Foxy Pundit

Morris doesn’t help his cause with the packaging and structure of “Off with Their Heads: Traitors, Crooks & Obstructionists in American Politics, Media & Business.” The title suggests the book is a crude populist tirade. Each chapter begins with a synopsis of the case against some malefactor followed by, in capital letters, “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS.” For example, noisy Hollywood leftists must be identified, exposed, and corrected, Morris writes, “so we may be immune to the blandishments and reject their seductions.” So, declares the next paragraph in its entirety, “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!”

All this is unfortunate because Morris has one of America’s great political minds, and a good chunk of the book is worthwhile, original, and even riveting. He should not be dismissed as a crank or a television blowhard, though the front of the book jacket identifies him only as a Fox News political analyst and New York Post columnist. Morris is especially astute in scrutinizing the press, particularly the manipulation of opinion polls by the New York Times, and his analysis of Clinton’s failure to crack down on terrorism, while overheated, is buttressed by first-person anecdotes from his years as a White House adviser. Still, on several subjects–the French, securities law, governors who spend tobacco settlement money to balance their budgets–he merely flails.

I’ve been looking at New York Times/CBS News polls for years, and I’ve always suspected they were tilted to promote Democrats and liberal crusades. Morris confirms my suspicion. In compelling detail, he explains how the paper shapes the results of its polls. One tool is weighting. All polling organizations do this to offset what they may feel is an unrepresentative sampling of voters. Sometimes they’ll add Republicans, sometimes Democrats. But in its polls from January 1, 2002, until Election Day in November, the Times always added Democrats and subtracted Republicans. This wasn’t really weighting, Morris insists. It was slanting. And it wasn’t that the Times had a preconceived notion of the Democratic and Republican shares of the electorate. Whether Democrats came in at 32 percent or 34 percent or 36 percent of a poll’s sample, the Times increased their percentage.

Morris reveals other tacks used by the Times. It conducted polls on favored liberal issues to build momentum behind them. Morris says a pattern developed while Howell Raines, recently deposed, was editor. “The pattern was always the same, following the Raines formula: flood the front page with stories and photos, push the party line on the editorial and op-ed pages, and gin up the impression of public support through weighted polling to show how popular the issue du jour was politically.”

After the Enron scandal broke, the Times ran numerous stories on President Bush’s financial dealings years ago. Then they conducted a poll to see if the public was angry at Bush. It wasn’t, but the Times headlined its story on the poll with the public’s vague worry Bush was too influenced by business. Deep in the story it was noted that Bush’s approval rating was 70 percent, and a solid plurality of the public believed he was honest in his business practices.

LAST FALL the Times sought to play up a supposed lack of progress in the war on terrorism. Again, it turned to a poll, asking if the public saw “a lot of progress” or “some progress” or “not much progress” or “no progress at all.” The normal way to handle the data would have been to combine those who endorsed “a lot” or “some” progress and label those respondents as favorable. Instead, the Times lumped those seeing “some progress” with those who saw little or none and “branded them all as negative.” Thus, the paper could report the public was unimpressed with Bush’s progress in winning the war on terrorism when it in fact it was impressed.

Morris’s criticism of the press goes beyond the Times. Citing the major media’s wildly inaccurate coverage of the war in Iraq, he concludes that network news, big newspapers, and news magazines have “produced a credibility gap,” which has sharply reduced their influence. “The era of media dominance of our political system has lasted forty years, ever since the news organizations brought down first Johnson and then Nixon,” he writes. “But it lasts no longer. It has lost the one thing it could not afford to lose: our trust and confidence in its impartiality.”

On fighting terrorism, my inclination has been to absolve those who did little prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001. That day changed everyone’s take on the terrorist threat. Morris doesn’t agree. His verdict on Clinton is harsh: “If history is just, President Bill Clinton’s [name] will be blamed for leaving George W. Bush a nation unaware of, and unprotected from, the deadly peril that hit seven months later.” Morris says Clinton could focus intently on domestic issues, but on terrorism “he knew little and cared less.” Morris says he participated in seven private meetings with Clinton in late 1994 and early 1995 and the subject of terrorism in America never came up.

Morris elaborates on one critical meeting at the White House after the Oklahoma City bombing in May 1995. It’s a self-serving tale, but revealing. Morris advocated a national crusade against terrorism, but George Stephanopoulos raised civil-liberties objections and told Clinton the Justice Department would block a full-scale crackdown by leaks and bureaucratic inertia. “Stephanopoulos’s comment is typical of how the White House staff sought to disempower the president,” according to Morris. “By threatening leaks and administrative non-cooperation . . . they gleefully controlled this oft-weak chief executive. Can you imagine a White House staff member having the temerity to pull this kind of stuff on George W. Bush?”

Morris made a wise decision to put the media and Clinton sections at the front of “Off with Their Heads”–that is, the good stuff first. The later chapters are nothing special. Sure, it’s nice to see the French zinged and Hollywood lefties excoriated. The celebrities, Morris writes, have in common that they don’t know what they’re talking about. And his advice is for the media to quit covering their political rantings. Actually, that’s good advice, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Don’t jump to the conclusion, based on criticism of the press and Clinton, that Morris is a conservative. He’s not. I’m not sure what he is. As a political consultant, he worked for both Democrats and Republicans. Now he devotes himself to writing a column and books and delivering political commentary on television. For what it’s worth, I always read his columns, his books, and stop and listen if I find him holding forth on Fox News. Forget what the political community thinks. Dick Morris shouldn’t be ignored.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.