It's sad that the rest of this kids' taunt is all too appropriate for President Clinton. But dissembling and shading the truth - in short, lying - in the Clinton administration goes beyond the president and his sex life.
In the days before Clinton's taking the grand jury stand, the media were filled with trial balloons.
Would splitting a legal definition in hair-width sections fly with the public? Should the president admit he had sex with Monica Lewinsky, but deny perjury and obstruction charges? Should he go for, a la Watergate, ''a modified hang-out strategy,'' admitting an inapproprate relationship, but refusing to answer specific questions?
All of these approaches are missing one common theme - the truth.
People who tell the truth don't need Hollywood producers as coaches, or private lawyers as advisers. And the truth doesn't need executive, attorney-client or Secret Service privileges.
But to this administration, truth seems to be a stranger. From the president on down through the Cabinet to the bureaucrats, lying has not only been made acceptable - but preferred.
Take the just-revealed actions of the Clinton administration on the issue of Iraq's weapons program. After fighting in the United Nations for the toughest possible language, which included the option of military force, the U.S. has begun backpedaling.
According to The Washington Post, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Richard Butler, on the eve of a surprise inspection to urge him to cancel it. He did, but she and Butler, of course, both deny a change in the U.S. position.
Albright has been up to now unsullied by this administration's penchant for falsehood. But she is learning that you can't say one thing and do another.
Look also at the fabrications of the Environmental Protection Agency. To be sure, the zealots at the EPA began a campaign against secondhand smoke in the Bush administration. But the Clinton eco-troopers threw honesty out the window.
As we've reported in this space, a federal judge struck down the EPA's jihad against secondhand smoke for, among other reasons, ''fail(ing) to disclose important findings and reasoning.''
The envirocrats have also made global warming a crusade worth lying for. Clinton said he would not implement any terms of the climate treaty reached in Kyoto, Japan, until the Senate ratified it. The Senate, justly skeptical, has refused to do so.
But that hasn't stopped the EPA from spending tax dollars on workshops and seminars promoting the deeply flawed treaty.
To compound the EPA's hostility toward the truth, it has pronounced man- made global warming a fact and a looming catastrophe - despite the utter lack of consensus among scientists.
A signal that this White House didn't care about truth (or the law, for that matter) came early on. First lady Hillary Clinton's health-care task force met in secret to devise its scheme to nationalize health care. Such secret meetings are against the law.
When called into court on it, Clinton officials dissembled, stonewalled and denied any culpability. But their lying didn't go unnoticed. The judge in the case, Royce Lamberth, ruled against the White House, calling several of its witnesses, in effect, liars.
None of these examples is about ''just sex'' or about the president's private life. They are policy matters that affect every American. Yet the Clinton administration has felt no compunction about lying about them to the American people.
Which brings us back to the current mess in Washington.
Apart from the lawyerly definition of perjury, Clinton has lied to the American people. With clenched lips and finger a-wagging, he told the public in January: ''I had no sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.''
Seven months of stonewalling, scatter-shot assertions of privilege and pit-bull attacks on perceived foes has undermined whatever credibility his January denial had.
Now he's pressed into a corner. The lie won't go away - no matter how many coaches and hairsplitters Clinton talks to. And the rest of his administration is learning what comes from lying. Shame. To one's family, to one's office and to the country.
Regardless of the fallout of Clinton's testimony Monday, a lesson can be taken from this presidency - thou shalt not bear false witness.
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