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The strategies that have made sense to McCurry have often put him at odds with longtime Clinton loyalists, such as secretive deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey and Lindsey's ally, fellow deputy counsel Cheryl Mills. Former White House aides fault Mills in particular for inaccurate statements McCurry has made in the past, leaving him fumbling for an explanation when the truth later emerged. McCurry, peering over half glasses during an interview in his office last week, defended Mills. "She's been burned too many times," he said. "She's seen people that she cares about get burned by reporters who are hostile and reporting that is inaccurate." A deeper problem for McCurry may be the fact that the President and First Lady have mixed views of what they want from a spokesman. They grasp the obvious point that a press secretary is useless unless he has credibility with the press; they appreciate McCurry's deft handling of quirky reporters and his fierce advocacy of Administration goals. But Clinton has at embattled moments mused to aides that he is not always sure whose interest his press secretary is serving best. If any coals of doubt about McCurry's loyalties still glow, they are certain to be stirred by the arrival in two weeks of Spin Cycle, a book by Howard Kurtz, in which the Washington Post media writer describes how scandal management has come to dominate the operations of the Clinton White House, with McCurry struggling to bridge a gap between the sometimes paranoid Clintons and a press corps hungry for scandal. McCurry is a main source for the book. It also includes a scene in which, at an unguarded moment, he is quoted telling a joke at Hillary's expense. Says a Clinton adviser: "Inside, McCurry's always been a little suspect. He's not an intimate. He's a hired hand, and he knows it." A former aide says, "In the end, [to the Clintons] it's about who's going to go to the barricades for them."
Adviser Sidney Blumenthal was hired to do just that last summer, which in itself has created problems for McCurry. For years Blumenthal had been whispering conspiracy theories about the press into the receptive ear of Hillary Clinton. At one point, Kurtz reports in his book, Blumenthal persuaded Hillary to commission a White House report criticizing Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt for her Whitewater coverage, with little evidence that it had been unfair or inaccurate. "The dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life," McCurry said about the notion of issuing the report as he ordered that all copies be collected.
Before Lewinsky came along, McCurry had been talking about how to find a way out of the White House. The father of three young children whose artwork and valentines decorate the walls of his office, McCurry skips watching the Sunday talk shows in favor of going to church. He dismisses suggestions that he is preparing to leave the job, but he is known to have his eye out for a professional opportunity that pays better and won't put him, as it did last year, on a flight to Bosnia on his son's birthday. Now that Clinton is under siege, McCurry cannot leave. "I don't know when I'm going to be able to get out of here," McCurry said last week. But he added that he plans to follow the advice his old boss Bruce Babbitt once gave him: "Exit the stage while the audience is still clapping."