Nero redivivus: Congress should stop fiddling around.

As the House droned on to its inevitable conclusion on October 8 on the impeachment inquiry for President Bill Clinton, the little box at the bottom corner of the television screen kept reporting the bad news. The Dow Jones was down more than two hundred points when I was watching. The market later recovered, but I couldn't help ruminating on the cliche: To compare this to fiddling while Rome burns may be unfair to the Romans.

What will the historians make of us? At one end of town, the folks at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were trying to find ways to avoid a global economic catastrophe. At the other, the congressional majority couldn't even agree to set time limits on the Clinton inquiry and restrict the investigation to the matters Ken Starr put on the table - even though it is Starr's referral that launched the inquiry.

Does anyone believe that the gravest threat to our republic is the possibility that we'll settle the Clinton matter too quickly? We've only been at this, in one way or another, for more than four years.

To paraphrase the good Admiral James Stockdale: Who are we, and why are we here? To take the second question first: We're here because the president had an astonishingly irresponsible sexual relationship that, according to Monica Lewinsky's testimony, he knew could get him into trouble. Then he lied about it for seven months. He jeopardized himself, his supporters, and, most importantly, whatever hopes he had of making enduring changes in American political life.

We're also here because the independent counsel decided to veer off his inquiry into Whitewater, Travelgate, and Filegate and cross his investigation with the Paula Jones lawsuit. According to a recent New York Times report, his office was tipped off in advance about Linda Tripp's allegations, which raises many questions about how the two cases got intertwined.

And we're here because the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, decided that a civil lawsuit that could lead to questions about the president's sex life couldn't possibly disrupt the president's work.

But what do we do now? The inquiry approved by the House is open-ended. There's no time limit. Anything that comes across the transom can be added to the committee's investigation. As Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) argued, with a debt to Jesse Jackson, Republicans "keep hope alive" that new charges will turn up to make impeachment easy.

If the Republicans had been smart, they would have agreed to Democratic proposals to limit the inquiry. One Republican who believes this is William Kristol, the editor and Republican adviser who wants Clinton thrown out of office. "There's a chunk of Republican opinion that doesn't want to give up the hope of new scandals and new smoking guns," Kristol said in an interview. "I'm happy to confine it to the scope of the Starr referral. It's ludicrous to think Starr will come up with something on Filegate" or the other matters in question, Kristol said.

The notion that elaborate hearings will turn up new evidence is also suspect. "There are no evidentiary issues here," Kristol said. The danger to Republicans is that "the strongest argument with the middle of the body politic" appeals to "the desire to get it over with." It's important, he said, "that Republicans not be the party of dragging it out." But that's exactly the course they've chosen. As Congresswoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) noted, they voted "to put our country in suspended animation for months and months." The result was a highly partisan division on a matter that cried out for bipartisanship.

It's possible, of course, that Republicans will view this differently after the election. The voters who want this to end could choose to send them a message. And moderate Republicans may suggest that Clinton be rebuked but allowed to govern.

But to return to Admiral Stockdale's question: Who are we? Will our grandchildren look back on us and say we were the generation so obsessed with the Clinton scandal that we couldn't pull ourselves together to prevent the human costs of a worldwide economic downturn? Herbert Hoover may look like a hero compared with us.

Kristol thinks Clinton should be tossed from office. I think he should be censured and allowed to serve out his term. Most Americans and - despite many pious statements to the contrary - most members of Congress also know where they stand. The public's sentiment on this issue is exactly right: Let's decide and get back to business while there is still business to get back to.