Aides to the President say that Mr. Clinton began consulting again regularly with Mr. Morris in December. Mr. Morris now comes to Washington every week or so to attend strategy meetings with the President and some top aides.

His influence has been decisive in several recent Presidential decisions -- most of them surprising to Mr. Clinton's fellow Democrats. In April, Mr. Morris successfully pushed the President to drop a planned speech and deliver a more combative one setting the limits of his willingness to compromise with Congress. More recently, he was instrumental in convincing the President to submit his own balanced budget blueprint, a move that most Clinton advisers opposed. And he helped create the first commercials of Mr. Clinton's re-election campaign, which focus on crime. Broadcasts began near the end of June.

Mr. McCurry described Mr. Morris's role as helping Mr. Clinton to "put his record and his achievements out there in a compelling way." He said Mr. Morris's influence could be seen in the "sharper rhetoric" and "sharper distinctions" of some recent speeches.

In important ways, Mr. Clinton's current political troubles mirror those in 1980, when he was defeated for a second term as Governor. And in important ways, too, the advice Mr. Morris is giving him now appears similar to the advice he gave Mr. Clinton almost 15 years ago during his extended comeback campaign leading to the 1982 election.

At that time, voters perceived Mr. Clinton's accomplishments in his first term as diffuse and insubstantial. Mr. Morris urged him to focus on a few important issues, just as he is urging him now, in Mr. McCurry's words, to maintain "a relentless focus on priorities."

Similarly, in the 1982 campaign, Mr. Morris urged Mr. Clinton to put campaign commercials on early in a sort of pre-emptive strike against his opponents. Those commercials, Mr. Morris has said in the past, helped insulate Mr. Clinton from criticisms his opponents aired later. The new television ads on crime appear to reflect the same strategy.

In an unusual arrangement, Mr. Morris has been paid recently by the Democratic National Committee through a New York polling firm, Penn & Schoen Associates. He is to move soon to the campaign payroll.