How does Bill Clinton do it? Every time he is riding a wave of successes, something comes along to knock him off his surfboard. The latest flap has me particularly puzzled. What a swinging guy. Imagine paying a woman that kind of money so you could expose her to Pant! What a turn on. Imagine the sickness involved in such an act. They included an unusual fondness for toes. Well, toe scandalβmaybe. The story did not support the image of orgies at the White House that the headlines suggest.
The alleged liaisons occurred in a Jefferson Hotel suite near the White House, not in it. Morris was a political adviser, not part of the official White House staff. Although investigations continue, Morris appeared to have committed his indiscretions on his own time and his own dime.
Sleaze factor? Who expects personal purity from people who make their living at squeezing votes out of the rubes? It is just weird.
As political damage goes, this one should be easily controlled. Daley at the convention what he thought of the Morris story, he brushed it off by recalling how his father, the late powerhouse Mayor Richard J.
Daley, who had witnessed more than a few such local embarrassments, had handled it. Then you deal with the offender appropriately and move on, he said. It is jarring. It is jostling. It may even be damaging. But it is far from disabling. But there is little reason to believe Clinton will now veer wildly off course without Morris. Clinton is no dummy. Why should he mess with success? Quite the opposite, his career record shows him to be a person who, like all of us, has made mistakes but who also shows an uncanny ability to learn from them and actually be energized by them.
