Dick Morris

MACHIAVELLI OR MEPHISTOPHELES?

One frequent guest on the nightly T.V. program of that blowhard, Bill O’Reilly, is a reptilian character named Dick Morris. Morris is a former advisor to President Bill Clinton. On August 29, 1996, Morris resigned as campaign manager to President Clinton after reports surfaced that Morris had had a long-time sexual relationship with a prostitute named Sherry Rowlands. It was reported that in order to impress Sherry while she was in bed with him, Morris invited her to listen-in on telephone conversations with the President. At the time, Morris was married to a Connecticut lawyer named Eileen McGann. Some say that it was Hillary Clinton who insisted on the firing of Morris. Since then, he has been the arch-enemy of the Clintons, the Democrats, and all things liberal.

Before Morris’s undoing in the Sherry Rowlands affair, he was widely known as a man with no principles. He went back and forth working for Republican and Democratic candidates for office, and was accused of sometimes leaking information from one side to the other. While he was working for several Republicans in 1994, he secretly advised Bill Clinton.

According to Time Magazine, he almost worked for the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988, but then ended up on the campaign of George H.W. Bush. Bush commanders, Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater, became convinced that Morris was leaking information about Bush's media strategy back to the Dukakis camp. "Roger didn't confront Dick," said a source. "Instead he used Dick to send disinformation to Dukakis." Years later, pushing for more business, Morris had lunch with Ailes. "We should work together; I know how to beat the Democrats," he told Ailes. "I don't want to work with you," Ailes replied. "You have no character."

Morris has a history of asserting and repeating misinformation. The other day, I heard one of Morris’s more outrageous misstatements. Prompted by O’Reilly, Morris argued for opening-up more waters to offshore drilling, and said: “And by the way, the safety concerns, Hurricane Katrina didn't cause any leakage or any spill in the Gulf of Mexico oil wells.” Bzzzz—False! The truth is that Hurricane Katrina caused massive oil spillage; spillage so significant it was clearly visible from space.

I believe that this was not just an innocent mistake of fact on the part of Dick Morris. He is far too clever a man not to be aware of the fact that Hurricane Katrina dumped approximately 233,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It is just that he has become so obsessed with revenge against the Democrats for abandoning him over the Sherry Rowlands affair that he is willing to make knowingly false statements on the O’Reilly nightly rant and other Fox News programs (“Fair and Balanced”—yeah right!).

In his fanatic attempts to get back at and smear Hillary Clinton, Morris has made many false statements about her. Morris has repeatedly accused Hillary of lying. In his efforts to paint Hillary as a liar, Morris has exposed his own dishonesty. For example, he made a reckless statement that Hillary went to Iraq and “told the American soldiers…that most Americans don’t agree with what they’re doing; that there’s strong debate over the Bush Administration; that success is not assured; that there aren’t enough troops to do the job.” Even O’Reilly had to correct Morris by pointing out that she never said that to the troops; she said it to reporters over the phone.

In a way, I blame Bill Clinton for the rise of Dick Morris. Morris is a far more unsavory person than any of the trollops or strumpets that have decorated Clinton’s life. Clinton knew that Morris was an evil little worm, but he also knew that Morris was smart. In the words of Rudy Moore, a Clinton aide in Arkansas: "Dick always worked the dark side." Clinton's Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta said: "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."

Clinton wanted a political savant. What he got was an unscrupulous snake.