President Clinton has made some "unpardonable" mistakes due to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but lying about it wasn't one of them, according to Colombia's Nobel laureate, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which Mr Clinton has called his favourite book, analyses the White House sex scandal in the latest issue of Cambio, a weekly news magazine due out today.
"Puritanism is an insatiable vice that feeds on its own shit," he writes at one point in his commentary, peppered with scathing remarks about the religious right and the feeding frenzy over Mr Clinton's private life that has led to his possible ousting.
Garcia Marquez, who has met Mr Clinton on at least three occasions, recalls how he was impressed by Mr Clinton's "power of seduction" and "the splendour of his intelligence" when he spoke with him for the first time in 1995. Since then the embattled President has been diminished by "metal fatigue," according to Garcia Marquez, having caved in to "a vast and sinister conspiracy by fanatics bent on the destruction of a political adversary whose greatness to them was intolerable."
A central theme throughout much of the work of Garcia Marquez is lust and the overwhelming human need for love. In his affair with Ms Lewinsky, according to the 1982 Nobel Prize winner, "the President only wanted to do what every man has done and hidden from his wife since the beginning of time."
Mr Clinton's problem was that he betrayed his initial instinct to lie about Ms Lewinsky, and carry on like any other "self-respecting adulterer with his head held high.
"Unfortunately, he accepted his guilt with the same determination that he had denied it," Garcia Marquez says, calling this one of Mr Clinton's "fatal mistakes" in the whole sordid matter.
"It's one thing to lie to fool people and something very different to hide the truth to protect . . . your private life," Garcia Marquez adds, saying Mr Clinton's impeachment trial was prompted by nothing more than political chicanery and "puritanical dim-wittedness."
While sympathetic to Mr Clinton, Garcia Marquez condemns him for the "unpardonable insanity" of inventing an enemy "5,397 nautical miles from the White House" to distract the public from his "personal disgrace."