Dick Morris

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Dick Morris (born November 28, 1948 in New York City) is an American political author, newspaper columnist, and commentator who previously worked as a pollster, political campaign consultant, and general political consultant.

Morris became an adviser to the Bill Clinton administration after Clinton was elected president in 1992. As a shrewd expert on polls and trends, Morris encouraged Clinton to pursue so-called third way policies of triangulation that merged traditional Republican and Democratic proposals, rhetoric, and issues to achieve maximum political gain and popularity.

The president consulted Morris in secret beginning in 1994.^[1] In the words of Clinton's Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, "I always had the feeling that the president wanted to listen to the dark side, even though he clearly knew in his guts where the issues were and what he wanted to do. He always wanted to listen to the Morris voice to kind of say, what are the thoughts of the most kind of manipulative operation that could go on in politics? I want to hear that voice. I want to hear what he's thinking." Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos has said that "Over the course of the first nine months of 1995, no single person had more power over the president".[1] Morris went on to become Campaign manager of Bill Clinton's successful 1996 bid for re-election to the office of President. His tenure on that campaign was cut short two months before the election, when it was revealed that he had allowed a nude prostitute to listen in on conversations with the President. Morris then turned his focus to media commentary. He now writes a weekly column for the New York Post which is carried nationwide, contributes columns and blogs to both the print and online versions of The Hill, and appears regularly on the Fox News Channel for political commentary. He is also President of VOTE.com.

More recently, Morris has emerged as a harsh critic of the Clintons and has written several books that criticize them, including Rewriting History, a rebuttal to Senator Hillary Clinton's Living History. Morris once joked he would leave the United States if Hillary Clinton were elected president in 2008.^[2] He currently lives in Redding, Connecticut.

1 Early life
2 Morris and Clinton
3 Scandals
4 Other work
5 Books
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Early life

Morris attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City,^[3] where he was active on the debate team. He managed Jerrold Nadler's campaign for class president; Nadler has since gone on to represent New York in the House of Representatives. Morris was also involved in the first campaign of Richard Gottfried for New York State Assembly in 1970. Morris graduated from Stuyvesant in 1964, then attended Columbia University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating a year early, in 1967.

[edit] Morris and Clinton

Morris first worked with Bill and Hillary Clinton during Bill Clinton's successful 1978 bid for Governor of Arkansas. Morris is credited by many with engineering Clinton's re-election to the Arkansas governorship after a humiliating defeat at the end of Clinton's first term. As a result, Clinton turned to Morris after the mid-term elections of 1994, when Republicans gained control of the U.S. House and Senate and Clinton's own chance for a second presidential term seemed remote. From the early months of 1995 until August 1996, Morris was a principal architect of the Clinton-Gore re-election strategy. Morris did not have a role in Clinton's successful 1992 Presidential campaign, which instead was headed by David Wilhelm, James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, and Paul Begala. After the 1994 mid-term election where Republicans took control of both houses of the United States Congress and gained considerable power in the states, Clinton once again sought Morris' help to prepare for the 1996 Presidential election. It was Morris who proposed a strategy that is now referred to as "triangulation," where Clinton would appeal to a diverse group of voters by distancing himself from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Many^[who?] perceived this as a move to the center right of the political spectrum, and it disappointed some^[who?] who had hoped Clinton would pursue a more liberal policy.^{[citation needed]}

In his 1997 book Behind the Oval Office, Morris wrote that, following an argument in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, he strode toward the exit and was tackled by Clinton. In 2003, Morris further stated that Clinton cocked his arm back to throw a punch, but Hillary Clinton pulled her husband off Morris. In both versions of the story, she consoled Morris and apologized to him, stating that Bill only behaved such with those he cared for most. According to Morris, she did this to keep him quiet about the incident. He says the incident was the reason for denying Bill Clinton's request to work on the '92 campaign; Clinton's side of the story is not known.

In 2008, after former President Bill Clinton's comments about the similarities between the Obama win and the win of Presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1988, Dick Morris quickly put out an article on his blog that asserted that this was Clinton's way of injecting race into the political campaign.[2]

[edit] Scandals

Time Magazine featured the scandal on September 9, 1996.

On August 29, 1996, Morris resigned from the Clinton campaign after reports surfaced that he had been involved with a prostitute. A tabloid newspaper had obtained and published a set of photographs of Morris and the woman on a Washington, D.C., hotel balcony. The Daily Telegraph reported that in order to impress the woman, Sherry Rowlands, Morris invited her to listen in on conversations with the President. The Telegraph also alleged that Morris had a preference for "toe-sucking and dominance," and that he regaled Rowlands with a version of "Popeye the Sailor Man," performed in his underpants.[3]

Morris resigned on the same day that Bill Clinton spoke and accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. In his resignation statement, he said that "while I served I sought to avoid the limelight because I did not want to become the message. Now, I resign so I will not become the issue." In his response, President Clinton praised Morris as a "friend" and thanked him for his years of service.

Morris was featured on two consecutive covers of Time magazine. The September 2, 1996, issue, which was released before the prostitute story broke, featured Morris as "The Man Who Has Clinton's Ear." The following week, the cover featured Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann, and the headline read "The Morris Mess: After the Fall."

A further scandal erupted over Morris' failure to pay his income taxes. The Connecticut Department of Revenue Services, the state tax-collection agency, listed Morris as the seventh-largest delinquent taxpayer for 2007.^[4] The agency states that Morris owes $280,819 in unpaid taxes and that he has been on the delinquent list for years.^[5]

[edit] Other work

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[edit] Political consulting

In addition to his work with Democrats like Bill Clinton, he has also worked for Republicans, such as U.S. Senators Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, and Paula Hawkins, as well as former governors William Weld of Massachusetts, Pete Wilson of California, and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and US Representative Jay Dickey.^{[citation needed]} As early as 1988, he has said, he decided to work only for Republicans, a claim he reiterated in 1995^{[citation needed]}; his role in Clinton's 1996 campaign and presidency was kept secret from the staff.^{[citation needed]} Morris has recently re-entered U.S. political consulting by signing on as the head strategist for Billy Harper's campaign for Governor of Kentucky during the 2007 election cycle.^{[citation needed]}

Described as America's most ruthless political consultant in the BBC documentary Century of the Self Episode 4^[6] (Dick Morris segment at ~34:45) which chronicled how he brought lifestyle marketing to politics for the first time. Dick told Clinton the way to winning was to throw out all ideology and treat politics as a consumer business -- to target the swing voters and identify their personal desires and whims and then promise to fulfill them. (Century of the Self Part 4 ~36:00). Targeting the worries of the swing voters became all that mattered and issues such as the V-Chip were the issues that became relevant. American suburbanite voters were running America's domestic policy and some of its foreign policy in the 1990s as the Clinton administration developed their political stance and strategies based on popular opinion polls, for example the bombing of Bosnia. (Century of the Self Part 4 ~41:00).

Morris has also consulted for candidates in other countries of the western hemisphere, including the campaigns of Fernando de la Rua for President of Argentina (1999,) Jorge Battle for President of Uruguay (1999,) Vicente Fox for President of Mexico (2000,) and Raphael Trotman for President of Guyana (2006.)[4]

[edit] Guest commentator and political prognosticator

Since leaving the Clintons' employ in 1996, Morris has said he has become profoundly "disillusioned" with the actions of the Clintons in the late 1990s. He has now formed a career of sorts as a political commentator and critic of the Clintons (particularly towards Hillary), primarily appearing on Fox News programs such as Hannity & Colmes and the O'Reilly Factor, and on various local and nationally syndicated radio talk shows. Morris is also a regular columnist and Pundits Blogger for The Hill, a nonpartisan daily newspaper based in Washington, D.C., and for NewsMax.com, a conservative online news website.^[7]^[8]^[9]

Occasionally Morris attempts to predict candidates' chances of winning elections during these appearances, though with a somewhat-mixed record. In a 2005 book on the upcoming 2008 Presidential campaign, Morris stated that it is most likely that Hillary Clinton would face Condoleezza Rice for the presidency. Morris critics reacted by mocking his mistaken predictions of past races. For instance, he stated "I don't give much for his chances", referring to John Kerry challenging Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination for the Presidential run in 2004, a prediction that was not borne out when Dean was beaten in the race. Additionally, he predicted that Hillary Clinton would face a "nightmare" in her 2006 senate race against moderate Republican candidate Jeanine Pirro, whose campaign subsequently collapsed within a matter of two months after repeated crushing defeats in the opinion polls. He even went so far as to suggest that Clinton would "give up" and drop out to focus on her 2008 campaign.^[10]^[11]

Morris further wrote that Hurricane Katrina would mark Bush's second term the same way 9/11 marked his first term, saying: "Katrina has the capacity to shape the second Bush term in the same way September 11 shaped his first term -- not only in rebuilding New Orleans but in taking preventative steps around the nation to bolster our defenses against natural and man-made disasters and terror strikes. Responding to disasters is a source of presidential strength and popularity, and Bush is about to show how it is done."^[12]

Appearing on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes January 29, 2008, Morris proclaimed that those voting for Edwards "are those that can’t decide which they don’t like more - a black or a woman getting elected". Morris attempted to clarify his statement with a vague mention about exit polls after Colmes asked if he was saying Edwards supporters are bigots.^[13]

[edit] Foreign political consultant

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Morris worked with the United Kingdom Independence Party in their campaign before the 2004 European Parliament election. The party, which advocates withdrawal from the European Union, won 12 of Britain's 78 seats.

In 2004 and 2005, he and his wife have acted as campaign consultants to the successful Yushchenko Presidential campaign in Ukraine. Morris reports that he insisted on the use of exit polls as a means of potentially exposing ballot tampering. He argues this played a significant role in forcing the government of then President Leonid Kuchma to acquiesce to a new poll when the official results of the first varied materially from the exit surveys. Mexico 2004; Morris outlined the strategy of the negative campaign that would be used against the PRD and AMLO: “The PRD would be a disaster for Mexico, the country would go in the same direction as Chávez and Castro.” That is to say, López Obrador would be “a danger to Mexico,” as Rob Allyn said in an article published on April 3, 2006, published in the New York Post.

KENYA 2007: In a November 13th 2007 press conference in Nairobi, Kenya, Dick Morris a renown campaign elections strategist announced that he will be offering his consultancy services pro bono (free without pay) for the campaign to elect Raila Odinga as President of Kenya in the 2007 Presidential election running on the Orange Democratic Party (ODM) ticket.

With 4 weeks to the National Elections, the editorial in one of the leading Dailies- called into question the legalities of Dick Morris' consulting work from the perspective of his presence in, & lack of legal ability to work in Kenya "pro bono" or " through the back door".^[14]

The outcome of the December 27th, 2007 elections in Kenya is still disputed due to allegations of electoral fraud and rigging by the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki,the Party of National Unity and erroneous reporting by the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK).Massive protests and tribal tensions have since erupted between the president's tribe (Kikuyu) and the majority of other tribes not favorably aligned to the outcome.Major mediations have commenced between concerned parties, including possible formation of a collision and/or interim government until reelections are performed.

[edit] Morris' DVD

Morris has appeared in the documentary film FahrenHYPE 9/11, which offers an alternative viewpoint to Michael Moore's 2004 film, Fahrenheit 9/11. He also wrote the screenplay.

[edit] Vote.com

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are behind Vote.com. The funding comes from Dick Scruggs and Steve Bozeman.^[15]

[edit] Books

Morris responded to Hillary Clinton's Living History with his book Rewriting History.

Morris has written several books. Most recently he wrote Condi vs. Hillary (subtitled The next great presidential race) (ISBN 0-06-083913-9) in which he argues that only Condoleezza Rice could block Hillary Clinton's anticipated 2008 bid for the White House. He co-authored this book with his wife, Eileen McGann.

Previously he wrote a pair of books criticizing the Clintons, again co-authored by his wife, Eileen McGann. Rewriting History (ISBN 0-06-073668-2) was published in May 2004 as a rebuttal to Hillary Clinton's book, Living History (ISBN 0-7432-2224-5). In it, he argues that Hillary Clinton has presented a false "nice" persona in the book. Morris instead remembers her as manipulative, cold, and single-minded in her pursuit of power. Similarly, Morris and McGann wrote Because He Could (ISBN 0-06-078415-6) in response to Bill Clinton's memoir My Life (ISBN 0-375-41457-6). Morris has also written Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (ISBN 1-58063-053-7), a retrospective of his work with the Clintons that was published soon after his resignation from the campaign in 1996. Other books include Power Plays: Win or Lose--How History's Great Political Leaders Play the Game (ISBN 0-06-000444-4), The New Prince (ISBN 1580631479 ) and Vote.com: How Big-Money Lobbyists and the Media Are Losing Their Influence, and the Internet Is Giving Power Back to the People (ISBN 1-58063-163-0).