Scandal And Politics Nothing New

By Bruce Morton/CNN

Morris Resigns

Prepared Statement

Analysis

TIME: Who Is Dick Morris?

E-mail From The Floor

The Insider

Voter's Voice

Take A Stand | The Tally

CHICAGO (Aug. 29) -- Politicians' sex lives once were private. Franklin Roosevelt had a mistress, John Kennedy had girlfriends, but the voters never knew it. Privacy for politicians ended years ago, and sexual philandering has often been fatal since.

An earlier Arkansan, Wilbur Mills, lost his powerful chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee after carrying on with an Argentinian strip-teaser named Annabella Battistella, a.k.a., Fanny Fox. Another House power, Wayne Hays, resigned after acknowledging he had a secretary, Elizabeth Ray, who couldn't type, and didn't.

More recently, Gary Hart's presidential candidacy flamed out after reports that he was partying with a woman named Donna Rice.

But extramarital sex isn't always fatal. Just look at the President of the United States. The Star, the tabloid which printed the Morris story, is the newspaper which paid Gennifer Flowers for her story of her alleged affair with then-candidate Bill Clinton. The candidate survived that, and, so far, subsequent charges from Paula Corbin Jones that he propositioned her.

And Morris, of course, is an aide, not a candidate or an office-holder. Walter Jenkins, an aide to Lyndon Johnson, acknowledged soliciting homosexuals, but it didn't affect LBJ's standing with the voters.

So the truth is that if Clinton's own alleged carryings-on haven't hurt him, and polls suggest they haven't, he's unlikely to be damaged by something a consultant did.

Will it affect the campaign? Probably not, in the long run. Morris has already given Clinton his key piece of advice -- seize the center, push Dole to the extreme right. That has worked. And even though Morris resigned, it's hard to believe that, if the President needs a little more advice, he can't call up his old friend and get it.

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