The Monicagate saga may be coming to an end any day now that the U.S. Senate prepares acquitted President Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice and permitted him to conclude his final two years in office. Well, there is still the much-anticipated Barbara Walters kvetch-and-shmatlz interview with the former White House intern. And of course, there are Monica’s coming memoirs, co-authored with the late Prince Di’s ghost writer. But as far as the Washington scenes goes, the members of the U.S. capital’s political and media elite may be forced to bid farewell to the infamous semen-stained blue Gap dress, to Linda (“With Friend Like That”) Tripp, to Ken Starr and to all the Republican party’s Angry White Men.

And as the curtain comes down on Washington’s year-long nauseating political and sex scandal, and as we all try to cope with the sense of emptiness that is bound to dawn on this capital city as we are unable to get our daily Monica Fix, this may be the appropriate time for me as well as for many other observers of the American and Israeli political scenes to try resolve a major “cognitive dissonance,” that is, a certain inconsistency in the way that many of us treat Bill Clinton on one hand and “Bibi” Netanyahu on the other.

Let’s face it. We are dealing here with two politicians who despite a lot of differences have many similar personal and political traits. Forget about adultery for a moment and focus on the more important issues. With their telegenic presence, phony smiles, shallow news bites, political opportunism, half-pregnant/ split-in-the-middle solutions and, of course, that astounding ability of theirs to give dishonesty and immorality a worst reputation than they deserve, they both ended up as marketing success stories produced by cynical and effective (American) media consultants.

In a way, while we would all think twice before buying a used PC from Bill or Bibi or allowing our daughters to go on a date with either of them, our political attitudes towards the two are quite different. We may be appalled by Clinton’s personal behavior and by his entire modus operandi, but we continue to root for him, boo his detractors and still want to see him remain in office. At the same time, when it comes to Bibi we lose our ambivalence. We think that the guy is a bum and we hope he’ll be run out of office, now and not later.

So, how do one explain this schizophrenic political attitude towards Bill and Bibi? To paraphrase Clinton’s famous 1992 election campaign slogan that was coined by James Carville (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), one can resolve this puzzle by suggesting that, “It’s the culture, stupid!” For both Americans and Israelis, Clinton and Netanyahu are more that just politicians who have effectively been advancing certain policies. In fact, as many American analysts would argue, on most domestic and foreign policy issues, the differences between the Democratic White House and the Republican Congress are quite limited; some critics on the right and the left suggest that Clinton has “hijacked” the Republican economic agenda. Similarly, there is a growing consensus in Israel about the inevitability of the establishment of a Palestinian state and a recognition that any government that emerges in Israel after the coming elections will have to operate based on this assumption. Indeed, Bibi’s main historical legacy would probably be the Likud’s abandonment of the Greater Israeli project. as demonstrated by the withdrawal from Hebron and the signing of the Wye Accord.

What makes the role of Clinton and Netanyahu in their respective countries’ political dramas is not their policy “wonknism,” but the part they play in the contemporary cultural wars that are dominating the politics of the United States and Israel these days.

It was renowned American political scientist Samuel Huntington who proposed in the aftermath of the Cold War that following the conclusion of the ideological struggle between communism and liberal-democracy (and earlier in the century, fascism and Nazism), our contemporary global and national political systems would project what he described as a “clash of civilization.” The old confrontation between political ideologies would be replaced by a cultural warfare, involving religion, ethnicity, race and conflicting “visions of the future.” Indeed, almost every nation is witnessing one form or another or such a “clash of civilization” that tends to reflect conflicting images about whether and how the society should react to the forces of globalization. One side are those who propose a more exclusive ethnic, religious and racial definition of national identity and who seek to “society” from the “threats” of the global economy and from the “other” -- immigration, foreign trade, global financial flows, Hollywood and the Internet. On the other side who advocate a more open. liberal and pluralistic concept of nationalism and that supports integration into the global economy, including free trade, open immigration, multiculturalism, and the creation of regional and supranational institutions.

Sure, “things are not simple” and not every political debate can be explained by applying this “clash of civilization” paradigm; there is a lot of “gray” in the middle not all political debates reflect a coherent cultural divide. But it does come close to making sense of what is happening, say, in Russia where a xenophobic and chauvinistic “Red-Brown” nationalist and anti-Western coalition is hoping to bring to an end the experiment in democracy and free market that was launched by the liberal and Westernized bloc, in Great Britain (the “Euro-skeptics” vs. pro-EU integrationists), in France (the nationalist, anti-immigration forces vs. the open, multicultural camp), or in Australia (those who supports free immigration, abolishing the monarchy, and a “Pacific orientation” are being confronted by those who back a more traditional, Anglo, anti-immigration approach).

In the context of this “clash of civilization,” Monicagate and the effort to oust Clinton from office revolved not so much about sex and probably was related only in an indirectly to the power struggle between the Republican and Democrat parties. As The New York Times’ columnist Frank Rich and other pundits have suggested, this 13-month long national drama uncovered a growing tensions between two political cultures, call it the 1950’s vs. the 1960s. The one represented by many of President Clinton’s detractors on the right wants to set back a lot of the progress made during the 1960’s in the political, social and cultural arenas and spearheaded by the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements, feminist groups, gay rights organizations. It was not surprising that some of the leading figures in the impeachment crusade were cultural conservatives ideologues, including southern lawmakers and Catholic pundits who perceive Clinton -- the draft dodger, the pot smoker, the adulterer, the powerful ally of African-American, feminist and gay and environmentalists groups, a close friend of the Hollywood and the Silicon Valley communities -- as representing all that is wrong with the 1960’s generation, with the baby boomers who have become now the leaders of America’s political, intellectual, and business establishments. For them Monicagate was nothing more than a proxy for the a more important long-term project -- transforming America’s political culture and restoring “traditional values” by, among other things, banning abortions, making religion and state less separate, imposing some form of censorship over the Internet and the film industry, and placing restrictions on immigration.

It was not unexpected that the opposition to impeachment would come not only from African-American and feminist organizations and other forces close to the Democratic party or on the political left. But that Monicagate was more than just a Republican-Democratic battle, or even a left-right confrontation, and that it reflected a deep cultural schism was demonstrated by the fact that among those Svoting against convicting Clinton were not only most of the Republicans representing Northeastern states but also all the female Democratic and Republican Senators. A reading of the vote on the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives reflect a very similar split: the anti-Clinton vote was driven by lawmakers representing white southern districts and Midwestern Catholic voters, while Republican lawmakers from culturally liberal and ethnically and religiously heterogeneous districts (Hispanic and Jewish voters also tended to back Clinton) such as New England, New Jersey, New York, and California. Indeed, Representative Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican who represents the Palo Alto area in California, which includes many high-tech entrepreneurs and who decided to vote in favor of impeachment seemed to have dug his own political grave. The majority of both Democratic and Republican voters in his district tell pollsters that they plan to punish him for his anti-Clinton vote.

So one way to sum up Monicagate is by concluding that the cultural war was fought and that at the end, the 1960s were clearly the winners, Big Time. This suggests that cultural wars, like some wars, are sometime worth fighting since they tend to help mobilize your political supporters and create eventually a balance of power that is favorable to your interests. This lesson should be studied carefully in Israel, especially by those who seem to be concerned that the Jewish state might soon experience a potential and costly cultural war between “Tel-Aviv” (the advocates of peace, of civil rights and religious freedom, and cultural pluralism) and “Jerusalem” (the nationalist militants and religious fundamentalist).

In a week when the images of the coming cultural war were evident in the demonstration in Jerusalem, pitting Haredim against members of the secularist camp, many politicians and intellectuals affiliated with political left and center stressed the need to avoid a nasty confrontation, a “bloodbath,” with the other side. In fact, there was a lot of talk about “building bridges” and “reconciliation.” At the same time, some of the more “pragmatic” forces in the anti-Likud parties are refraining from applying a cultural explanation to the debate with the nationalist-religious Greater Israel, characterizing the political fight with Bibi as a contest between policy styles (Labor and the centrist parties will manage more effectively the negotiations with the Arabs or the relationship with the United States) and personalities (Barak and Mordechai are more competent leaders than Netanyahu) as well as to pander to the religious parties (by voting in the Knesset in support of the Orthodox-religious parties) and the West Bank settlers (by promising not to remove settlements) and to refrain from forming electoral alliances with Israeli-Arab voters.

But by trying to avoid recognizing that the cultural split in Israel is the political reality and that one has to try devise an effective and winning election strategy based on that premise, the anti-Likud forces are playing directly into Bibi’s hands. The Likud leader’s political strategy has exploited this deep cultural divisions in Israel, by getting all of “Us” to vote against “Them,” while Labor and its allies proposed a more “inclusive” and fuzzy political design that, among other things, discouraged many Arab-Israeli voters from voting for Shimon Peres in the last elections (thus helping Bibi win the vote). In fact, it is the perception of a cultural war, not unlike the scene of this week’s demonstration in Jerusalem, that could force many secular security-minded and nationalist Israeli-Jews who may otherwise be inclined to back Bibi to vote for the more centrist Mordechai so as to strengthen the secular and democratic forces. But if Moredchai and his political allies are perceived as wishy-washy politicians seeking to make deals with the Haredim, why should a Likud supporter switch his vote to the “centrists”?

Indeed, Barak, Mordechai, Lipkin-Shahak and the other self-proclaimed leaders of the secular peace camp in Israel should take a closer look at Cinton’s Monicagate guide on How to Win a Culture War? and study its main conclusion: There is a time and a place for “building bridges,” for “understanding” and “reconciliation.” But that usually comes after the triumphal finale.