BILL CLINTON'S TEMPER NEGATIVELY AFFECTS HILLARY'S CAMPAIGN
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FoxNews.com on January 25, 2008.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen it all before.
That picture of the seething, red-faced former president of the United States shaking his
finger at members of the press who dare to question his wife’s slimy campaign tactics, is all
too familiar to those who have worked closely with him in the past.
Like Janus, the two-faced Roman god, there are always been two distinct personalities in Bill Clinton.
That charming, smiling gentleman seen in public is too often eclipsed in private by his negative twin
evidenced in the eruption of a furious, unexpected, and uncontrollable rage, often accompanied by loud cursing and occasionally, even physical violence. It’s not a pretty picture.
I’ve been at the other end of that anger too many times and I was always amazed at the suddenness
and intensity of his fury.
Early one Sunday morning, he woke me up at my Connecticut home screaming into the phone, “have you seen the Washington Post?” Blearily, I said no that I wasn’t in Washington (it was in the pre-Internet days). Apparently, the paper’s lead article had our poll and focus group questions about his character and image.
“Who did you tell?” “Who did you tell?” he shrieked. I assured him that I never spoke to the press.
“Well, who DID you speak to?” he screeched.
“I only spoke to George [Stephanopopous] and Rahm [Emmanuel],” (his two closest aides).
That set him off even more. He yelled even louder: “You ONLY told George and Rahm! You ONLY told George and Rahm! Why didn’t you just send out a f-ing press release. Don’t you understand that you can’t tell those two anything that you don’t want to see on the front page of the Washington Post? They leak everything!
He kept screaming about how he couldn’t keep anything confidential because everyone who worked for him leaked. Then he slammed the phone down.
I was shaken.
The phone conversation recalled an even more difficult encounter with his temper.
Many years earlier, in 1990, he seriously overstepped his boundaries with me
during one of his blind rages and permanently changed our relationship.
It was during his last gubernatorial race and he was falling behind in the polls.
When we met at the governor’s mansion, it was close to midnight. Hillary and Gloria Cabe,
his campaign manager at the time, were at the meeting with Bill and me. I had left
Connecticut after oral surgery that morning to arrive in time for a 6 p.m. meeting.
My mouth was killing me, but I avoided taking any pain killers to be alert for the
strategy session. The meeting was changed several times because Bill had decided to
do the Nightline Show. He finally arrived back to the mansion in a foul mood. Even
though he was a teetotaler, I wondered if he had been drinking.
When he learned of his decline in the polls, he immediately blamed me, accusing me
of spending too much time with other clients. Yelling and screaming, he escalated his
charges, refusing to listen to me tell him that his latest ad had not been on
television yet when the poll was completed. He kept ranting.
Finally, I had enough. I stood up and said I was leaving, quitting the campaign.
I grabbed my coat and headed out of the mansion. As I crossed the foyer,
I suddenly fell to the ground, tackled by Bill Clinton. I saw his large fist
coming at me. Hillary was trying to get between us, yelling “Bill, Bill, stop it.
Think about what you are doing. Bill, stop it!”
Bill got up and I walked out the door. Hillary ran after me. She tried to calm me
and asked me to walk around the grounds of the Mansion with her. “He only does
this to people he loves,” she told me. (I’ll leave that one for the psychologists.)
