The "Spinmeister extra ordinaire" is gone from the White House and a beleaguered President will miss him badly. After his 509th briefing from the podium of the press room, Mike McCurry has decided to call it a day, spend more time with his young family and make more money on the lecture circuit.
While the last eight months of dealing with the Monica Lewinsky scandal have taken their toll on the usually affable, debonair McCurry, they have also made him a national figure for his daily network briefings.
He had some very rough days in the pressroom as the press corps hounded him for information on the President's relationship with Monica. Even on his last day when the pressroom was jammed with mainly well-wishers, there were some tough questions about his handling of what was a nightmare for him and the White House staff.
McCurry early on tried to shield himself from the facts of the relationship, referring most questions to Clinton's lawyers. He used to thank God that he did not know more about what the President and Monica were up to - but just once he let the guard slip.
In an interview last February with a Chicago newspaper he admitted that there would most likely be no "simple, innocent explanation" for the President's predicament. "I don't think so," he said, "because I think we would have offered that up already."
On his last day, McCurry was able to say: "Frankly, the President misled me, too, so I came here and misled you on occasion. And that was grievously wrong of him, but he's acknowledged that."
So what about these mysterious comments of last February? McCurry grinned and attributed them to "clairvoyance".
His proud boast is that unlike "some of my predecessors" he never came into the pressroom and lied. While the veteran White House correspondent, Sam Donaldson of ABC News, told McCurry: "You leave with your honour intact", and doyenne of the pressroom, Helen Thomas of UPI, told him: "You've done a good job, Mike, under the circumstances", there were a few dissenting voices.
The New York Post correspondent, Deborah Orin, wrote in her article on his last day that McCurry according to some critics was "lying by omission rather than commission". The New York Times once used an editorial entitled "The Truth is Inoperative" to flay McCurry over his handling of the Democratic fundraising scandals. The newspaper said his credibility was "in tatters".
But White House press secretaries get paid to take hammerings from time to time. McCurry got through the bad times but for over a year, the rumour was around the pressroom that he was looking for an out - even before Monica Lewinsky was heard of.
He worried his own staff by the long hours he was working. The good humour was becoming rarer, although he once appeared at the podium with a paper bag over his head to announce he was one of the "anonymous sources" the press were always quoting.
Last July, the President made a rare pressroom appearance to announce that McCurry - whom he praised highly - was quitting and would be replaced by his deputy, Joe Lockhart, in October.
Then on August 17th, the President admitted he had had a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was "not appropriate". All the "sleaze" that McCurry and other aides had been denying was suddenly the truth after all.
McCurry, briefing from Martha's Vineyard where the President was taking a holiday, looked shattered. But he was also lucky. His days were already numbered at the White House and he could not be accused of bailing out when the muck hit the fan. Some day the Princeton graduate from California will write a book about his days in the White House. He will be able to ponder how he ever got the job. He had been only peripherally involved in Bill Clinton's first election campaign and had worked for one of his Democratic rivals in the primaries. So although McCurry had access to the President he was never one of the "Friends of Bill".
He did a superb job as the Clinton spokesman under incredibly difficult circumstances. But he knew his limits. "You can't do this job day in and day out and keep the energy level that you need to have and keep your patience without going a little stir crazy," he said in a farewell interview with a Reuters correspondent. "Over the last couple of months, I've just sort of felt my attention span wandering enough that you might end up making a mistake one day. That's when you know it's time to pack it in."
