Dick Morris

Dick Morris

Richard S. "Dick" Morris (born October 5, 1948 in New York City ) is an American political advisor and spin doctor . Morris was best known as an advisor to Bill Clinton during his tenure as governor of Arkansas in the 1970s and as US president in the 1990s.

Live and act

Training and beginnings as a political advisor

In his youth, Morris attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City. From 1964 to 1967 he studied at Columbia University , which he graduated with a bachelor's degree.

In 1970, Morris began working as a political advisor and professional campaign strategist. A first major commitment he received as an employee of the campaign team of Richard Gottfried , as this 1970 for the state legislature of New York ran.

Work for the Clintons (1978-1996)

In 1978, Morris began working as a Spin Doctor for Bill Clinton, who this year successfully applied for the office of governor of the US state of Arkansas for the first time .

After Clinton's Democratic party in the midterm elections had 1,994 suffer a heavy defeat of the year - the Republicans were both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate win a majority - he turned to Morris as a strategist policy shift. Morris convinced Clinton to abandon his political course of 1993 and 1994 - which many Americans felt to be too left-wing - and instead to embark on a strategy of the third way, in which he traditionally blended democratic and republican issues, approaches and language rules to unite as large a proportion of the population as possible. From early 1995 to August 1996, Morris served as the campaign manager and lead strategist for the re-election campaign for Clinton and his Vice President Al Gore . Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos later stated that in the first nine months of 1995 there was no one who had greater influence over the president.

Scandal and dismissal

A few weeks before the presidential election in November 1996, in which Clinton won a clear victory, Morris suddenly had to leave the Clinton campaign team after it became known that he had dealt regularly with a prostitute and allowed her to make his highly confidential telephone calls listening to the president. At that time, Morris became the only person to date to appear on two consecutive covers of Time magazine : On the cover of the September 2, 1996 issue, before the prostitution scandal became known, he was featured on the cover as "The Man Who Has Clinton's Ear" was highlighted, while the following issue was headlined "The Morris Mess. After the Fall ”dealt with the scandal.

In the years since, Morris has emerged as an increasingly aggressive critic of the Democratic Party, the Clintons, and especially the Hillary Clintons . As a "counter-representation" to Hillary Clinton's autobiography "Living History", he published the book "Rewriting History", in which he accused Clinton of misleading representations and countered their alleged lies and misrepresentations with alleged "truths". Remaining true to his line critical of Clinton, he declared in 2008 that he would leave the country if Clinton was elected president. In the film Hillary the Movie , which has remained unreleased due to a legal dispute , Morris appeared in various sequences as a sharp critic of Hillary Clinton, who claims that because of his time behind the scenes of the Clinton administration he knew the "real" Clinton who had nothing to do with the nice one Person who they pretend to be, but who is actually a manipulative, cold and power-obsessed woman.

Recent activities (since 1997)

Outside the United States, Morris has participated in various election campaigns as a consultant and strategist since being fired by Bill Clinton. He worked for Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina , for Vicente Fox in Mexico , for Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukraine and for Raila Odinga in Kenya .

Morris currently writes a weekly column for the New York Post and, intermittently, columns and blogs for the print and online editions of The Hill magazine . He also appears regularly as a commentator on programs on the right-wing news broadcaster Fox News Channel , such as the shows by Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly . At these appearances, Morris is asked particularly frequently about his assessment of the outcome of the upcoming important elections in the USA and the chances of success of various candidates. In particular, he is asked about forecasts of the outcome of races for governor, senate or congress seats; However, his assessment has only a very poor reputation among pollsters, as Morris tends to always make one-sided predictions in favor of the Republicans. In particular, his statement, made just days before the 2012 presidential election, that Mitt Romney would undoubtedly win a "landslide victory" over Obama, earned him ridicule after Obama's electoral success.

Morris has been a vocal critic of President Obama since early 2009 . In particular, he tried to overthrow the Obama administration's health reforms through Internet campaigns and similar efforts to organize the front of those who opposed the reform. Similar to other right-wing moderators such as Glenn Beck , he accused Obama from the outset of pursuing secret plans to turn the USA into a "socialist" dictatorship.

Together with his wife Eileen McGann, Morris has been running the website www.vote.com, a non-scientific platform for "opinion research", since 2008. In addition, Morris continues to work as a consultant: in 2010 he worked for Christy Mihos , a Republican candidate for the governor of Massachusetts, on whose campaign team he led strategy, opinion polling and advertising.

Private life

Morris has been married to Eileen McGann, who is also the co-author of many of his books, since the 1970s. Despite several extramarital affairs, she stayed by his side.

In the past few years, Morris has also been noticeable for its problems with the US tax authorities. The State of Connecticut has filed a tax liability of $ 280,000 or a total of 452,367 in unpaid taxes and fees against Morris on its internet tax evaders list.

Books

• Behind the oval office. Winning the Presidency in the Nineties , 1997.
• Because he Could , 2000.
• Rewriting History , 2004.
• Condi vs. Hillary. The Next Great Presidential Race , 2006.
• Catastrophe , 2009.