Dick Morris

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Dick Morris appears on TV's FOX News channel.
Dick Morris appears on TV's FOX News channel.

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

Morris is best known for managing Bill Clinton's successful 1996 bid for re-election to the office of President of the United States. His tenure on that campaign was cut short two months before the election, when it was revealed that he had allowed his extramarital affair - (Sherry Rowlands) - 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 (the column is carried nationwide) and he 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 will leave the United States if Hillary Clinton were to be elected president in 2008 [1]. Now a devout Roman Catholic, he currently lives in Redding, Connecticut.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Morris attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, where he was active on the debate team. He is related both to Jules Pfeiffer the liberal cartoonist and the infamous Roy Cohn. 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 where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. Early in his career, Morris was a campaign consultant for Clinton’s Arkansas gubernatorial campaigns, later his role as an advisor to former President Clinton during the successful 1996 re-election campaign, was widely credited with assisting Clinton to articulate a middle course between Republican conservatism and traditional Democratic liberalism. He has advised a wide range of political leaders, including Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., Republican Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tx, former New York City Mayors Ed Koch and just recently Mexico's President Felipe Calderón during his successful candidacy.


[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. Thus it is not surprising President Clinton turned to Morris after the mid-term elections of 1994, when Republicans seized control of the U.S. House and Senate and Clinton's own chances for a second presidential term seemed negligible. From the early months of 1995 until August of 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 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 of "triangulation," where Bill Clinton would appeal to a diverse group of voters by distancing himself from both the Democratic and Republican parties. Many perceived this as a move to the center of the political spectrum, and it disappointed some who had hoped Clinton would pursue a more liberal policy.

In his 1997 book Behind the Oval Office, Morris wrote that, following an argument in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, he strode towards the exit and was tackled by Bill Clinton. In 2003, Morris further stated that Bill 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.

Less sensationalistic but more relevant to political observers was Morris's use of polling data and his "triangulation" strategy in 1995 and early 1996 to outmaneuver Republicans Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole, who had won a decisive victory in the 1994 elections. Morris led Clinton to co-opt popular Republican initiatives and force the Republicans to justify their unpopular decisions leading to the 1995 government shutdown. Key to this effort was massive early TV advertising in swing states paid for by soft money raised through the Democratic National Committee, which gave Clinton a decisive advantage before Bob Dole won the Republican Presidential nomination.

[edit] Scandals

Time Magazine featured the scandal on September 9, 1996.
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 in an extramarital affair with a prostitute named Sherry Rowlands. A tabloid newspaper had obtained and published a set of photographs of Morris and Rowlands on a Washington, D.C., hotel balcony. Accompanying the photo layout was Rowlands' story of the casual affair, including the revelation that Morris's favorite sexual fetish was toe-sucking [2]. The article also revealed that Morris had allowed Rowlands to listen in on phone calls with the President, and had given her a copy of a campaign speech before it was delivered. Rowlands stated that Morris had bragged about writing both Hillary Clinton's and Al Gore's 1996 convention speeches - a claim which Hillary Clinton denied in her 2003 autobiography Living History. Morris had been very casual about sharing his opinions of Bill and Hillary Clinton with Rowlands, and some very inside and personal information became available to the public.

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 scandal 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's 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[3]. The agency states that Morris owes $280,819 in unpaid taxes and that he has been on the delinquent list for years. [4]

[edit] Other work

[edit] Political Consulting

Morris makes the claim that he is a bipartisan consultant even though as a media consultant he tends to work for Republicans. In addition to his work with Democrats like Bill Clinton, he has also worked for Republicans, such as U.S. Senators Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, as well as former governors William Weld of Massachusetts, Pete Wilson of California, and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. As early as 1988, he has said, he decided to work only for Republicans, a claim he reiterated in 1995; his role in Clinton's 1992 campaign and presidency was kept secret from the staff. He is not believed to have worked as a U.S. political strategist since the scandal of 1996, possibly because of candidates' fears that their choice of consultant would cause bad publicity.

Described as America's most ruthless political consultant in the BBC documentary Century of the Self Episode 4[5] (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).

He no longer consults for US candidates, preferring instead to consult for foreign campaigns.

Morris has recently re-entered US Political Consulting by signing on as the head strategist for Billy Harper's campaign for Governor of Kentucky during the 2007 election cycle.

[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 90's. 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, the O'Reilly Factor, and various local and nationally syndicated radio talk shows. Morris is also a regular columnist for NewsMax.com, the leading conservative online news agency. [6]

Occasionally Morris attempts to predict candidates' chances of winning elections during these appearances, though with a somewhat-mixed record. In his current book (on the upcoming 2008 Presidential race), Morris states that it is most likely that Hillary Clinton will face Condoleezza Rice for the presidency. Morris critics, however, have mocked his sureness on this issue, due to the fact that he has made predictions which have been wrong in 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.[7][8]

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 Sept. 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 manmade 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."

Morris has been criticized for his failed predictions by University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, who has been praised for his usually correct predictions, who has said of Morris: "He's frequently wrong." [9]

[edit] Foreign political consultant

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.

[edit] Morris' DVD

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

[edit] Books

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

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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