I Think I'm in Love with Dick Morris

It happened on October 6 in the opening segment of Fox News' Hannity and Colmes show. Five minutes into a lively interchange between Alan Colmes and Dick Morris and I was literally dancing around the living room, pummeling the air, and yelling to my husband upstairs, “I think I'm in love with Dick Morris!!!!!!!!”

Not that my husband of many many years would object, mind you. After all, he drops everything to make a mad dash for the TV remote and turn up the volume whenever he spots Morris on screen.

Even our plans to watch a cable movie invariably gets sidetracked when some talking heads announce a Dick Morris appearance toward the end of their show, my husband grumbling about having to sit around for most of a wasted hour — but doing it.

If Dick Morris of the wry quips and outrageous pronouncements isn't the most insightful political strategist around, he's right up there at the top.

Every time he launches into some astute dissection of what's happening — or not — in this vitally important election campaign, I feel like one of the bystanders in that long-running TV commercial where someone is quietly giving investment advice to a customer — and suddenly everyone in the packed restaurant or the crowded elevator turns into a statue with pricked ears while a voice intones: “When Peabody & Company speaks, people listen...” I listen, carefully, to Dick Morris.

But humor is only part of Morris' appeal. The guy obviously takes pride in his non-partisan approach to analyzing political events, no matter how controversial, no matter what the latest short-lived poll.

Never have I seen Morris demonstrate this quality more forcefully than when Colmes asked him about October 5th's vice presidential debate. Morris didn't mince words, didn't hedge his bets and avoid committing himself, as so many commentators do. He told a dismayed Colmes that Vice President Cheney quite simply had “massacred” Senator Edwards.

At this point in the dialogue, the metaphors began to flow, each one more effective than the last. Cheney had made Edwards slip from “a borderline JFK” to “a borderline Dan Quayle.” Cheney had made Edwards “look like a deer caught in the headlights.” Cheney was the school principal admonishing the head of the student body.

Wit and dramatic flourish aside, Morris can turn deadly serious on a dime, armed with facts and analysis that show he's done his homework — to the detriment of an opponent who has not. Alan Colmes flunked. As is his habit, Colmes consulted his notes for some seemingly damning numbers (echoing a Kerry/Edwards talking point) to bolster his claim that Cheney and the Bush administration had “misled the American people” about the percentage of our troops killed in Iraq.

Morris pointed out — nicely at first — that the figure Cheney gave was perfectly legitimate, appropriately taking into consideration the percentage of Iraqis who had suffered casualties. Colmes persisted — an accountant spouting dry figures from his “fact” sheet — until Morris chastised him in no uncertain terms. “Who, Alan? They're not people?”

Colmes' retort: “We're talking apples and pears.”

“Hey, Alan,” Morris said with some asperity, “they're fighting on our side of the war. It's not apples and pears. It was dead men and women.” Mercifully for Alan Colmes, the camera stayed on Dick Morris' face.

Then there's the eloquent side of Dick Morris. He can write a column that electrifies me to the point where, despite my resolve not to drown in a sea of computer-generated paper, I cannot throw the column away.

The one he wrote on September 3 was a post-Republican convention piece entitled “Sometimes a strategist just has to sit back and gasp.” Here are a few of the things that made me gasp:

With a rhetorical flourish worthy of the great speeches of all time, George W. Bush has transformed the war into a battle for liberty. [...] In a speech that was at once eloquent and substantive, sensitive and dynamic, profound and familiar, Bush has risen to a level few presidents have ever reached. [...] Occasionally, a seasoned political observer needs to realize that he has seen something extraordinary. Tonight, Bush made me feel like that.

Morris goes on to explain in precisely what ways Bush's speech was so dynamic and all-compassing; how Al Gore's 2000 convention speech held the record for the largest vote swing as a result of an acceptance speech.

But Bush left the Gore rhetoric in the dust. Summoning a poetry unusual in American politicians and unique among those who now run for office, Bush reached into each of our souls and brought forth an emotional response that only a glorious speech could summon.

The last paragraph of Morris' column is especially memorable:

I voted for Gore in 2000, as a true child of the Clinton era. But I decided to vote for Bush on Sept. 12, 2001 when I saw how he handled the threat we face. I used to back Bush because he offered safety; now I support him because he summons us all to an ideal. Before he spoke, supporting Bush was a duty one owed to the fallen. Now, it's an honor.

It is an honor, and a pleasure, for this Conservative to have Dick Morris as a comrade-in-arms.