Word: squier
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...humid weekday afternoon in Washington. Seven men were sitting in the spare, modern living room of Bob Squier's Capitol Hill town house making tense small talk, eating deli sandwiches, sipping diet sodas and herbal tea. Although the debonair media consultant was the nominal host, the meeting had been called by Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's stealth strategist. Morris had been secretly advising the President for six months and had emerged from the shadows only in April. Now Clinton had asked him to assemble the campaign's creative team. But despite Clinton's endorsement, Morris' position inside the White House...
...pollster, a superb numbers man and a loyal friend. Hank Sheinkopf, a straight-talking New York consultant, was a "raw talent" who excelled at making emotional attack ads. Marius Penczner, a video producer from Nashville, Tennessee, was a terrific shooter but didn't know much about politics. Bill Knapp, Squier's lanky partner, was a top-notch writer and manager, while Tom Ochs, the firm's third partner, was a tough political operative. And Morris said of Squier, "Bob and I have had our ups and downs...
...fact, they loathed each other. They had tangled in 1986, while working opposite sides of a Florida Senate race. Squier had accused Morris of inflating his client's polling numbers, calling Morris "the Julia Child of cooked polls." Morris had been nursing a grudge ever since. Now, by way of apology, Squier said, "At least I didn't call you Chef Boyardee." But Morris didn't have to like Squier to appreciate his value. Morris and most of the others were renegade New Yorkers with few Washington ties; Squier, a consummate insider and confidant of Al Gore's, would...
...assembly of the November 5 group, as the new Clinton message team called itself, began a few months before the secret meeting at Squier's town house. In late 1994, Schoen was standing in a departure lounge at a Nashville airport, cursing his luck at missing a plane, when his beeper went off: "Call Dick Morris." Schoen dialed the familiar Connecticut number. "Doug," Morris told him, "I have this client, but I'm underground...
...during the campaign undermines my candidacy." Morris was brilliant, Schoen knew, but erratic. There was an excellent chance he would flame out. So when Morris turned to Schoen for help in assembling the message team, Schoen recruited one that could survive without Morris. At the heart of it was Squier Knapp Ochs, a firm Schoen had worked with before and one that had the manpower to handle a presidential race. Clinton asked Schoen if he could trust Squier. "Absolutely," said Schoen. "I'd trust him with my family and my bottom dollar...