Adviser Is Seldom Seen, Often Heeded by Clinton : Policy: Dick Morris’ low-profile, centrist influence on President confounds both Democrats and his GOP clients.

Victory usually finds a hundred sponsors in Washington but when it came time to take credit for President Clinton’s new budget this week, the man widely thought to be responsible was making no claims.

Dick Morris, indeed, was nowhere in sight--the way he prefers it.

Morris is a GOP political consultant whose increasing influence with Clinton has rattled the White House staff, alarmed liberal Democrats and disturbed some of the 47-year-old adviser’s usual GOP clients. And one reason they find him most unsettling is that he seems to prefer dealing with Clinton from a distance, mostly out of sight of other aides, often in nocturnal phone conversations.

Since GOP victories in the 1994 midterm elections persuaded Clinton that he needed fresh advice, Morris has offered a generally centrist-populist brand of counsel on various issues, culminating in his advice to Clinton that he respond to public desires for a balanced budget with a new spending plan. This “counter-budget” was unveiled Tuesday night by Clinton in a televised address.

The recommendations--which have sometimes superseded staff advice--have prompted rueful insider comment about the “shadow White House” and jokes about how Clinton’s hot new adviser is a disembodied controller like the official who directed the glamorous agents of the “Charlie’s Angels” or “Mission: Impossible” TV programs.

On occasion, top officials have blurted out their exasperation, saying that they wish they knew more about the views of Morris, who has teamed on some issues with another rising White House newcomer, former Connecticut state Comptroller Bill Curry.

Morris finally has begun showing up for White House meetings but he shows no inclination to explain himself publicly. In a hasty conversation from a cellular phone Friday, Morris insisted that he had to observe a “rigid rule” of not talking about his relationship with the White House.

“I realize there’s no one else in Washington who does it that way,” he said.

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Morris, who helped Clinton win reelection as Arkansas governor in 1982 after he had suffered a deflating defeat two years before, began his career working on the anti-war presidential campaigns of Sens. Eugene J. McCarthy in 1968 and George S. McGovern in 1972.

He led insurgent Democratic campaigns on the West Side of Manhattan during the Vietnam War, battling a more traditional bloc whose operatives included Harold M. Ickes, now the chief White House political official as deputy chief of staff.

But he has moved gradually to the right and his chief congressional patron recently has been Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, who is the second-ranking Senate Republican.

Since Morris entered the picture at the White House, Clinton has heeded his advice on such topics as meeting House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in a joint appearance in New Hampshire last weekend, taking a more nationalist line on trade issues with Japan and adopting a generally conciliatory approach to relations with congressional Republicans.

Morris has also had influence on many speeches. At his urging, Clinton abruptly switched texts for a major speech to newspaper editors in April, dropping the topic of education and talking instead about his response to the GOP agenda.

His critics--from both the Democratic and Republican parties--claim that Morris is cynical and more inclined to expediency than ideology. His admirers say that he is flexible and praise what they say are rare gifts for formulating ways to contrast his clients with their opponents.

It is clear that Morris believes Clinton should move toward the middle of the spectrum and distance himself from what Morris considers the hidebound orthodoxy of liberal Democrats.

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Morris has mapped out a strategy for Clinton that he calls “triangulation,” which calls for Clinton to find his best political position by calculating, like a surveyor, the optimal distance from the GOP on one side, and congressional Democrats on the other. Some insiders flatly predict that Clinton will be employing the strategy on a number of issues in the months to come.

As might be expected, the emergence of Morris has stirred speculations about why Clinton has turned to newcomers for counsel after laboriously setting up an advice-giving apparatus headed by White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta and political boss Ickes.

Some suggest that Clinton, frightened by the Democratic rout in November and faced with popular rejection, is turning to a man who helped salvage his career earlier in Arkansas. One outside adviser said that Clinton has not been satisfied with the quality of the in-house advice he was getting and several aides said that Hillary Rodham Clinton, focused on her husband’s political survival, is also happy to have new views in the mix.

Some aides venture that Clinton, known for having a restless mind, believes that he can gather the best ideas through a clash of conflicting views from different sources. One described that notion, only half-jokingly, as another form of the “managed competition” that Clinton proposed for the health care system last year.

And many believe that Morris’ ascendancy is a reflection of the conflicting impulses Clinton himself feels--and has always felt--on policy issues. That same ambivalence, these sources say, was evident when Clinton gave an important job to David Gergen, the politically independent former adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, in May, 1993, after the punishing opening months of his first term.

Morris by no means wins at every turn. He did not succeed in getting Clinton to refrain from laying down his first veto on a $16.4-billion spending bill, for instance. And some speeches he has offered for Clinton’s Saturday radio addresses, for example, also have been rejected.

Further, Morris is not giving exclusive advice. For instance, others--including Curry, who suggested the move in April staff meetings--were urging Clinton to offer an early counter-budget.

Indeed, some Clinton advisers contend that Morris’ advice is overstated, partly because his absence from the White House leaves so much doubt about the extent to which Clinton is really following his counsel. He is more Wizard of Oz, falsely believed to have great powers, than a Rasputin, who actually holds sway over his patron, these advisers say.

Some political professionals predict that Morris’ high-profile connection to Clinton could cost him his meal ticket, alienating Republicans and Democrats alike.

Lott has already told Morris that he is disturbed by the relationship.

“It is my fervent hope that Morris will never get another Republican dollar in his life,” said Eddie Mahe, a GOP consultant and former executive director of the Republican National Committee. In Mahe’s view, Morris has tried to straddle party lines in a way that was not fair to candidates of either party.

He said that Lott’s support has provided a large chunk of Morris’ Republican business. And with Lott alienated, Mahe said, “I don’t see how Morris stays alive.”

Yet others see little in the way of lingering trouble. Dick Dresner, who is now California Gov. Pete Wilson’s pollster and Morris’ partner in the 1970s and early 1980s, predicted that “people will hire him just because he’s a brilliant guy.”

Dresner said that Morris is adept at identifying powerful defining issues with populist appeal. Morris proposed having Ed King, a conservative Massachusetts Democrat, run in 1978 on a platform of raising the drinking age to 21, Dresner said. In the 1980s he pushed the idea of standard tests for public school teachers for then-Gov. Clinton and other candidates.

“Flexible is what he is,” Dresner said.

Morris is now showing up at the White House roughly every week to meet with Panetta and Ickes. Some aides say that tensions with the others are easing after several fence-mending meetings.

Still others wonder how long the presidential breeze will blow Morris’ way, especially if there is still another Clinton shift, this one toward the Democratic faithful whom he still must win over to prevail in the 1996 election.

“The winds have shifted,” said one insider. “They could shift again.”