KEY POINTS:
When Bill Clinton testified in early 1998 that he did not have "sexual relations with that woman", Monica Lewinsky, he wasn't exactly committing perjury.
Not if you bought his legal team's definition of "sexual relations" as not including oral sex.
Clinton admitted later, as evidence mounted against him, that he'd had a relationship with the star-struck White House intern that was "not appropriate" and indeed "wrong", and that his public comments and silence had given a "false impression" and "misled" people.
But technically he hadn't lied. His answers had been "legally accurate", and, as his lawyer argued, his "candid but not detailed answers" were necessary to "preserve personal privacy and institutional dignity".
Which was true, in a way. The world wasn't made a better place by knowing the grubby details of the affair that sullied Clinton's presidency.
It might have required a law degree to appreciate Clinton's semantic stretches, but not to work out that he hadn't done anything illegal - morally reprehensible, yes, but illegal, no. And there's a difference, particularly in the murky, morally grey world of politics, taxes and political donations, where it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad, or pick out the fly faeces from black pepper, as millionaire Phillip Vela memorably commented last week.
As Winston Peters should know from his experience with the Winebox inquiry, separating illegality from ethically dodgy but legally watertight arrangements is often a matter of interpretation.
Sir Ron Davison's interpretation of Peters' Winebox allegations about allegedly fraudulent Cook Islands tax haven deals was that there was no evidence of wrongdoing, or any corruption on the part of the Serious Fraud Office and Inland Revenue staff who failed to prosecute the deals, and that Peters had grossly overplayed his hand.
Sir Ron's findings drew applause from the business community and brought the illusion of judicial clarity, but it was short-lived.
In 1999, the Court of Appeal overturned his finding, and while it stopped short of finding wrongdoing, concluded that "the inferences that might be taken from the very nature, intended result, and non-disclosure of the [transactions] could support a finding that there was evidence of fraud".
Which seemed to mean that the deals were probably unethical and possibly illegal.
Of course, as many tax lawyers or accountants will tell you, there's a big difference between the entirely legal and, many argue, morally defensible practice of tax avoidance - which is the right to exploit every legal trick and loophole in the tax laws to pay as little tax as possible - and tax evasion, which is illegally cooking the books to pay as little tax as possible.
As a US Appeals Court judge said in 1934, "Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the Treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.
"Over and over again the courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant."
There's certainly been a lot of sanctimonious and hypocritical talk from just about everyone involved in the unedifying spectacle that saw Peters step down as Foreign Minister on Friday, including a fair bit of jostling for the moral high ground, particularly from National Party leader John Key.
The trouble with Key's claim to moral rectitude is that his actions haven't been based on ethical grounds, but on a calculated gamble that the risk of losing a possible coalition partner - whose chances of political resurrection are slim no matter what the findings of the privileges committee or the Serious Fraud Office - is outweighed by the political mileage to be had from looking tough and principled. Which isn't quite the same as actually being tough and principled.
I've never met Peters, though I interviewed him once on the phone many years ago, when I was a reporter on the Herald. I can't remember what the interview was about but I remember his manner.
He didn't waste his charm on me; he was impatient and brusque, with the pained tone of a teacher (which he was, once) talking down to a particularly obtuse pupil.
His unfriendliness seemed at odds with the other faces he's cultivated over the years, even given his famous lack of affection for the media. But then he has always been a contradictory character - an anti-Establishment crusader who is deeply Establishment; a hard-drinking, hard-partying bon vivant who wants to be taken seriously; and surprisingly thin-skinned for all his combativeness.
Peters has been many things - belligerent, arrogant, egotistical, a demagogue, all of which have been on display of late - but never, I would have thought, corrupt or stupid, and certainly not stupid enough to be caught out in a blatant lie.
The problem for Peters is not, I think, that he has done anything illegal, but that he will be shown to be no better that the big business interests he's made a career of attacking.
