by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and ALEXANDER COCKBURN
“Dick Morris, a man of elastic political scruple, had enjoyed a fluctuating relationship with Clinton. He’d bailed out the young governor of Arkansas after the latter’s first comeuppance at the hands of the voters in 1980. Since then Morris had served many masters, …” PHOTO/Peter Morgan/Reuters/The New York Times
In November of 1994 two years of ramshackle government, breached pledges and the Clinton administration’s frequently manifested contempt for its traditional base, exacted their price. In the midterm elections Republicans seized control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since the Eisenhower era. The rout extended to governors’ mansions across the country, where the Republicans captured the majority of governorships for the first time in a quarter-century. Newt Gingrich, the new Speaker of the House, became the nation’s political wunderkind.
Yet for Bill Clinton the Democratic defeat held its paradoxical allure. The old-line Democratic Congressional leadership no longer held sway on the Hill. Tom Foley and Dan Rostenkowski were gone altogether–one back to the Inland Empire of the Pacific Northwest and the other to a federal penitentiary. The White House no longer had to dicker with hostility to its agenda from New Deal-oriented Democrats. Without the threat of a presidential veto to lend clout to their resistance, the liberal Democrats on the Hill were impotent against the Republicans flourishing their Contract with America. Thus unencumbered, the Clinton administration could cut deals with the Republican leadership.
All this strategy needed was a name, and soon after the election Bill Clinton summoned in the man who would introduce “triangulation” into the lexicon of the late 1990s.
Dick Morris, a man of elastic political scruple, had enjoyed a fluctuating relationship with Clinton. He’d bailed out the young governor of Arkansas after the latter’s first comeuppance at the hands of the voters in 1980. Since then Morris had served many masters, ranging from the millionaire socialist from Ohio, Howard Metzenbaum, to Bella Abzug of New York, to Trent Lott of Mississippi (“I love his feisty, shit-on-the-shoes style”) and Jesse Helms of North Carolina. Morris worked as a consultant for Helms in 1990, in a particularly foul campaign against the black Democratic challenger, Harvey Gantt.
Morris came to the White House with the purpose of providing new ideas and a new strategy. He says Clinton told him, “I’ve lost confidence in my current team.” Morris commenced his mission of refreshment under conditions of secrecy, code-named Charlie, his function at first known only to the Clintons. His advice: steal the Republicans’ thunder, draw down the deficit, reform welfare, cut back government regulation and “use Gore’s reinventing government program to cut the public sector’s size.” The president should demonstrate toughness, Morris counseled, with decisive action overseas.
Counterpunch for more