BENNETT'S `OUTRAGE' TONE SURPRISINGLY CIVIL.

Byline: Brad Stetson Special to the Daily News

Without question, the award for most prescient book must go to Bill Bennett. Just a few days before the lurid details of Kenneth Starr's report bathed the nation in a verbal sea of squalid sex and presidential prevarication, Bennett's book was in the stores, beckoning readers to consider the larger political and social implications of the president's defense against the special prosecutor's various allegations.

And this marketing clairvoyance has paid off: Bennett's book has leaped immediately onto the best-seller list, and its stock is rising as Republicans and Democrats play out their political chess game in the capital.

The format of Bennett's book is simple: On six topics (Sex, Character, Politics, Ken Starr, Law, Judgment), he summarizes what he terms ``the defense of President Clinton,'' then seeks to show the implausibility of it, believing that both the line of defense and the public's reaction to it are an index, of sorts, to our cultural well-being.

Bennett explains, ``Once in a great while a single national event provides insight into where we are and who we are and what we esteem. The Clinton presidency has provided us with a window onto our times, our moral order, our understanding of citizenship. The many Clinton scandals tell us, in a way few other events can, where we are in our public philosophy. They reveal insights into how we view politics and power; virtue and vice; public trust and respect for the law; sexual morality and standards of personal conduct.''

That the former Reagan cabinet secretary, drug czar and co-director of Empower America (a Republican think-tank) excoriates Clinton, and flatly rejects the arguments in his defense, is unsurprising. But what is noteworthy is the civil tone Bennett strikes and maintains throughout his discussions.

This work is not a political tract as much as it is an exercise in moral reasoning and political theory. Bennett's former life in academe (he earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Texas and a law degree at Harvard) has served him well in his presentation, as his narrative is clear, and free of ad hominem attacks and emotional invective.

Bennett's general conclusion - that our public refusal to insist the president leave office will have a perilously corrosive effect on our national character and ethical culture - is sobering. Our unwillingness to recognize the appropriateness, even necessity, of outrage at the president reflects a moral paralysis, a basic inability of the American body politic to soundly govern itself. And what the future holds for such a people is a frightful thing. It may be that the greatest value of this concise summary of the moral case against the president is that it marshals all the arguments that now have currency into one volume, and organizes them in a plain, straightforward way.

If Bennett's conclusions are right, then ``The Death of Outrage,'' this book of the moment, will in time become primarily a history book; the record of either the successful case against the president, or the warning of the social devolution that the completion of his second term brought to pass.

``The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals''

by William Bennett 

(154 pages, Free Press; $20)

Our rating: Three and One-half stars.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1) ``The many Clinton scandals tell us, in a way few other events can, where we are in our public philosophy,'' says William Bennett, inset, in ``The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals.''

(2) no caption (President Clinton)