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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Clinton Sure Knows How To Pick ‘Em

Sandy Grady Knight-Ridder

My guess is that somewhere in the night Sherry Rowlands was having a drink, fondling her checkbook and laughing her blond head off.

And Dick Morris, cynical to the end, was applauding the lines he’d fed to his boss, the president. After all, the $200-an-hour hooker and Bill Clinton’s guru had knocked hell out of the choreographed circuses that are 1996 conventions. Reality, ancient as Adam and Eve, has burst through the plastic curtain.

Sure, Democrats were whooping as Clinton swore he’d end “the old politics of Washington.”

But the old politics was back - sex, lies, money and betrayal.

Rowlands, described in the tabloid Star as a “blonde, blue-eyed, hard-bodied beauty,” must have chortled. Surely her $12,000 paramour Morris had bragged between the sheets that family values - teen curfews, school uniforms, V-chips - were his gizmos behind Clinton’s surge.

Rarely has a convention had such a whiff of hypocrisy. Dick Morris, who invented Clinton’s comeback, exploded a stink bomb into his boss’s triumphant night.

The president awoke to find the Star, same tab that blabbed his Gennifer Flowers scandal in ‘92, had the goods on Morris and his illicit sweetie - pictures, a diary, checks, phone tapes. Clinton flack Mike McCurry said the boss was cool, saying only he’d miss his “good friend and superb strategist.”

Knowing Clinton’s temper, I don’t believe it. I’d be surprised if the furniture in Clinton’s Sheraton suite wasn’t wrecked.

I also suspect that White House insiders who distrusted Morris’ rightward effect on Clinton - Leon Panetta, Harold Ickes and George Stephanopoulos - cheered Rasputin’s downfall. But Clinton ignored it all, delivering a supercharged speech on centrist themes of “opportunity and responsibility.” Morris, who’s had the prez’s ear for two years, supplied the ideas. Clinton sang the music.

That’s a slur Republicans will pin on Clinton - his risky judgment in hiring Dick Morris. Clinton needed Morris for his brilliance. He also knew Morris was a loose cannon.

Even now, Clinton (according to McCurry) will keep chatting about politics with “his friend.”

That’s dumb.

No matter if Morris engineered Clinton’s 13- to 15-point lead over Bob Dole. No matter if Morris twisted Clinton back to the right, pressed him to take a Republican line on a balanced budget and welfare, reshaped him as a winner. Clinton should divorce him as quickly as Reagan jettisoned Ollie North.

The worst sin of Morris’ liaison with his prostitute babe wasn’t the sexual high jinks but his blabbermouth. According to the Star’s Richard Gooding, whose story hasn’t been denied, Morris let his honey-for-hire listen to his phone conversations with Clinton and read his drafts of Hillary’s and Al Gore’s speeches.

“She knew about life on Mars a week before the public did,” said Gooding, who admits Rowland was paid big bucks by the Star. “She knew about deals with Saudis.”

If this blowhard had been spilling secrets in the Cold War, I suspect Morris wouldn’t merely be in a doghouse but a federal pen.

Republicans will paint Morris’ sex-and-blab caper as part of the Clinton gang’s Whitewater, Filegate and drugs sleaze - a White House that can’t fly straight.

But Democrats I interviewed were sure the Morris escapade means zilch to Clinton’s ‘96 chances. “Dick who?” many said with a grin. Said Pennsylvania delegate Lucretia Fee, “Doesn’t mean a darned thing. People vote for Clinton, not some Morris guy.”

That’s unarguable. The Morris cloud couldn’t dampen Dems’ rowdy exuberance as Clinton hit his closing lines: “After four hard years I still believe in a place called Hope and a place called America.”

Watching them dance in the aisles, Dick Morris by his TV set must have grimaced. His fingerprints were all over this Chicago script. But the man who made Clinton a winner was in exile.

Goodbye, Dick. And you, Sherry - laugh all the way to the bank.

xxxx