Rating: 
Summary: an interesting political discussion
Review: "Behind the Oval Office" gives an excellent discussion of how Bill Clinton triangulated himself between the policy approaches of the democratic and republican party during his first term as an attempt to get more legislation passed through Congress and as a method of getting re-elected.
Rating: 
Summary: Another excellent piece by Morris
Review: As a political staffer myself, I am always looking for "behind-the-scenes" type of books. "Behind the Oval Office" provides its readers with a thorough understanding of the Clinton White House and the manner in which it has conducted business over the past few years. Dick Morris, in depth, discusses many of the approaches that Clinton took in his attempt to gain successful reelection in 1996. Particularly interesting is Morris' triangulation approach to governing. I would highly recommend this book to others who are interested in presidential politics.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Captivating
Review: Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris as a consultant for his 1996 reelection campaign. His role as an advisor to the president was kept a secret for several months, and eventually ended in a tabloid-driven scandal that cost Dick his job. Behind the Oval Office provides an account of this time from Dick's perspective. The account is told in a surprisingly linear and story-like fashion. It makes for a captivating literary experience (which is a real accomplishment considering that this is a political book). It also serves as an outlet for Dick to apologize for, and make peace with, the scandal that cost him his job (and almost his marriage). I found the book to be quite fair in describing the principals of the Clinton administration and Republican leadership in Congress (Dick Morris had also consulted for many Republicans over the years and briefly served as an information conduit between Bill Clinton and Trent Lott). The bottom line is this: If you're looking for some sort of a hatchet-job on the Clinton administration, look elsewhere. If you're looking for starting revelations and juicy details, try the tabloids. However, if you want to know more about one of the most unique relationships a president has ever shared with an advisor, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Captivating
Review: Bill Clinton hired Dick Morris as a consultant for his 1996 reelection campaign. His role as an advisor to the president was kept a secret for several months, and eventually ended in a tabloid-driven scandal that cost Dick his job. Behind the Oval Office provides an account of this time from Dick's perspective. The account is told in a surprisingly linear and story-like fashion. It makes for a captivating literary experience (which is a real accomplishment considering that this is a political book). It also serves as an outlet for Dick to apologize for, and make peace with, the scandal that cost him his job (and almost his marriage). I found the book to be quite fair in describing the principals of the Clinton administration and Republican leadership in Congress (Dick Morris had also consulted for many Republicans over the years and briefly served as an information conduit between Bill Clinton and Trent Lott). The bottom line is this: If you're looking for some sort of a hatchet-job on the Clinton administration, look elsewhere. If you're looking for starting revelations and juicy details, try the tabloids. However, if you want to know more about one of the most unique relationships a president has ever shared with an advisor, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Snowing the Electorate Against All Odds
Review: Clinton's use of television advertising in his 1996 reelection bid was unprecedented in American history. Political consultant Dick Morris was highly influential in managing this campaign, and retracing his collaboration with the Clintons back to the Arkansas gubernatorial campaigns, he peeks inside Clinton and his White House.
Morris was also the one who gave the American political world 'triangulation'. If (as he insists too many times) triangulation is not really shaping of policy by polling but merely the shaping of presentation by polling, it would still be terribly disingenuous toward the voter. But I think even he realizes that cherry-picking other people's policies in order to win elections is not leadership.
In fact, a lack of leadership is indicative of the Clinton White House itself. According to Morris, Clinton suffers from a chronic inability to fire under- or misperforming members of his staff (inadvertently giving another clue as to who really was responsible for firing the travel office staff). He creates chaos and infighting, then drifts around waiting for someone to move in his direction whom he then supports. Morris describes a permanent near state of war between White House chief of staff Leon Panetta and deputies Harold Ickes and Erskine Bowles. Such is the manner that Clinton exerts control.
But then he isn't much of a team player-- he even keeps Morris out of sight from his staff because he wanted him to himself. Later, paranoia erupts when Clinton accuses Morris of hogging Al Gore, and fearing abandonment by his boss, Gore accuses Clinton of the same.
Clinton spent an astounding $85 million in his reelection campaign. In the previous presidential election, both candidates spent less than half that amount. Obviously this war chest drained an enormous amount of time and energy from Clinton's other job as president. Quoting Clinton: "I can't think. I can't act. I can't do anything but go to fund-raisers and shake hands. You want me to issue executive orders; I can't focus on a thing but the next fund-raiser. Hillary can't, Al can't-- we're all getting sick and crazy because of it."
Interestingly, Clinton doesn't even watch television news-- or read newspapers, with the exception of the New York Times and Washington Post op-ed pages.
Morris describes the reason for not supporting a cut in the capital gains tax. Their own experts had agreed with President Ronald Reagan's rationale that such a cut not only would not cost anything but would even raise revenue, but they still opposed it because it would make them look "too Republican." So they screwed American workers for cosmetics' sake. He describes Clinton's strategy to pass a welfare reform bill to help his election, but then force changes in it after being locked into the White House. Morris has many good words for Trent Lott, but being a good Senator couldn't save him from being lambasted over an off-hand remark at Strom Thurmond's centenary.
Not much is mentioned about foreign affairs, but what is doesn't speak well for Clinton's grasp of it. On the victory of Prime Minister Netanyahu in the 1996 Israeli elections, Clinton flatly concludes that the "Israelis are not ready for peace," forgetting that following countless terror attacks on its citizens after the disastrous Clinton-sponsored Israeli/Palestinian peace agreements, Israelis voted Netanyahu in office precisely because he was the only one who could credibly bring peace.
Sooner or later everyone strays into Hillary's dark side, and Morris commits the sin of recounting how she wanted a swimming pool in their taxpayer-funded Arkansas governor's mansion. It is fairly amusing to read the fawning and sycophantic groveling he had to endure to be restored in her favor.
Behind the White House is a fairly interesting read, though it suffers from sloppy editing. Are "honesty, honor, reliability" really adjectives in the Democratic lexicon? It has its share of political correctness: why does 'Arab terrorists' need quotes? Truman 'lost' China, but Clinton didn't want to lose Russia.
Dick Morris seems a generally honorable professional who is good at what he does, though I'm left to wonder whether this is good for the electorate or the country. In order to raise the astronomical amounts of cash needed for the marketing of what Morris calls the "first fully advertised presidency in US history," Clinton by his own admission was incapacitated from his duties. As we now know, the methods used to raise the cash were illegal, sometimes damaging to our national security, and always reprehensible.
Rating: 
Summary: A GLEEFUL GENIUS
Review: DICK MORRIS DESERVED TO GET MUCH CREDIT FOR CLINTON'S TRIUMPH IN 1996 ELECTION. IT WAS HIM, BESIEGED BY THOSE LEFT WING DEMOCRATS , WHO CAN FORCE CLINTON TO THE CENTER. YOU WILL FIND THIS BOOK INTERESTING, NO MATTER FOR WHOM YOUR VOTE IS CAST. MORRIS REALLY PLAYED FAIR IN IT, HE KNEW WHEN TO BOAST HIS SUPERIORITY AND KNEW WHEN TO BE HUMBLED. IT SCRUTINIZED THE STEPS THAT CLINTON TOOK AFTER WITNESSING THE GREATEST DEBACLR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAD SUFFERED IN 1994 MIDTERM ELECTION. TIME MAGAZINES PUT IT RIGHT WHEN IT SAID THAT MORRIS IS "THE MAN INSIDE THE PRESIDENT MIND"
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff for political junkies
Review: Dick Morris is full of himself. However, this book is worth reading...particularly if you are a political junkie like myself. "Behind the Oval Office: Winning The Presidency in the Nineties," offers a front row seat to White House political strategy. To this end, the one conclusion that all will agree upon with this book is that President Bill Clinton is a slave to the polls. In many ways this book reveals how shallow politics can get. Morris is an extremely influential political actor in the Clinton White House and is able to expertly navigate the President through the dangerous aftermath of the 1994 Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole midterm Republican advances. Moreover, there is no doubt that Morris laid the foundation for Bill Clinton's second term victory. Morris does not enjoy the victory...he goes out in disgrace. Nevertheless, this book shows how the author's twenty-year relationship with William Jefferson Clinton and his wife Hillary allowed this couple from Arkansas to survive many political storms. Morris is a master of polling and offers many insights on how polling tracks voter thinking on many sensitive issues. This book is easy to read and a straightforward account of how the "big boys" win in the political arena. Bert Ruiz
Rating:
Summary: Good stuff for political junkies
Review: Dick Morris is full of himself. However, this book is worth reading...particularly if you are a political junkie like myself. "Behind the Oval Office: Winning The Presidency in the Nineties," offers a front row seat to White House political strategy. To this end, the one conclusion that all will agree upon with this book is that President Bill Clinton is a slave to the polls. In many ways this book reveals how shallow politics can get. Morris is an extremely influential political actor in the Clinton White House and is able to expertly navigate the President through the dangerous aftermath of the 1994 Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole midterm Republican advances. Moreover, there is no doubt that Morris laid the foundation for Bill Clinton's second term victory. Morris does not enjoy the victory...he goes out in disgrace. Nevertheless, this book shows how the author's twenty-year relationship with William Jefferson Clinton and his wife Hillary allowed this couple from Arkansas to survive many political storms. Morris is a master of polling and offers many insights on how polling tracks voter thinking on many sensitive issues. This book is easy to read and a straightforward account of how the "big boys" win in the political arena. Bert Ruiz
Rating:
Summary: A Psychologist in the White House
Review: Dick Morris, the political consultant widely acknowledged for arranging Clinton's second term win, writes an insightful analysis of President Clinton's career, personality, and political tactics in Behind the Oval Office. Called "The most influential private citizen in America" by Time Magazine, Morris is a consummate influence professional who understands how national attitudes can be engineered through artful communications and carefully chosen positions on issues. Behind the Oval Office can be read as Morris' tactical playbook, where he exposes the psychological machinery that supports political power. Here, Morris details how he conducted regular polling to understand the public's desires, from that polling located unassailable positions for the president to assume, and from those positions crafted messages that persuaded Americans to vote for Clinton. Morris also reveals how he "inoculated" the president from political attack, how he sometimes found it necessary to distract the American public away from a close examination of the president's actions, and how he ran "stealth" advertising campaigns that slipped under the radar of the media elite, to successfully change the voting behaviors of millions of Americans with an image of a likeable and fair president who deserved a second term. Morris also provides an insightful analysis of the missteps and blunders that marked the Dole defeat, and offers a strategy with which Dole could have beaten Clinton. In the revised edition of the book, Morris has released copies of White House agendas that provide a virtual diary of how Morris and Clinton outmaneuvered their political rivals.
Rating:
Summary: A Psychologist in the White House
Review: Dick Morris, the political consultant widely acknowledged for arranging Clinton's second term win, writes an insightful analysis of President Clinton's career, personality, and political tactics in Behind the Oval Office. Called "The most influential private citizen in America" by Time Magazine, Morris is a consummate influence professional who understands how national attitudes can be engineered through artful communications and carefully chosen positions on issues. Behind the Oval Office can be read as Morris' tactical playbook, where he exposes the psychological machinery that supports political power. Here, Morris details how he conducted regular polling to understand the public's desires, from that polling located unassailable positions for the president to assume, and from those positions crafted messages that persuaded Americans to vote for Clinton. Morris also reveals how he "inoculated" the president from political attack, how he sometimes found it necessary to distract the American public away from a close examination of the president's actions, and how he ran "stealth" advertising campaigns that slipped under the radar of the media elite, to successfully change the voting behaviors of millions of Americans with an image of a likeable and fair president who deserved a second term. Morris also provides an insightful analysis of the missteps and blunders that marked the Dole defeat, and offers a strategy with which Dole could have beaten Clinton. In the revised edition of the book, Morris has released copies of White House agendas that provide a virtual diary of how Morris and Clinton outmaneuvered their political rivals.
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