Real Tale of the Tapes Is One Bad Tripp

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose it’s all true.

Suppose that President Clinton did everything those audiotapes suggest he did.

Suppose that the president really did have a tawdry affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Suppose that President Clinton told her to lie about it. Suppose that he’s been lying about this to his wife, his daughter and all of us all along.

Sound plausible? Of course it does. The job performance ratings are high and the State of the Union address was well-received, but this is still the same Bill Clinton who long ago confessed to “causing pain” in his marriage after Gennifer Flowers stepped forward with tapes of her own, with Clinton telling her to deny it. This is the president whose “bimbo eruptions” helped inspire the best-selling novel “Primary Colors,” about a philandering Southern governor bound for the White House. And so polls show that many, many Americans are quite willing to believe his libido and hubris led him into a dalliance with, as he called her, “that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

So assume the worst, and now answer this question:

Who would you rather have as a friend--Bill Clinton or Linda Tripp?

*

If the question seems off the point, bear with me. This would be, I suspect, an easy call for just about anyone who has been following the details of this story. Even the most ardent Clinton haters--and some of my best friends hate him dearly--would have to think twice before allowing Linda Tripp into their circle of friends.

The question I raise here isn’t one of grave national concern. It’s not a question of whether Bill Clinton, if found guilty of suborning perjury, should be impeached. Whatever happens to Bill Clinton, chances are life won’t change that dramatically. We’ll just be hoping all the more that President Gore is the Boy Scout he seems to be.

But this potboiler isn’t just about the private and public ethics of a public man. It’s also about the personal ethics of private people--and the old question of whether the ends justify the means.

Most of us will never hold public office. Try imagining yourself as the president of the United States and it all fairly boggles the mind. But all of us have friends. (If not, I’m truly sorry for you.) And most of us have confidences and confidants. So it shouldn’t be so hard to imagine yourself as a friend of Monica Lewinsky.

Poor Monica. Poor little rich girl from Beverly Hills. Poor mixed-up, star-struck, immature Monica. Maybe deluded, maybe not. Who knows?

Newsweek described her as sounding “like a neurotic, slightly spoiled Valley Girl” on the audiotapes. We now know that she carried on a five-year affair with her former drama teacher, a married man. We know that he and his wife describe Monica more or less as a scheming two-faced liar--and as someone who would stretch the truth to make herself seem more important. She boasted to her old teacher about an affair with a high-ranking but unnamed White House official and she was even quoted making a reference to earning her “presidential kneepads.”

But if Monica Lewinsky is manipulative, she more than met her match in Linda Tripp, the older woman who became her gossip partner, friend and confidant.

Tripp is the former White House secretary who was the last person to see Vince Foster alive and tried unsuccessfully to peddle a book about life in the White House. She started to secretly tape her conversations with Lewinsky and shared them with her book agent. Soon enough, Paula Jones’ lawyers were serving subpoenas. Tripp kept secretly taping their phone conversations. Later she took her story and tapes to independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

A tape excerpted by Newsweek reveals Linda Tripp as a rather dishonest paragon of honesty. She secretly tapes a conversation in which she tells her friend that she won’t commit perjury to back up Lewinsky’s story.

“I can’t be involved in this,” Tripp tells Lewinsky at one point. “I can’t be a party to all this ugliness that will do nothing except destroy people.”

It was after that that she went to Starr. When FBI agents brought Lewinsky in for questioning, she reportedly said: “My life is ruined.”

Yes, poor Monica. Maybe she can’t choose friends or lovers.

*

Now how many of you have secrets you wouldn’t want your loved ones to know? Maybe you are lucky that way. Maybe your life is an open book and you’re not troubled by a single page. Maybe you’ve never told a little white lie in your life, much less a big dark one.

But even the most virtuous among us have probably been entrusted with the confidences of friends--perhaps the secrets of infidelity, the kind of secrets that can indeed hurt and destroy families and reputations.

Now, of course, it’s hard to imagine that one of our friends will someday tell us she or he is having an affair with the president of the United States. But if it happened, what would you do? Would you secretly record your conversations? Would you call a book agent and notify the press?

The world has no shortage of moral ambiguity, but it’s hard to imagine a situation that justifies Linda Tripp’s long-term betrayal of her friend. The virtues of honesty and loyalty too often come into conflict, but Tripp’s betrayal seemed driven by a desire for money, fame and vengeance on the Clinton administration.

And maybe the moral ambiguity is why, as the polls indicate, so many people are willing to think well of President Clinton while suspecting it’s all true. Maybe in the end, most Americans really feel the way Linda Tripp only pretended to feel.

We don’t want to be party to all this ugliness that will do nothing except destroy people.

*

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.