"EVEN IF THIS DESTROYS ME ..."

By WALTER ISAACSON

On Friday morning, the day after he resigned, Dick Morris spoke by phone with managing editor Walter Isaacson. Subdued and unusually mellow, Morris repeatedly refused to talk about the allegations against him, but he discussed the internal debates leading up to the convention. Though clearly self-serving, the interview gives an interesting glimpse at Morris' perception of what his role had been.

TIME: What about the Star piece?

Morris: I won't dignify such yellow journalism with a reply.

TIME: But it's true?

Morris: This form of journalism is a plague on our political system. I won't dignify it by talking about it.

TIME: Then why did you resign?

Morris: I didn't want to become the issue.

TIME: What were your thoughts going into the convention?

Morris: The Republican Convention sliced 10 points off our lead, from 17 down to 7. It was the only point since January we faced serious peril.

TIME: How did you all seek to counter it?

Morris: We decided, on my urging, that we would lead into the convention with a lot of bill signings and directives--health care, welfare, tobacco regulations. The Republicans made a serious blunder in timing by sending bills to the White House just after their convention, allowing us to use them to slice away at their momentum. Before the opening gavel fell, we had regained 6 of the points we had lost.

TIME: Whose idea was the train?

Morris: Harry Thomason's. It was brilliant. I liked it because if the old liberals had succeeded in co-opting our convention--which they didn't, as it turned out--then there could be a form of triangulation: the Republican Convention, the Democratic Convention, with the train ride as the President's own convention in the middle.

TIME: Why was this convention different?

Morris: The most significant departure was making Monday nonpolitical, featuring Christopher Reeve and Sarah Brady. Mark Penn and I pushed that. Almost everybody at the White House criticized the idea, calling it "happy talk." The President himself was quizzical. But I called him every morning on his vacation, and he said that if I thought it would work, we should do it.

TIME: Was there debate over Hillary's role?

Morris: The convention planners had decided not to have her speak. Instead, she would appear on the screen opening night doing a series of video greetings from places around town, such as her home, her school, a neighborhood candy store. I met with Hillary at the White House, and she rejected that plan as too precious. I told her she should speak, and she agreed. Some people at the White House feared it would bring back the image of Hillary as President if she gave a substantive speech. You have to appreciate the courage it took for her to face them down and to give a speech about what she valued most in her life--her efforts for children.

TIME: And Gore?

Morris: He had been scheduled for Thursday, which is traditional. I came up with the idea of his speaking on Wednesday, so the day would be dominated by a major speaker and one headline. But Gore was very, very reluctant. He was suspicious he was being separated from the President. I raised hell about it and talked to the President constantly about it. Gore acquiesced. I felt if the Vice President could be himself, his emotional and caring self, then the stiffness and formality that have shackled him politically would be gone. When he gave that statement about his sister's death, I cried, because my mother died of smoking. I think in that four minutes he probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

TIME: Why did the President's speech feature such a laundry list of proposals?

Morris: The State of the Union last January was the most important event in the past two years in moving him up in the polls. It was my idea that giving a second such speech this year would produce an equivalent gain. The main work was getting approval for each of the 30 or so initiatives he would propose. We had been collecting ideas for months, polling them and vetting them. We announced some on a daily basis and put some in a piggy bank to save for the convention speech. The bureaucracy opposed a lot of them, but [presidential aides] Bruce Reed, Gene Sperling and Rahm Emanuel helped push most through.

TIME: How was the speech drafted?

Morris: A group of aides, including Don Baer, David Shipley, Bill Curry and Mark Penn, sat around a big computer screen with Michael Waldman at the keyboard. I would give the speech as it came to my mind, and people would pounce on it and edit it as we went along. The President was distracted at the end because he was on the train trip, but I talked to him every morning by phone. The basic ideas were his. The speech he gave was almost word for word the one we drafted for him.

TIME: What were your thoughts as you watched from Connecticut?

Morris: I felt even if this episode destroys me, I will have done one great thing in my life, which is to help this man get the chance to lead this country for another four years.

TIME: Do you worry that your situation caused a distraction, especially regarding the family-values message?

Morris: I'm not going to talk about that.

TIME: Have you spoken to the President since your resignation?

Morris: On Thursday the President, the Vice President and the First Lady all called me.

TIME: What did the President say?

Morris: They were all very, very kind. I'm not going to say any more.

TIME: Are you going to be offering advice informally?

Morris: I've sent myself out of the game. I'm not going to run the campaign from the locker room. I told the President that.