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Why did Morris lie? It would have destroyed him if it had got out. "Remember, this was a transitional period," he says. "Bill Clinton was making no staff changes. He wasn't willing to commit to me, and I wasn't to him. I didn't know how long he would have me. He said, 'Let's see how this works out.'" Still, it was worth a shot. "I'd just had my best year ever," says Morris, "but this was the ultimate moment in one's life. If Clinton lost, we'd both be finished. I had to ask myself, Is his presidency worth defending? And I decided it was. He is the end product of the debate between Democrats and Republicans in this century. By marrying the Democratic doctrine of opportunity to the Republican doctrine of responsibility, Clinton could achieve a Hegelian synthesis. And on a personal level, this was as close as I'd ever get. What do I believe? I don't believe there is a single issue where Bill Clinton and I disagree. I'm just like him."
Last summer Dole media consultant Stuart Stevens sat next to Morris on a shuttle flight to New York. "He detailed his involvement with Clinton," says Stevens, who still respects Morris' skills. "He said he 'ran' the Gennifer Flowers response in New Hampshire, polled for Clinton in 1992 and advised him in the fall of '94. Then he said, 'But I never hurt any client we worked for, and I never hurt the Republican Party.' I said, 'Dick, you just told me you helped elect Clinton. I don't think that helped the Republicans much.' He thought about it and said, 'I guess you could look at it that way.'"
CLINTON'S SECRET AGENT
Once inside the Clinton operation, Morris drove staff members crazy just as he'd made Republican operatives boil over--by becoming Clinton's secret agent, bypassing the hierarchy and talking privately with the President on the phone and after hours. "Mystery," he likes to say, "is an integral part of power." For a while he was known only as Charlie--so named by Clinton--the unseen force that hijacked speeches and made policies change course. Chief of staff Leon Panetta threatened to quit unless Clinton brought Morris into the structure. Deputy chief of staff Ickes, his adversary since the 1960s, bollixed Morris wherever he could, refusing his hotel minibar bills and cutting the commission that Morris and his team earned on Clinton's enormous TV-ad budget. Last summer, when Morris urged Clinton to "bust the cap"--refuse federal matching dollars so he could spend limitless amounts on TV--he courted a conflict of interest a Clinton aide calls "obscene."