One of the mysteries of the past year is why no member of the White House staff felt compelled to resign over Bill Clinton's dishonesty. Maybe the answer is they just stopped thinking about it very hard. The day before the impeachment vote, former spokesman Mike McCurry was asked by a BBC journalist if Bill Clinton was fit to be president. McCurry said, "I have enormous doubts because of the recklessness of his behavior. The immorality is troublesome to me, but you know, you can sort of understand how an adult male gets to that kind of situation. I don't think Mrs. McCurry would understand me getting into that situation, but you know you can see how pressures occur. But there's something beyond that. The nature of this particular affair and then the way in which he did conceal it really does raise some very profound troubling matters."
This is not the language of a person who worked extra hard to grapple with the moral dilemmas of his job. It suggests the White House staff gets through the day in a fog of lazy agnosticism.