I can’t speak for my fellow citizens, but these days, I’m embarrassed to be an American. I can only remember feeling this way a couple of times in my life.

The last time was in 1977.

It wasn’t the president who embarrassed me, however; it was the American public who latched onto the subject of the president’s sex drive as if it were anyone’s business but his own.

Back in 1977, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan when the American public began hounding Carter for admitting to having had lustful thoughts.

Wow. See how far we have come?

It used to be that presidents weren’t allowed to have lust in their hearts, and now we’re wishing it had just stopped there.

For those who need a history lesson, in Nov. 1976 Carter agreed to be interviewed by Playboy magazine — a gutsy decision for a candidate to the American presidency. But he was a good and honest man who knew he had nothing to hide.

He lived by his religious and ethical convictions and for that I admire him more than any other president I have seen in my lifetime.

After Playboy quizzed Carter about his religious convictions, they asked him if he had ever sinned, and Carter admitted to having committed adultery in his heart.

In return for his honesty, many Americans laughed at him, derided him, tried to make him a laughing stock.

The world did not laugh along. Instead, when the jokes continued into Carter’s first year in the White House, the Muslim intellectuals I knew in Kabul asked me how my country could publicly embarrass our elected leader in such a manner. I couldn’t answer.

And the same questions ring in my ears today: Is a sexual nature not a natural instinct?

Are we so naive as to think that being a president and being a man are distinct from one another?

In this country where rape carries a lesser sentence than “possession with intent,” isn’t it hypocritical for Americans to act shocked and hurt by Clinton’s sexual indiscretion and his predictable attempts to deny it? Look how we rewarded Carter for his honesty.

On the basis of our film industry alone, Americans are perceived in various parts of the world as self-serving, sex-obsessed and immoral pagans, but we can argue that there is a difference between entertainment and who we are.

Our political ethics, however, are clearly defined for all the world to see by the way we wage internal warfare — regardless of what we say we believe.

While we like to think of ourselves as “God-fearing” and as “one nation under God,” the international community perceives us as neither.

It is common knowledge that the Religious Right has spearheaded and funded this attack on the American presidency.

Most of us know that it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with bipartisan politics.

Even American Christianity is taking a hit on this one.

President Clinton committed his first sin when he crumbled before outspoken religious leaders at the start of his first term.

He had made daring campaign pledges to his supporters, which he later modified.

How many of us elected him because we thought he could change the climate of Washington politics?

After he reneged on his pledge to protect gay rights in the military, many of us were left wondering what other promises he would break.

Perhaps Clinton viewed a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy as a political necessity, a calculated compromise made in order to gain the support of an extremely partisan and conservative Republican Congress.

However, he seems to have forgotten two important things.

One is that the American people who elected him on the basis of his election campaign were ready to back him up on the issues.

And, even more important, Clinton forgot that old playground rule: If you give in to the neighborhood bully, he will only come back for more.

The bullies are winning now. Had Clinton addressed his original agenda, he may have only served a single term.

But he would have been remembered as a president who stood by his word, a president who effected important social change in the face of an opposition which would stoop to the lowest and most destructive means in order to promote its own agenda.

As it is, Clinton will be forever blamed for the effect of those destructive means, while those truly responsible for the damage will have won this round.

But this is American politics, isn’t it?

We call it democracy at work.

We continue to pretend that democracy is alive and well in America, as if to say, “Look, everyone! We are right! Follow our lead!”

This isn’t democracy at work; this is McCarthy politics, back in style.

What our treatment of President Clinton says to the world is quite clear: “Look, everyone! We are idiots! We have a lot to learn.”

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Kata Alvidrez is a graduate student in English from Los Angeles, Calif.