The Shameless Dick Morris’ Cruel Legacy

How did I do?” the president asked his most trusted, if unlikely, advisor on welfare reform. “Splendid,” Dick Morris replied. The president had just announced that he would sign a bill ending the U.S. government’s 60-year commitment to the welfare of poor children and he assured Morris that “I want you to know I signed that bill because I trust you.”

That was three months before the election in the halcyon days before Morris’ dalliance with a whore’s toes led to the end of his dalliance with public policy. But for a while, he clearly ran the show, and it is the perverse boast of Morris’ new book that he got Clinton to disregard administration experts’ warning that the welfare bill would throw an additional million children into poverty.

The “trust” that Clinton invested was not based on Morris’ familiarity with welfare issues, although it has since been shown that Morris provided financial support to his Texas child born out of wedlock. Nor was this trust undermined by Morris--ever the political chameleon--having worked for the election of key Republican conservatives, including Majority Leader Trent Lott. Indeed, his conservative associations came in handy, and Morris claims that as a result, he was the key negotiator between the president and Lott on the welfare bill to the extent that Lott referred to him as “the prime minister.”

Clinton thought Lott despicable, shouting, according to Morris, “He [Lott] loved cutting off children. You should have seen his face. He was delighted that he could savage them, delighted.” On the other hand, Morris is ambivalent to the values of his clients--a stance befitting one who is comfortable in the company of whores.

But why was Clinton so reliant on this scummy fellow? Easy. Poll gurus are the high priests of Clinton’s belief system and none was more revered than Morris, who for two decades worked to distance Clinton from his better instincts.

“Clinton’s heart felt for poor children cut off from benefits because their mothers were irresponsible, as his own stepfather had been--this was no abstract issue to him: it was real human suffering.” Faced with sappy emotions like that, what’s a political hack to do? Scare the candidate with the spread: “I told him flatly that a welfare veto would cost him the election,” Morris reports, and sure enough, the president no longer felt obliged to do the right thing.

Even Hillary Clinton, who had served as chair of the Children’s Defense Fund, which lobbied vociferously against the bill, was won over. “We have to do what we have to do, and I hope our friends understand it,” she is supposed to have told Morris after his briefing on the poll numbers. “You sweet-talking devil, you,” she chided Morris with what he describes as “a forgiving grin.”

Morris won the Clintons over with the argument that signing the welfare bill would assure not only the president’s reelection but also Democratic control of Congress. And on that bright day, they would be able to rework the welfare package to add much money for job training and reverse the provisions excluding legal immigrants from benefits.

Oh well, Morris predicted wrong, and all the president managed to do was save his own skin. Still, he does care about the poor, and just last week he warned business leaders that “the welfare reform law did not put anybody to work. Unless we can create new jobs in the private sector . . . the welfare reform effort will not succeed.”

Unfortunately, the business community as represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which enthusiastically supported the welfare cuts, now has cold feet about coming up with jobs. “It’s a foregone conclusion that the private sector will have a hard time absorbing these people into the work force,” was the dour assessment of the group’s vice president.

Outgoing Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich noted that even at today’s low unemployment, “there are still some 7 million people unemployed and actively looking for jobs. People who are now welfare beneficiaries are likely to be at the end of any job queue.” But jobs or no jobs, thanks to the new law, welfare mothers who can’t find jobs and their children will be forced off the rolls.

Reich and a majority in the old Clinton Cabinet were opposed to junking the federal welfare system before anyone knew where the jobs would come from. But Clinton trusted Dick Morris more. Pity. Think of how much brighter the prospects for poor children would be if only that Washington hooker had sold her story to the tabloids three months earlier.