One year before Bill Clinton met Monica Lewinsky, he was sneaking around the White House

with someone else. Clinton had a code name for this individual, Charlie. The two of them

had an understanding. I went to see him in January and I said, I get it. You don't want me to be

part of your administration. Charlie's actual name was Dick Morris.

He was a political consultant with a specialty in polling.

And I said, you want me to be a little bird perched on your left shoulder,

whispering in your ear, and not talking to anyone else.

He said, you've got it.

That's exactly what I want.

Way back in 1978, Morris had

helped Clinton get elected governor of Arkansas. But in the years since, he had become a

Republican. Clinton was the only Democrat Morris was still willing to work for. He got grandfathered

in, Morris says, because he was the president. But Clinton's senior staffers didn't trust Morris.

They saw him as an unsavory character, a ghoul from Clinton's past.

They saw me as hijacking their president.

They wanted him to be a straight liberal, tow the party line, and go down to glorious defeat.

And he and I didn't see it that way. It wasn't just that

Morris pushed Clinton to the right. It was that he encouraged the president to follow poll

numbers instead of his convictions. George Stephanopoulos once described Morris as the dark

Buddha whose belly the president rubbed in desperate times. So it made sense that Clinton's

secret arrangement with Morris began after the disastrous 1994 midterm elections.

The 1994 elections from coast to coast are Republican romp. This is truly a wildly historic night.

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