I happened to catch on C-Span Book-TV a re-run of Dick Morris’ recent address at the Cornell Club, NY. A PR-plug to his book, it was an engaging hour-long speech-cum-Q & A, by an articulate Obama-basher, who took in in his swipe Hillary and McCain as well, for balancing his bash-job.
Doing justice to Dick’s pet peeves and political prejudices; and his alarmist analysis, in the event of an Obama presidency, would take a book, not a mere blog post. What I found noteworthy and must-be-posted are his comments on how the other two presidential potentials have virtually allowed Obama a walk-over in this race.
The author’s considered opinion is John McCain is ‘sleep-walking’ through the campaign. He said he wrote Fleeced for McCain to read it. As for Hillary Clinton, it was not a good idea for her to highlight ‘experience’ to a constituency of Democrats who are sold on ‘change’ as the prime campaign point. Talking about ‘experience’ in Democrats’ primaries, said Dick Morris, was akin to talking ‘abstainance’ in the French primaries.
The other factor that did in Hillary was her lack of appreciation of the power of the Internet. In contrast Obama has built up a formidable online following. Mr Morris reckoned Barack Obama had a million online donors who keep funding his campaign, whether or not he won a given primary. Hillary’s fund-flow dried out along the way.
Referring the Clintons’ ignorance, and lack of faith in the Internet Dick Morris observed neither Bill nor Hillary even knew how to type. They believed in drafting speeches in long-hand. And the former Clinton political strategist referred to an incident when Mr Morris had to draft a State-of-the-Union address for Clinton.
President Clinton tossed at Dick Morris an yellow writing pad, asking him to get on with the speech, while the latter was used to keying in such stuff in his laptop. Clinton didn’t want this. For, according to Mr Morris, the President didn’t want anyone in the White House to know his State-of-the-Union wasn’t authored by him.
As Mr Morris put it, they produced an IBM electric type-writer on which he pounded out the speech, working late at night in the White House. Clinton walked in now and then to take away the type-written stuff, page by page, for copying on his yellow-pad, in his left-handed scrawl. So that he could brag the next morning to his aides about how he worked on the speech through the night.
