The president's problems -- now our problem -- go far beyond questions of perjury and impeachment. Clinton has in effect undermined the office of the president, and this can have devastating effects on young people, and hence on the future of politics in the United States. Hasan Zillur Rahim, a PNS commentator, is also the editor of Iqra, a national Islamic magazine published by the South Bay Islamic Association of San Jose, CA. One of a series on the crisis from the "new California."

Character, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, the first American author of distinction, is higher than intellect. Judged against this criterion, William Jefferson Clinton has flunked, and flunked badly.

The country is now caught in a frenzied debate: Should the President be impeached or shouldn't he?

The debate misses the bigger issue, which is that the President has undermined the presidency of the United States to an extent that is beyond impeachment to restore.

This is an authentic American tragedy that even Theodore Dreiser would have been hard-pressed to invent. And the saddest part is that the brunt of this tragedy is being borne mostly by the young.

For better or worse, young Americans look up to the bearer of the highest office in the land as a standard of moral excellence. Now an entire generation is in danger of falling prey to pessimism, cynicism and despair.

Whatever their personal failings, and despite the less-than-wholesome values propagated by mainstream media, the youth of America have never let go of a certain idealism rooted deeply in American history. Its essence is that character and competence go together, just as freedom and responsibility.

And now they struggle to understand how someone so competent as Clinton could be so lacking in character. They are angry and shaken and are beginning to observe their parents with wariness.

My sixteen-year old daughter seethes at the mention of Clinton. When I probe, she tells me that she is bitter because of what "poor Chelsea," with whom she feels a kinship, has to endure. "But Chelsea seems to have forgiven her father," I tell her. I am thinking of the First Family's late summer vacation in Martha's Vineyard. "How do you know what she is going through inside?" she challenges me. The intensity of her anger is new to me, a mature anger that both frightens and saddens me.

But the plight of "poor Chelsea" is only the tip of the iceberg. What contributes to her anger is also the indignity suffered by Hillary Clinton (or, has the First Lady made a Faustian bargain with her husband?) Most of all, it's the vacuum created by fallen ideals that cannot keep dark and despondent thoughts away.

"I have sinned," confessed the President to the clergy at the annual prayer breakfast at the White House only hours before details of independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report to the Congress became public. There were tears in his eyes when he said it. There is no reason to doubt his repentance.

At the same time, it is troubling that the President resorted to incremental contrition only as details of his tryst with Monica Lewinsky gradually came to light. Why did he wait? On the chance that the details wouldn't perhaps emerge? And when it became clear that there was nothing more to hide, let the confession pour forth?

No matter what his detractors may say, President Clinton has done a lot of good work. His decisive help in initiating the peace process in Northern Ireland is undeniable. His visit to Africa and the stirring acknowledgment of America's role in fostering slavery had a cleansing effect on the nation's conscience. At home, he must be given credit for presiding over a good economy.

But all that will hardly amount to a ripple compared to the damage he has inflicted on the moral climate of America. There remains one, and only one, thing that he alone can do to restore the presidency to its original status of dignity and respect, and to redeem himself, and that is to voluntarily resign.

By doing so, Clinton will prove that he holds the country's interest above his own. Equally important, he will give the youth of America a chance to reverse their slide toward pessimism and moral relativism, and instead instill in them the value of a strong character, the lack of which can reduce many an accomplishment to dust.

In the end, if he were to resign, this may be the most lasting legacy of the forty-fourth president of the United States.