     |
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
Following is my interview with former Clinton advisor and fellow sex scandal survivor Dick Morris. This interview took place in the Fall of 1997 at the Yale Club in New York City and was published in the November/December 1997 issue of the Door, the oldest, largest, and only religious satire magazine in the U.S.
Becky Garrison, Contributing Editor, The Door
The Door: 5634 Columbia Avenue, Dallas, TX 75214; 800-597-3667; outside the US 815-734-1217. Web Site: http://www.the-door.org
Topics discussed during our meeting included:
- The mystical, spiritual side of Bill Clinton and the revelation that Clinton underwent a spiritual conversion in 1995 following the Democratic loss of Congress the previous November
- The Morris spin on Clinton's sex life both past and present
- His interpretation of family values Morris/Clinton style
- How Dick Morris defines the term "moral politician"
- Morris' advice for other political figures, who find themselves embroiled in sex scandals. Also, he offers a suggested list of reading material for recovering sex addicts.
A copy of the November/December 1997 issue of the Door highlighting this interview and featuring "Saint Bill" can be found at The Door's web site - http://www.the-door.org
DOOR: In your book, BEHIND THE OVAL OFFICE, you note there's a mystical, spiritual side to Bill Clinton. Can you please elaborate?
DICK MORRIS: I wrote about it a bit in the book, but I've thought about it even more extensively since I wrote the book. It's in part because I've been going through a private spiritual journey of my own. In the 1980's, Clinton would never mention religion or God when we talked. Then starting around early '95, around Oklahoma City, he began more and more to make spiritual allusions.
And more and more to speak of his policy views and spiritual, as well as political terms. Also, he began to alter his goals to include spiritual ones like the resolution of racism or the restoration of civility in our lives. I believe that the President went through a private spiritual journey in the late '95 period, that probably was occasioned by the trauma of his defeat at the end of '94. There's a wonderful saying in the addiction field, "Those who fear hell are religious, those who've been there are spiritual." I think that the very tough time he had in the first two years and the defeat in '94 were something of a visiting hell for him. It kindled a spirituality in him that really made him a very different person than I think he was before that time.
DOOR: Is the media not bringing out this side of our President or does he wish to keep this part of his life private?
DICK MORRIS: I think it's a combination of things. First of all, I think he keeps it private. Second, I think he feels that were he to talk about it, it would seem disingenuous. I think the media doesn't understand it because they haven't been through it so they don't cover it. Thirdly, there is such a focus on his past and such lack of forgiveness about his past, that I don't think people are willing to open their minds to the spirituality of which he does speak.
DOOR: So, it's sort of like they're so focused on Paula Jones that anything he does to redeem himself doesn't matter at this point.
DICK MORRIS: Exactly. Not just Paula Jones but the whole gamut. I think the point is that the President, fundamentally changed in the mid-95 period. I think that people either don't know it or are not willing to credit it.
But as someone who is up close with him and for a long time during that period, I noticed a distinct change.
The other element that I think is important, is that in the 80's, he was somebody who believed that every problem had an immediate solution. It was just a question of his getting in there and applying it. By '95, he had basically adopted the notion of "let go and let God," which is another saying from the addiction movement. To a great extent he came to believe there was a time for everything and that often the time wasn't right for something. I think in particular, his China policy is guided by the notion that historical forces move in a certain direction and that only when it was timely can you influence it.
Also, being freed for the first time in his life of the need to be elected, was an element in kindling that spirituality. It left him with a capacity to leave worldly concerns somewhat further behind than he'd ever been able to during his active political life.
DOOR: What's your take on Hillary Clinton's relationship with Dr. Jean Houston?
DICK MORRIS: When I polled on this issue, I found that 25% of the people believed that you could communicate with the dead. The President was amused by that and he said, "This is the electorate I have to run in? One out of four believe you can communicate with the dead?"
I don't think Hillary ever meant it in that sense. I think Hillary just meant that she was going to put herself in Eleanor Roosevelt's position and ask herself based on what she knew of Eleanor Roosevelt, what Eleanor would think of a given situation. After the incident, after I related to Hillary the poll data on it which was positive for her, she cracked a joke. She said, "Is there anyone who I can call for you? Would you like to talk to Machiavelli for example?" So, I said, "Give him my pager number."
DOOR: We read in a New York Times article (August 30, 1996), was that you wanted Clinton to run more as a Pope than a President, by having him serve as a moral guide for the nation, and especially for our teenagers. What did you mean by that statement?
DICK MORRIS: After the budget battle of 1995, the American people knew what they wanted to achieve in welfare reform and in balancing the budget. It's essentially reflected in the legislation that was enacted in 1996 and is still being enacted this year which I think effectively mirrors their consensus.
But there was also a terrible feeling by a large number of Americans that their problems, their fundamental issues in their own lives, would not be solved by this kind of adjudication in Washington. That there were a host of issues that were deeply important to them that were simply not being addressed in Washington. They were just not part of the political process. They felt that politics had failed them by not addressing these concerns. I think that the American people came to a fundamental judgment that their lives could not be made better primarily by an increase in income. The things that were imperiling the quality of life were things could only be addressed collectively in a communitarian way - things like safety, environment, education, and civility that required a commonality of effort.
I felt it was important for the President to address these issues and to open up debates in areas where there had really not been much focus - how mothers can juggle family and jobs; how to improve the quality of education, not just the quantity of expenditure; how to provide time for parents to be with their children when they need them; how to curb tobacco; how to rate violence and sex on television; how to address the high cost of college. These are a variety of issues that really were somewhat outside of the normal political agenda at that point. Many of those issues could not be dealt with by direct action by the federal government. They either were the province of state and local government or they were not the province of government at all. A number of these measures like school uniforms, academic testing in schools and tobacco regulation exceeded the authority of the federal government.
But the President is not just the CEO of the federal government, he's the President of the United States. As such, he occupies a role that's almost spiritual as well as one that is legalistic and powerful. I felt that if the President used what people call the "bully pulpit" in an electronic age, he could have an enormous effect in focusing the public dialog of certain issues and causing major change even though no particular laws would pass or no particular funds would be spent. Instead, popular attention would focus on something and would accomplish and initiate change on its own and that's what I meant by his being Pope, not just President.
DOOR: Some people assumed that what Clinton was doing was co-opting some of the Christian Coalition's agenda, thereby stealing their thunder.
DICK MORRIS: Well, I think to a certain extent he certainly was. The American people want more leadership but less government. The only way to achieve that was to move beyond the legal formal powers of the office.
If I could impart one theme to the Clinton presidency, it is to resolve the fundamental problems that have set up the polarization of our national debate. That is: get people off welfare, cut the crime rate, eliminate the deficit, create full employment, fund health care for children, lower the cost of attending college. By relieving these frustrations, we permit our society to move ahead.
Many of those frustrations are embodied by the Christian Coalition. So for example, I think the President felt we could diffuse much of the abortion controversy by a dramatic increase in the number of adoptions. Most people agree that abortion is wrong, even though many say that it should not be outlawed. So, by creating a tax credit for adoption, and by the new legislation to require the interests of the child to be put ahead of the interests of the parents in abuse or neglect situations so the kids don't languish in foster care but get adopted, I think we could make real progress in reducing the 1.6 million abortions we have in the United States.
I think that the President sought to relieve many of the frustrations that impelled the religious right by adopting secular policies and religious policies that could deal with them. Probably the best example is the school prayer amendment. Instead of endlessly debating the amendment or the constitutional issue, he asked the Attorney General to give him an opinion as to what could be done in school under the first amendment without a new constitutional amendment. And he found that it dealt with 70 or 80% of the things people wanted to do under the school prayer amendment and he gave a speech discussing that and showing a way of relieving that frustration without changing the constitution.
DOOR: Pat Robertson is very clear that if the Christian Coalition gets into power that they would want to create a "Christian nation."
DICK MORRIS: One man I admire greatly is Mike Huckaby, a Baptist Minister who is the Governor of Arkansas and a former client of mine. And I think some of the things that he's doing to implement the idea of a Christian nation are fascinating. I know for example when I spoke with him, he refused to oppose the parole system because he said that to do so would undermine the concept of Christian forgiveness. I know that a big focus of his has been to cover children who are not covered by health care because he conceives of that as an extension of Christ's mission. I don't know if he has implemented this, but he spoke with me about scaling back prison privileges and according those privileges based only on good performance, so there's an incentive system brought into the prisons. I think that if that's what Robertson means by a Christian nation, I think that's very constructive. If what he means by a Christian nation is, "Don't do this and don't do that and certainly don't even think of doing the other thing," then I think essentially it's a very negative agenda and not one which really can meet the country's needs.
DOOR: How do you define family values?
DICK MORRIS: Obviously number one, is to restore fatherhood in our society to a position of active responsibility. Eighty percent of the child support in this country is not collected. There's a huge role for government to play in collecting that. I think we should treat child support as the equivalent of taxation and turn the collection over to the IRS.
I think the second big issue in family values to deal with, is the need to help families spend more time with their children. With that in mind, I think that the Republican idea of permitting people to take time off instead of cashing out overtime is a great thought. And the Democratic idea of extending family leave, so that more people can take hours off during the day to be with their children, is a very good idea.
I think probably the third focus in family values, is the effort to provide the half million children that are in foster care, with homes. A huge percentage of our social pathology comes from that group. So the legislation now pending in congress to speed their adoption, is a very important one.
My fourth thought on family values would be to increase academic standards in schools. To do that, the right wing needs to maintain it's opposition to government imposed standards and curricula in things like English literature, but should drop its opposition to these standards and criteria in things like elementary math or reading, where there could be no doctrinal spin on things, just a question of evaluating merit.
Actually, as I think about it, probably the single most important family value issue, is to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy. Forty percent of all girls, 15 through 19, are impregnated by their 20th birthday. Half give birth and half either have miscarriages or abortions. We have got to lower that. One of the things that I think we opted out on in the Clinton administration, was that we didn't have the guts to move ahead with a national program of condom distribution in high schools, with parental consent required. This way it doesn't supersede the families will, but it implements it. A step like that is crucial in reducing teen pregnancy, which I think is probably the single most important family evaluation.
DOOR: Do you think the Religious Right's definition of family values is, to put it mildly, outdated?
DICK MORRIS: I've been through a personal experience in this last year, through participation in a twelve step program. I've found that the view of the religious right, that you don't simply enable people to avoid consequences of their sins, but you help them avoid the sin, is a very good one. But I do believe the best way to do that is to institutionalize twelve step programs in schools. In particular, I would suggest that all high school students would be required to undergo drug tests each year. Those who fail, be repeatedly tested, and those who continue to fail, be put in residential facilities with twelve step programs. I think that coping with these kinds of addiction issues early is a terribly important part of dealing with our social pathology and we could easily divert a large portion of the DEA budget to this goal. But I do feel that it's a two front war. The other front is to stop kids from having babies. And I think that is a priority over stopping them from having sex, even though I think we should pursue both.
DOOR: When talking about the family values Clinton-Morris style, most people tend to focus on your scandal and President Clinton's marital history. How would you respond to people who tend to lump those events together with the family values agenda you orchestrated?
DICK MORRIS: I was totally hypocritical in addressing family values while I was seeing a prostitute at night. It was the product of my blindness, my neurosis and the short comings in my character. I've worked very hard since then, at trying to remake my character by replacing the need for sex with the need for God. That's been a private journey that's been very important to me. I don't think the answer to my hypocrisy was to abandon the good things I was advocating. It was rather to clean up my act in private so that it would match my public advocacy. I deeply regret that I was too blind to see that. I believe that God brought about my downfall so that I could see this.
DOOR: Clinton has admitted on 60 Minutes that he has not been a good boy. In fact, if a tenth of the stories we've heard are true, he's not far from rivaling JFK. How then can he preach about family values?
DICK MORRIS: First let me say, there are two things I don't believe are true. One is, I don't believe that eighteen months before a presidential election, Bill Clinton would invite a total stranger into his hotel room, drop his pants, and ask for oral sex. Secondly, I don't believe that in the middle of a presidential campaign, he would knowingly take money from the Chinese communist government. But to get to your basic question, I do believe that the president's personal morality has changed as a result of some of that spiritual journey that I spoke about earlier. Without commenting on what he has done in the past, I would doubt very much, that he is at the moment going through any kind of personal conduct which would subsequently be seen as immoral.
DOOR: So Gary Aldrich's allegations and some of the stories circulating about Clinton's sexual past are just people trying to get media attention?
DICK MORRIS: All of his allegations, and I'm not commenting on their veracity, predate what I would characterize as the months of Bill Clinton's spiritual journey which I would say ran from February 1995 through Christmas 1995. I would doubt very much that there is much subsequent to that for anyone to write about.
DOOR: So, you're implying that this is an area where we as a country are not giving someone a chance for forgiveness at all?
DICK MORRIS: Yes, basically. We are not willing to credit the idea that he's changed. Now, part of that is that he has refused to confess. But, I believe that politically he can't. I think we should grow up, understand that and credit that people change. It is not for me to give Christians lectures on the works of Christ, but I have had the opportunity to study them perhaps more recently than they have. And one cannot but be struck by the centrality of the notion of forgiveness and I think that people should look at doing some of that when they think of President Clinton's morality.
DOOR: In your book, you described your fall in terms of a Greek tragedy. And what we find interesting about a this genre is that the notion of free will is non-existent. Everything is preordained from the beginning - the person is destined to fall and has no choice in his outcome. Do you still think that....?
DICK MORRIS: I would amend the book if I wrote it today to speak of it in less secular terms and more spiritual terms. But I do feel that my downfall was inevitable given my conduct. I feel that I was sowing the seeds of my own destruction, probably consciously. Well, not consciously, probably deliberately. I think that as I entered the work with Bill Clinton, I had a deep sense of shame about myself that came from very early in my life.
I think I had always tried to act virtuously in my marriage but I had been horribly cynical in my sexual life and somewhat sinful in my vocational life by working for bad people and working for money. When I went to work for the president, I cleaned up my vocational life and did good things but I didn't deal with the basic shame and that made my sexual life more sinful.
Also, I think that I was completely blind to the entire idea of spirituality or the fundamental notion that none of us is that important. When we succeed, we're succeeding because God wants us to succeed. And when we're failing, we're failing because he has a very good reason. I also just want to say that you sought this interview with me. I don't want to be one of those people who runs his conversion up a flagpole and asks people to salute it because I don't want to feel that I'm proselytizing this. It's very private.
DOOR: How would you compare your fall with the sex scandals of Jim Baaker and Jimmy Swaggert in terms of the reaction from the public and especially the late night comics?
DICK MORRIS: I think they reacted similarly to all three of us and I think that all three of us deserved it richly. There was an element of financial corruption in the Baker situation that was not present in mine and Swaggart's. But late night comedians are an essential element of the living hell through which we make sinners pass. They're sort of like inmates beating you up in prison. They make a bad experience worse so you're more likely to get the point.
DOOR: In doing a very quick internet search on the Late Show with David Letterman web site, where I counted well over twenty Top Ten lists where your name was mentioned at least once. And that must have been painful just knowing that someone was...
DICK MORRIS: The agony that I went through in the scandal is beyond belief. You can't begin to know it unless you've experienced it. But in the crucible of that pain I had important insights that have changed me forever which I never would have had, had I not had the pain.
DOOR: Is it almost pushing it to call it a blessing in disguise?
DICK MORRIS: Well they told Winston Churchill his defeat by Clement Attlee in 1946 was a blessing in disguise. And he said, "It appears rather effectively disguised at the moment."
DOOR: The Senate Finance Committee Hearings raises a fundamental question. Is winning everything and what role should ethics play in a political campaign?
DICK MORRIS: I think that we're not watching the failure of ethics in this, we're watching the triumph of stupidity. Of the $360 million dollars the Democrats raised, you find $3 million that was taken from crazy sources, you're dealing with stupidity, not a lack of ethics. It's not that people knew that it was bad money, it's that they took it without taking the trouble to find out. I think there is no necessary reason why they took that money. We could have easily won the election without it and restricted ourselves to clean money.
The basic question you're asking though, which is what is the role of winning and what is the role of morality in winning, I think is very important. I think that you have to win an election, but you have to do it by advocating important, positive things for the country. If you win the election in a negative way, I believe that you do a tremendous disservice to your people. For example, I was once part of a political campaign that used the issue of homosexuality to helpwin.
DOOR: Was that Jesse Helms?
DICK MORRIS: No. That was a guy in South Carolina and he was attacking gay quotas. And he used that to win the election and I was a part of that. I deeply regret having done that. When I worked for Jesse Helms, I deeply regret what he did in using the racial quotas issue to win the election.
DOOR: That was against Harvey Gantt?
DICK MORRIS: Yes. Those were sins that I think, at least in retrospect, were at least as great as the sexual sin I committed. When I worked for Bill Clinton, I was very conscious, as was he, of winning only through advocating things that he wanted to do, that were important and that were good. The only time I ever advocated anything in the course of his campaign where I felt that I was making a mistake, was sinning in my public advocacy when I urged him to oppose gay marriages. But with that sole exception I believe everycourse of action I urged on him was clear both with his views and mine of right and wrong.
DOOR: One of the most cynical things Republicans latched onto was when Hillary said she wanted to adopt. Everyone just thought that was coopting a certain value and trying to get sympathy.
DICK MORRIS: I believe that it is very possible that between now and the end of this term they will adopt a child and I think that it's particularly possible that it might be a black child.
DOOR: Is this one of these things where it's their own personal business and people are trying to attach very cynical motives?
DICK MORRIS: I think Hillary regrets that she spoke out about it in the first term because people would do exactly that. But now that he cannot run for reelection, I would not be at all surprised if he moved in this direction as a private, personal matter.
DOOR: People tend to feel that the term "moral politician" is an oxymoron. That given the nature of Washington D.C., you really can't keep your beliefs and continue to stay elected and continue to run in office. We saw starting in 1992, just a flood of some of the best people leaving for that reason.
DICK MORRIS: They're certainly partially right. You cannot obey the commandment against lying and be in public life. You simply can't. White lies and innocent lies due to the very fact of wanting not to announce a decision until you're ready to announce it or the necessity of keeping things secret as a matter of security. Even those simple things lead to lies.
We have to understand that businessmen are in business to make money, politicians are in business to get votes, and media types are in business to get circulation and ratings. They can pursue those in either good or bad ways, with good or bad moral consequences. A moral businessman, a moral politician and a moral media person pursues money, profits, votes and ratings in a morally positive way. But we very often feel that politics is immoral simply because it pursues votes. It's no more true that it is immoral because it pursues votes, than a business is immoral because it pursues profits.
DOOR: What about politicians like Ted Kennedy and Bob Packwood that claim to be major supporters of legislation advocating women's issues, but they also have a reputation for womanizing? What does that say to you?
DICK MORRIS: The people who are involved in sex scandals, including me, are fundamentally flawed people, who have major personality disorders and spiritual vacuums in their lives. They need help, understanding and hopefully forgiveness if they try to change. We shouldn't enjoy their scandals but I feel that they should not be barred from advocating the right things simply because they don't live them.
DOOR: Does there when a politician should step down due to his personal indiscretions?
DICK MORRIS: I think that a politician should get help in his own personal self interest in conquering the pathology that leads him to that behavior. That's the politicians personal business. The public often takes the view that that's not relevant to how he serves the public. In that point of view they're basically justified. But it is a tragedy that Ted Kennedy has never gone through the journey that I've gone through in the last ten months. Or at least not that I know about. It would be a wonderful blessing for him to do it.
However, I think it was encouraging when I heard one of the Kennedy children saying, "You could get the family together more easily for an AA meeting than for a touch football game." And if they really are in twelve step programs, they're going through it. Twelve step programs are basically the secular bridge between a life of dependency and a whole life. And it's just very important for people to go through that.
DOOR: If you were to give a politician like Ted Kennedy a list of books that he should read, are there any particular authors you think would benefit him?
DICK MORRIS: Sure. Patrick Carnes'' book "Out of the Shadows : Understanding Sexual Addiction," Thomas Moore, "Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life," C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity," and John Bradshaw, "The Shame that Binds." For me to be suggesting a reading list to Ted Kennedy is a little bit like a third grader telling a second grader how to read, but, you asked.
DOOR: But the third grader is a grade above at least.
DICK MORRIS: Not very many of us are teachers.
DOOR: When your book came out you said that your number one priority was getting your wife back. What is your number one priority now as you move on?
DICK MORRIS: My number one priority is getting my wife back. My number two priority is to fill the spiritual void in my life. I think they are reinforcing.
(Note: At last word, Morris and his wife are in the early stages of a reconciliation.)
