If the Clinton administration has accomplished nothing else, it has at least sensitized Democrats- with a vengeance-to the dangers of the system of court-appointed independent counsel that they used for so long to harry Republican presidents.

President Bill Clinton, and his wife, and his closest White House aide (Bruce Lindsey), and Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, and former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, and others now are (or are about to be) squirming under microscopic scrutiny by independent counsel. And suddenly, onetime champions of the statute that mandates such investigations, like Clinton and White House Counsel Abner Mikva, are sounding more like critics.

It’s easy to make fun of the hey-those-are-our-oxen-being-gored timing of such Democratic misgivings, and I’ve done so. But "|w]isdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late," in the words of Justice Felix Frankfurter.

And the Clintonites’ current travails provide perspective- especially for those of us whose hearts did not bleed for the likes of Oliver North and Michael Deaver-on the risk that the current independent counsel regime will have a debilitating effect on the presidency for many years to come.

Governments are not, and never have been, run by paragons of ethical purity. After all, just about every elected official in Washington, and many a Cabinet officer, owes his or her position in large part to success at the legalized corruption of wheedling campaign contributions from special interests seeking political payoffs. It’s a dirty business, but somebody has to do it. And some people steeped in sleaze have done it rather well. Like the first Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. And like Ron Brown.

Whoever…being a public official…directly or indirectly, corruptly…accepts…anything of value personally or for any other person or entity in return for…being influenced in the performance of any official act…shall be fined…or imprisoned for not more than 15 years, or both.

-U.S. Code, Title 18. §201(b)(2)(A) [bribery]

Whoever…being a public official…otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official ditty, directly or indirectly…accepts…anything of value personally for or because of any official act performed or to be performed…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two Years, or both.

–U.S. Code, Title I8. §201tc)(l)(B) [illegal gratuity]

Charles Keating Jr. is that rarest of creatures in the world of political fund-raising-a man who publicly avows what everyone knows to be true.

The Arizona financial executive is now at the center of Senate and FBI investigations involving $I .4 million in political contributions he arranged for five U.S. senators and associated groups. These contributions were made before and after the senators put the arm on federal thrift regulators in 1987 on behalf of Keating’s now-insolvent Lincoln Savings and Loan of Irvine. Calif.

At a press conference last April. Keating said: "One question among the many raised in recent weeks had to do with whether my financial support in any way influenced several political figures to take up my cause. I want to say it in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so."

Keating’s contributions to the senators-including four Democrats with whom he. a conservative Republican, had no ideological affinity that might account for his generosity-were clearly things "of value."

The petty ethical transgressions that finally brought down House Speaker Jim Wright last week are a pimple on the nose of a body politic racked by the cancers of legalized corruption, moral laxity, and political cowardice.

Lancing the pimple does nothing to cure the cancers. Indeed, the unseemly haste with which Wright (D-Texas) was hustled overboard is one symptom of the political cowardice of many of his colleagues who are themselves steeped in the legalized corruption of honoraria, free trips, and campaign contributions from monied interests. They hope that the ravening beast of media fascination with the seamy side of congressional ethics can be sated by the ritual sacrifice of the speaker, along with the self-immolation of House Democratic Whip Tony Coelho (Calif.), the fund-raising prodigy who impaled himself on a messy $50,000 junk-bond investment.

But only those who cannot see the forest for the trees find anything uniquely shocking in Wright’s ventures down the slippery slope of sleaze.

The purging of the speaker and any others alleged to have violated the ethical rules will have been a largely empty and hypocritical exercise unless Congress does something about the kinds of graft that the rules allow.

As a legal matter, the case against Wright is quite weak on the main charge of violating House standards by taking $145,000 in alleged gifts (his Wife’s salary and the use of a condominium and a car) from his friend George Mallick, a Fort Worth developer, between 1979 and 1988, The rules bar acceptance of large gifts only from those with a more "direct interest in legislation" than Mallick seems to have had by virtue of his oil, gas, and real-estate investments. Distasteful as it may be for a House speaker and his wife to have a sugar daddy, there is no clear evidence that Wright ever used his influence to enrich Mallick.