Without Linda Tripp, her tape recorder and a little microphone taped to her thigh, President Clinton would not be where he is today - facing impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives. The seven men and women taking part in our People's Panel agreed with that conclusion, but most found nothing noble in Tripp's decision to record her conversations with the president's Oval Office paramour, Monica Lewinsky. So today we discuss Tripp's actions and, as always, the wise rabbi from Columbia, Martin Siegel, tries to lead us from the mud to a higher ground.
Moderator Dan Rodricks: I was amused, in a cynical way, by something I found in the documents released by Congress on Oct. 2. At some point in this saga, Tripp said that, if she went to Kenneth Starr with the telephone tapes and her knowledge of Monica Lewinsky's affair with the president, she feared she'd be losing a dear friend, Monica.
Dee Herget (screen painter): Balderdash.
Elayne Smith (counseling center administrator): I think she used Monica. Clinton used Monica, and Tripp used her.
Nance Jacobs (medical assistant and teacher): She had a reason to make the tapes. Tripp felt she had been burned by not having documentation before. Someone on Clinton's staff ...
Smith: His lawyer.
Rodricks: His lawyer said she was not to be believed.
Jacobs: Right.
Rodricks: But what do you think of what she did?
Jacobs: I didn't know it was against the law, but knowingly taping someone, I think that's a problem. Not that it's equal to what the president did.
Rodricks: Put yourself in Tripp's position. Would you have done what she did for the purpose of proving the president had a sexual relationship with someone not his wife?
Jacobs: I've been in that position, having to tape telephone calls. In the mid-'70s, we were fighting a developer behind us and this guy was playing pretty dirty. So I started taping conversations with people - if I called someone in the county government, for instance - to have, word for word, what they said.
Rodricks: It probably wasn't illegal to do that then. ... But what do you think of what she did? Do you think she was motivated by wanting to get Clinton?
Smith: Yes.
Rabbi Martin Siegel: She said something in front of the grand jury I found very interesting. Before Clinton admitted he lied, she said, "There are people in this case who have lied, and they know they've lied." The issue for me is that she betrayed her friend. I know people who have lied under oath to protect their friends. I'm not saying you should lie under oath. I just think friendship is one of the most sacred things there is. But what I think caused her to do it is the same disease that [afflicts] the House Judiciary Committee - she believes she is right, she believed they were wrong, and she was going to make sure that right triumphed, and therefore she could use this method that was illegal. She didn't care.
Rodricks: If she was such a friend, why didn't she tell Monica to stop doing what she was doing?
Jacobs: I think she tried a couple of times.
Smith: It sounded to me like she egged her on.
Herget: I think she needed money to put a couple of kids through college.
Bobby Knatz (Democratic precinct pol): The most ludicrous part of all the myriad of television I've seen on this: The wired Linda Tripp, coming out after the grand jury testimony, and saying, "After all, I'm just like you, I'm just a suburban mom." Now, heaven forbid if she is just like a suburban mom. She was totally motivated. She got fired from the White House, sent over to the Pentagon. And, by the way, that disturbs me greatly if she still has a top-secret clearance at the Pentagon. The whole thing - 20 hours of taping without an ulterior motive? Come on.
Daniel Myung (certified public accountant): I don't really care about Linda Tripp. If she broke the law, let her be punished. I care about Clinton.
Rodricks: What would you have done? Let's play Scruples. You have a friend who's having sex with a president you don't like, whose politics you don't like. What do you do?
Myung: I'd be scared. I'd be scared of Clinton ...
Rodricks: Scared? Really?
Smith: She saw this young woman, she saw this opportunity - I don't think they were really friends - and started using her.
Knatz: She contacted a book agent.
Smith: Her friend, Lucianne Goldberg. Just as I wonder what kind of a friend Linda Tripp was to Monica, I wonder what kind of friend Lucianne Goldberg was to Linda Tripp. She egged Tripp on, just as Tripp had egged Monica on. Tripp and Goldberg had a mutual hate and were out to get Clinton.
Siegel: We've got to be careful about implying motives. It's just not healthy. Linda Tripp could very well have believed she was saving the country from this evil man, Bill Clinton.
Knatz: Let me rephrase my comment, Rabbi. What I have seen or read relating to actions of Linda Tripp, they were somewhat less than admirable. This wired suburban mom made Mata Hari look like a Sunday school teacher.
Jacobs: There have been a number of women who have stated they feared for their lives.
Myung: There have been a number of mysterious deaths around Clinton.
Jason Wilson (musician): Oh, please, let's not go there.
Herget: I think what Tripp did was wrong. She has no character, no principles. She wasn't saving the country from the Canadians coming at us, or the Mexicans coming at us, or Russia dropping the bomb. Nothing is worth betraying a friend.
Myung: What about Clinton betraying his wife?
Siegel: That's between him and God. It's not Linda Tripp's issue.
Myung: I think it's funny the way they say Linda Tripp, what she did was betrayal. How about betrayal between a wife and husband? Why are we adamant about punishing Linda Tripp, but not Clinton?
Siegel: It's an area of private morality. "Judge not that you be not judged," we're instructed, and therefore we have to be careful about setting ourselves up as judge.
Rodricks: Back to that hypothetical question again: If you had been Linda Tripp, how would you have behaved?
Knatz: Ask yourself how you would have behaved if you were at the end of your rope after spending four years and $40 million on Whitewater, and you're Ken Starr, and here comes this off-the-wall woman with 20 hours of tape.
Smith: Yes, and you finally got him, and now I can justify how I spent all that money. (Laughter)
Siegel: I want the hearings because the hearings will give Clinton a chance to really tell it, and that might bring it to an end. I think it depends how they're handled. If the Democrats and Republicans quibble over everything and fight with each other, forget it. But if there is some sense that the committee is trying to find something substantial and Mr. Clinton turns off the attack dogs and spin doctors, plus all those $1,000-a-suit lawyers and just comes as a person, if he lowers himself to go before the committee, that will say a lot to me.
Rodricks: If he says, "I lied. I was afraid of my affair being found out and I'm sorry," how would you want Henry Hyde and the rest of those guys on the committee to react? Would you want it to stop right there?
Jacobs: If Clinton's deeds matched his words, yes.
Herget: If it worked out that way, fine. But it won't. It'll be a media feeding frenzy. Like when you hear a speech and you get 14 different commentators telling you what someone just said.
Siegel: The media has to stifle itself a bit.
Wilson: Clinton is in for a fight. I think if I was in Congress, if I honestly thought there was evidence, I would say, "Yeah, we need to talk this out." I don't think Bill Clinton is going to be judged outside of a political context, unfortunately.
Siegel: I say let all the players in the political class say, "I must do not what's good for me, but what's good for the country." Clearly, what's good for the country is something like this: Clinton goes before the committee and says, "In the two years that are left for me, I'm truly going to try and do my best for the country, and I really want to do it with the Republicans. I've been through a hell of a time and I've really learned something. I want you to work with me to serve others."
Rodricks: Why doesn't anyone ever speak like that? Why don't we hear the voice of inspiring moral leadership?
Smith: Because they're in politics.
Wilson: I have no issue with having my own sense of morality and not needing to talk about it, not needing to tell you how to live. Honestly, Rabbi, I don't think people want to hear about the things you're saying.
Rodricks: Where's the compass? Doesn't the nation, the society, the community, the village need a compass of some kind to show the right way, instead of the compass just spinning around in any old direction?
Siegel: You need role models or something.
Knatz: The Republicans are not going to let it end soon, and they'll squeeze as much juice out of this before the November elections as they can. I thought Gerald Ford's suggestion [of a rebuke of Clinton in the well of the Senate] had a lot of merit; it was along the lines of what you're talking about, Rabbi. But it was dismissed by Henry Hyde as premature.
Wilson: Someone earlier mentioned role models. I don't think we have role models anymore. I think we learn now by consequence. We saw the actor Rob Lowe get caught in an uncool sexual thing and we saw what happened to him, and therefore we learned that we shouldn't do that.
Jacobs: You learn everything the hard way?
Wilson: Everybody we put up as a role model has something in their past that gets discovered.
Smith: And why is there a need to put somebody up above ourselves as if they're perfect?
Rodricks: Can you name a role model in your life?
Smith: My parents.
Rodricks: So why do you sound dismissive of the need for role models?
Smith: Who needs a role model outside of your own parents? Why does it have to be Michael Jordan? Why does it have to be Clinton?
Siegel: The role models are reflective of the value of the culture. They represent values. We value a guy who can play so many consecutive baseball games. There's something in the nature of the human being to want to look up to people above them.
Smith: And to bring them down.
Siegel: That's right.
Smith: It's the same nature. You put them up, then bring them down, and why do we need to do that?
Siegel: That is our confusion.
Smith: Why do we do that?
Siegel: You see how this story is no longer about Clinton, it is about us. What you're talking about is a terrible dilemma. We want to know a great deal about people, we want to hold them up to a higher standard. We want to build them up, we want to tear them down. It's driving us crazy. I think this particular episode gives us an opportunity to resolve that. First of all, we can stop playing petty games and say we really have something higher, which is the good of the country - that's a role model. We can say people can err, but they also can change, and we can identify with that - that's a role model.
Smith: I know what a role model is. But we try to make them be more than they are, more than human, deity ...
Siegel: In our particular epic, this has been our dilemma - we need people above us, we also need to destroy those people. Unless we find some way out of this destructive dilemma, we're going to drive ourselves crazy.
The Panelists
Daniel Myung, 26, certified public accountant from Columbia. Registered Republican, born-again Christian. "Why are we adamant about punishing Linda Tripp, but not Clinton?"
Elayne Smith, 48, lifelong Baltimorean. Administrator of a counseling center in Cockeysville. "Linda Tripp used Monica."
Bobby Knatz, 68, Reisterstown.Commercial real estate broker, self-described "old Democratic precinct politician." "It disturbs me greatly if [Tripp] still has a top-secret clearance at the Pentagon."
Jason Wilson, 25, of Columbia. Musician and freelance radio producer and recording engineer. "I don't think we have role models anymore."
Rabbi Martin Siegel, 65, led the Columbia Jewish Congregation for 26 years. Runs institute for spiritual healing. "Linda Tripp could very well have believed she was saving the country from this evil man."
Nance Jacobs, 57, of Annapolis. Medical assistant, teacher, homemaker, native New Yorker. "She had a reason to make the tapes. Tripp felt she had been burned before."
Dee Herget, 63, of Essex. Baltimore's best-known painter of window screens. Her work is sought by folk-art collectors all over the world. "I think she needed money to put a couple of kids through college."
Pub Date: 10/13/98