The Washington Monument, that sharp needle that pops out of the skyline of America's capital, is not looking so good just now. It's clad in scaffolding from top to bottom, necessary for some mid-winter repairs. And it makes an unsettling sight.
For one thing, it could be a cartoonist's depiction of Washington's 1998 obsession with sex. The boltupright monument has always had a phallic significance; now it looks as if it's sheathed in a condom. But there's a less crude reading. The sight of a national landmark propped up by poles and planks captures the current mood of the city: Washington is falling down.
For in these dying days of 1998, the American capital has felt like a place in drastic trouble. At war with Iraq, at war with its President and at odds with the country, it has begun to consume its own. Washington has become the town that ate itself.
The first victim is, of course, President Clinton, impeached on Saturday. Republicans were effective on the floor of the House of Representatives that day, arguing that Mr Clinton is guilty not of a sin, but a crime, not a private offence but a public one. He lied under oath.
There is some logic to that case and Democrats may struggle to repel it in the Senate, where a trial is due to be held next month - barring the kind of cross-party deal being discussed behind the scenes at the weekend. Still, logic can be deceptive.
For once the premise of an argument has been accepted, then all kinds of apparently logical consequences can flow, even those that are plainly absurd and dangerous.
It happened when Joe McCarthy was allowed to make mere belief in communism a crime, and therefore to stamp out anything, and anyone, even vaguely touched by it.
Zippergate began with a different premise - that probing into the sexual lives of politicians is legitimate - so that Mr Clinton's failure to fall into line became an impeachable high crime. When the cry came that private lives should be off-limits, no one listened. It was too late.
And now they are paying the price. Mr Clinton had to share Sunday's headlines with Mr Bob Livingston's resignation. After an investigation by Hustler magazine, he was forced to admit to a string of extra-marital affairs and he resigned rather than defend himself.
Democrats did not cheer his departure. "It is a surrender to a developing sexual McCarthyism," cried New York's Mr Jerrold Nadler. "Are we going to have a new test if someone wants to run for public office: are you now or have you ever been an adulterer?"
The Democratic leader in the House put it even better. In a stirring, career-defining speech, Mr Richard Gephardt implored his colleagues to put aside "the politics of slash-and-burn" lest the dark forces of sexual inquisition consume America's political system.
"Our founding fathers created a system of government of men, not of angels. If we keep demanding standards of morality unobtainable by mere mortals, we will see our seats of government lay empty."
This is a dire warning, and an urgent one. The US has now impeached a president for only the second time in its history for an act that arose from an embarrassing, paltry, unconsummated and consensual fling. This same episode has also cost the Republicans two leaders: Mr Livingston and Mr Newt Gingrich, who resigned after the poor Republican performance at last month's Zippergate elections.
Three other Republicans have been outed as adulterers, partly thanks to the enterprising work of Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, who is offering cash-for-dirt on any politician who hypocritically espouses family values.
A longer-range worry is what happens with the next president, perhaps a Republican. Won't the Democrats be hungry for revenge? Won't impeachment, once the nuclear-button of American politics, become not a last resort, but a procedure?
How will Washington stop the insanity which, polls show, continues to appall the rest of America?
That, along with the fate of Mr Clinton, is now in the hands of the 100 members of the US Senate.