools.

Finally, the politician who is a frequent liar needs "spinmasters" and good lawyers on the Sunday morning talk shows to tell American voters what the politician really meant when the politician yesterday told us something contrary to what he means to tell us today.

Some one asked me the other day, "What if Clinton is telling the truth?"

It's the appropriate question to ask -- and the sad question we are left with after watching a political career of many little lies.

It's lucky for Monica Lewinsky that she has money enough for lawyers. It's luckier for President Clinton that Americans are not much interested in the importance of lying.

After all, liars love liars. Americans these days seem in a relativistic mood about most matters. We may have found our perfect president.

For what matters much more to Americans is the economy, polls say. Please, Mr. President, tell us you are a liar. Then get back to work!