A STEP IN the right direction would be for the media to stop perpetuating these superficial "character debates." You can't open a newspaper lately without seeing an article on the existence or significance of Clinton's alleged extramarital affair or his possible avoidance of the draft for Vietnam.

Another big improvement would be for all of us to give serious thought to how we judge others' characters.

Do we still want to cling to the simplistic old formulas that equated draft avoidance with cowardice, or treated any deviation from sexual propriety as not just a mistake but a crime?

And are we even capable of assessing people's private characters with enough skill to predict their public behavior, when we've never encountered these politicians outside the public domain?

When New Hampshire residents vote in the primaries next Tuesday, these concerns should affect their decisions more than the crude iconography of George Bush the war hero and Bill Clinton the philanderer.

But that's a lot to ask for this time around: the damage has already been done. We can only hope that future political races will depend less on the quick fix and more on the responsible decision-making without which the democratic process is nothing but Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.