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By the time he parted ways with Clinton in 1990, Morris was a solo operator who worked almost exclusively for Republicans. His partnership with Dresner had ended badly--he left the firm in 1982, shortly before it went bankrupt--and his combative nature had burned many bridges. Morris has considerable charm--along with deep knowledge of history and an abiding love of all things French--but he used it on candidates, not on their campaign teams.
His usual m.o. was to swoop in to seduce the candidate, caroming among five different campaigns, calling from a pay phone and needing the big guy now. "He's like a cult leader," says Stuart Stevens, a Dole media consultant who once worked with Morris. "The client has to get in there, drink the Kool-Aid and look him in the eye, get the whole mystical connection going."
Candidates find him odd but endearing--he tells them they can win, knows all about their state, cites chapter and verse on their careers. Roemer calls him "the weirdest guy I ever met in politics"--and Roemer is friends with another eccentric, Clinton's strategist, James Carville. "A wild man, yelling and screaming, all over your back. I said, 'Give that man a machete! I want him on my side.'" But sometimes candidates wonder whose interests come first with Morris. Roemer's campaign against the scandal-plagued Edwards was based on Roemer's pledge to reject all PAC money and large contributions. Morris was a big booster of the plan--until he wanted to put TV spots on the air and Roemer lacked the money to pay for them. "Dick wanted me to break my word," says Roemer. "I wouldn't do it."
Campaign managers, meanwhile, just find him threatening. Brose McVey, who worked with Morris on the 1992 campaign of Indiana Senator Dan Coats, compares Morris to "a fly on a screen door--buzzin' all over the place, trying to get past the organization so he can one-on-one the candidate and cut everyone else out of the deal." McVey fired Morris during the campaign.
Morris can get so immersed in the game that he barely recognizes his own bad behavior. In 1988 he almost went to work for the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, then ended up on George Bush's campaign. Bush commanders Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, according to two sources close to Ailes, became convinced that Morris was leaking information about Bush's media strategy back to the Dukakis camp. "Roger didn't confront Dick," says a source. "Instead he used Dick to send disinformation to Dukakis." Years later, pushing for more business, Morris had lunch with Ailes. "We should work together; I know how to beat the Democrats," he told Ailes. "I don't want to work with you," Ailes replied. "You have no character." That afternoon a friend asked Morris how his lunch had gone. "It was good," Morris replied. "He told me I had no character. I really learned a lot."