Sin Is Bad, Unless It Boosts Polls
Whenever I watch the ritual of the sultry blonde, the shamed pol and the betrayed-but-loyal wife, I secretly wish that just once, poor Lee, poor Hillary or poor Eileen would step up to the bouquet of microphones and let loose: “I’d like to tie that pathetic loser to a stake in the boiling sun and pour honey on his face and let red ants eat his eyes out.”
Standing by your man is the oldest way of sacrificing your self-esteem. Instead of treating a reckless, feckless mate like a dip in the partnership’s fortunes, why not send the bum packing to the Helmsley Palace with a tip to the paparazzi?
Now the adultery of the husband becomes the positioning of the wife. When Dick Morris came home to Eileen McGann, the bad news was their marriage was on the cover of the Star. The good news was their marriage was on the cover of Time.
The man who pulled off the miracle of the president’s makeover is now trying to pull off the miracle of his own makeover. Time features an astonishingly uncandid shot of husband and wife over a candlelit dinner in Connecticut, looking about as cozy as an arms-control negotiation, only one day after he resigned.
Triangulating the wife and the mistress may be tough. But we live in a time when infamy sells, when sin slides painlessly into redemption if your confession is loud enough and bathetic enough, and when a president asks the people to vote for him because he is easily triangulated.
At the point that Morris resigned, he became his own client, studying the polls on himself and trying to humanize himself.
McGann confides to Time that her husband has had “great survival instincts, ever since being born prematurely at 2-1/2 lbs,” and that she hopes a new puppy named Bismarck, or Bizzy, will cheer Dick up.
“She was defending her life,” says a friend. “This man is her life.” Even Hillary Rodham Clinton, feminist and stander-by-her-man, called to console the kinky consultant.
In the old days, a pol caught in a scandal would slink offstage, or at least wait a decent interval to resurface, usually after confessing to an addiction or psychological problem and seeking treatment.
Morris has no time for therapy. He’s too busy with publicity. With a touch of diabolical genius, he understands that the distinction between therapy and publicity has disappeared. He is merely the logical extension of the Oprah arias of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who have exploited personal sadness for political gain in both their conventions.
The fallen strategist had to make a snap judgment about who was nuts: himself or America. He chose America, and he is right. What seems like delusion may just be dangerous knowledge: We are a society beyond shame, beyond dignity.
That is why Morris didn’t lose a breath before nabbing the covers of both news magazines to brag some more about how he had saved Clinton from getting buried.
“The president was not pleased when Dick got the cover of Time the first time around or the second time around,” said one top Clinton aide. “His attitude is: ‘I just won the nomination and Dick didn’t.”’
Morris was paid a fortune by the Democrats to turn the president into a preacher and outmoralize the Republicans.
Now he will earn another fortune unmasking the President. Wednesday night Random House announced that he had signed a deal for a book about his work for the Clinton campaign.
Knowing his value is strongest in the next two months, he quickly turned a CBS request for an interview into a feeler about whether he could work as a network consultant, possibly for the debates.
The networks, like the news magazines, lurch between respectability and cupidity. As one ABC producer put it, “We pretend to have standards.”
A CBS executive said the network did not automatically rule out the idea of hiring Morris. “You have to ask whether someone who’s ethically corrupt, who cheated on his wife with a hooker, has the dignity to sit on the set with Dan Rather,” he said. “On the other hand, this guy was very close to the president and editorially he could be a resource.”
President Clinton, beware. The alter ego is on the loose.
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