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In 1977, when the Arkansas attorney general was trying to decide whether to run for Governor or Senator, he began thinking about Morris. They had met a few months earlier, when the New Yorker was traveling the country pitching himself to politicians, fast-talking his way into their offices and dazzling them with his ideas about using polls to shape policy. Morris believed that key issues, if objectively researched and properly framed, could move segments of the electorate in predictable ways. "No feelings get into anything he does," recalls G.O.P. consultant Bob Goodman, who worked with Morris for years. "He's a supremely rational creature. He'll never stop into a roadhouse to get the feel of a place; he'll take a poll."
A Clinton aide called Morris down from New York, and Morris did some polling that helped Clinton decide to declare for Governor. Since that race proved to be a breeze, Clinton and Morris worked together with far more intensity on a concurrent campaign in 1978, helping Governor David Pryor in his successful race for the Senate against Jim Guy Tucker, a rival whom Clinton wanted to see defeated. Clinton and Morris became Pryor's consultants, with Clinton writing ad copy, Morris revising it. In that context, Morris once said, he came to see Clinton as "a highly sophisticated colleague" who knew that you "do what you have to do to get elected."
Once in the statehouse, however, Clinton felt he had less use for Morris-style issues manipulation and let him go. But Clinton made a hash of his first term by taking on too many issues and angering key constituencies, and by the time Hillary Clinton placed an emergency call to Morris late in the 1980 re-election campaign, it was too late. Clinton lost. Morris flew in to plot the comeback--Clinton apologizing for his mistakes, hacking at his opponents--that returned him to power. "It's very important for me to convey how deeply I care about this man, what an inspiration, even a guide he's been," says Morris. "He is the essence of my career."
What Morris calls "the incredible metaphor of 1980" remains at the heart of their rapport. In 1980 as in 1994, Clinton suffered a shattering defeat and sank into depression. In both cases it seemed impossible for him to climb out of his hole. And in both cases Morris' confidence jump-started the candidate--and began a "permanent campaign" in which Clinton defined himself partly through polling. In Arkansas, as the two men dueled over strategy, they would throw poll numbers back and forth from memory--10 different surveys, each one yielding different slices of voter sentiment. Still, the notion that Morris dictates policy to Clinton, says former chief of staff Betsey Wright, fundamentally misreads their relationship. Clinton controls the dynamic; Morris reads his grunts and silences and knows when they mean no. "I have never seen Dick move Bill on an issue," says Wright. "I watched him propose positions, like a no-tax pledge, that would have been fabulously popular, but Bill said no. Dick huffed out of the room, pouted overnight, then came back with a way to minimize the damage. But he always accepted that Bill wouldn't budge."