NEWTON'S LAW: TIRED OF CANDIDATE SURPRISES? LET'S JUST PUT THEM IN WRITING

You're young, you're bright, it's Saturday night. By ordinary standards, you're a good looking man; by political standards, you're a hunk.

Not only that, it's Little Rock, passion capital of Arkansas. The youngest governor in the nation, charismatic and a former Rhodes scholar to boot, might easily get his head turned.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac ... hey, if a toad like Henry Kissinger figured that out, think what a princely looking fellow like Bill Clinton must have discovered.

For the most part, Americans came to know Gov. Clinton in 1988, when his introduction of a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention almost lasted until the general election.

Now, Clinton is just another Democrat who can't keep his pants zipped.

The world of politics has many of the qualities of show business, but it isn't quite that. The entertainment axiom is that no publicity is bad publicity; in seeking public office, that is not the case.

Thus, Gov. Clinton, whose quest for name recognition could use additional fuel, would ordinarily celebrate at the thought of having some prime-time, post-Super Bowl, network television minutes to himself.

Instead, he gets no chance to advance the issues of his candidacy; his time under these harsh lights is spent sweating out questions about the most personal aspects of his private life. Were "60 Minutes" to get an exclusive with Jeffrey Dahmer, CBS would have hyped it no differently from the Clinton interview.

In giving himself over to this, Clinton dissolves from being a man seeking the highest office in the land to a perverse curiosity.

The Star is no place for a presidential candidate to find himself. Cher works well on a tabloid cover. Patrick Swayze and Roseanne Arnold unwillingly have their pictures displayed from these market racks. Few of these sorts see their careers collapse because of lurid stories in journals that specialize in UFO itineraries, bizarre tumors and miraculous diets.

Rob Lowe may be the only Democrat to leave that Atlanta convention more embarrassed that Clinton. (There must be something about Democrats when they get below the Mason-Dixon Line. Democratic icon Franklin Roosevelt, now known to be a husband who strayed, had his retreat in Georgia.)

Yet, despite his sexual exploits, Lowe finds his career now in full bloom. We reward our stars with greater riches than Clinton will ever know and forgive them their moments of flawed judgment.

Obviously, presidents should be held to higher standards of judgment than Hollywood leading men; the Screen Actors Guild, the last I heard, has no nuclear capabilities.

But our thinking on this Clinton issue is all jumbled. The means by which the information emerged has a flaw that points to American hypocrisy: The Star paid Gennifer Flowers for the story of her alleged affair with Gov. Clinton, a story that has gained some degree of credence simply by being brought into the public eye. What if there had been a bidding war and Clinton would have offered Flowers more money not to tell her story?

What would happen is that Clinton's candidacy and career would be finished. On a scale of political survivability, cheating of your wife gets you a better break than paying hush money. Get it? She can take the money, he can't.

Think about this. The real leverage against a politician with an adventurous sexual history is the threat of disclosure; a political opponent can blackmail the office holder by releasing evidence of his infidelities.

So, it makes sense to me to neutralize this threat. The Federal Elections Commission requires candidates to file financial disclosure statements. Why not make candidates file sexual disclosure statements?

A form printed by the federal government would require candidates to detail their marital ~indis~cretions. Since all office hopefuls would be made to do this, it would not allow any one of them an advantage.

If you're going to make a candidate disclose his stock holdings, you might as well know what else he's been holding.