Perspectives on Dick Morris - former political advisor to Pres. Clinton - On the Right - Column

National Review, Sept 30, 1996 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

One view of the Dick Morris business is that he was, pure and simple, a technician. No different (to stretch the metaphor to the breaking point) from a computer. So the computer develops a virus? So -- since you can't eliminate this particular virus: only divine agents can accomplish that, and there is a long waiting list for their services -- you throw away the computer, and get another one. It's just that easy, that comprehensive. Next question? The other view of it is that the computer in question had a very special hold over the President of the United States. Absolutely no one is denying that Morris was the architect of the post-Gingrich Clinton, the President who suddenly agreed that we had to balance the budget, who signed a welfare bill that surrendered final federal authority over welfare dispensations, who went so far as to recommend school uniforms to revitalize the sense of order and discipline in the chaotic little cloisters where the next generation is being taught how to behave.

And then this second Morris was more intimately involved with the President than even the most advanced and malleable computer could be. When the news first reached Mr. Clinton, he said that Dick Morris was his friend, to whom he owed a great deal. He didn't quite say that he thought Morris not guilty of the charges leveled against him, but he did document his personal regard for him. And while Clinton was talking about Morris, Morris was writing about Clinton, in a statement that accompanied his resignation. What he said, in almost exactly as many words, was that he had picked Clinton up from the floor and propped him up to be, once again, a viable presidential figure. And then he went on to say that he had a very high opinion of the honor and character of Bill Clinton.

But then of course the situation becomes complicated, because the two positions -- Morris as a mere computer, Morris as Rasputin --crawl toward each other. So highly did Mr. Morris esteem the honor and character of Bill Clinton that he let his prostitute listen in on conversations over the telephone between the two men. Put it this way: There is no question that the man supremely responsible for Mr. Clinton's current focus on family values was himself scoffing at them. Morris (of course) says he was guilty of nothing (while writing out his resignation). From Clinton's end (through the chief strategist of the 1992 campaign, Paul Begala) we got the quiet dismay of a man temporarily on the rocks. "I've been dealing with the press for 13 years, and I've always wanted to say this and I never was able to until this moment: No comment."

It's hardly the end of the world for Bill Clinton. Lyndon Johnson had Walter Jenkins, his live-in amanuensis, who got caught seeking homosexual distraction in a YMCA a few weeks before the 1964 election. Nothing happened, unless one wants to attribute to that episode the loss of the five states won by Goldwater. The difference, however, is that Walter Jenkins's employer hadn't been repeatedly put down for licentious conduct, didn't have another confidant who committed suicide, didn't etc. etc. etc., all of which Mr. Clinton was engaged in trying to chase away into the shadows, using words in a speech substantially composed by -- Dick Morris.

There has been much discussion lately of the question of presidential character. The subject came up when Senator Gary Hart was caught up in episodes of physical and moral relaxation, and of course it was what did Richard Nixon in. But Nixon's smoking gun wasn't merely an article in the Star documenting abandoned sexual conduct. "Does it matter" what a public figure does away from home? former mayor Ed Koch recently asked. After all (he continued) half of American marriages end in divorce and at least one half end, or don't end, with adultery in the picture.

Surely one answer to that question is: What is the solemnity of the vow to fidelity taken by parties who contract marriage? Because the public is likely to reason (even if not justifiably) that to disdain an obligation under the one vow is to invite suspicion that the person in question would deal lightly with others. The incumbent President of the United States has taken two vows relevant here, the one to be faithful to the woman he married, the second to defend, so help him God, the Constitution of the United States.

That's what the fuss is all about.