by Dick Morris
Sometimes, it’s a good idea to challenge an unbeatable but aging incumbent so that you can move into the on-deck circle to succeed him when he retires. In fact, there is nothing to make an elected official of long tenure and advanced age look forward to the Florida sunshine more than a tough reelection race every two years.
The key variable in recovering from a defeat is whether you see the district or the state as a long-term investment to be nurtured and developed, as a quick opportunity for a speculative gain through an opportunistic win. If you care about your base, develop your image, and network carefully, it will last until the next election.
What should you do after you lose?
Nurture your donors. Grow closer to them. Find more of them. Act like you won. Stay in the district. Service your constituents—even if they aren’t yours yet. Stay involved in community issues. Get your face in the paper a lot. Find a position that allows you to remain visible. Study the returns and figure out where you need work. Spend a lot of time in the areas you lost so that you can come back.
Take your defeat gracefully and cheerfully. Be a good sport. Smile even though it hurts.
Epilogue
The Future
The issues will be new. Not because the year begins with a “2” as opposed to a “1,” but because the dawn of the millennium comes at a time of an unusual winding-down of issues that have dominated our domestic and foreign agendas for half a century or more.
Chapter 46
The Issues of the First Years of the Twenty-First Century
IN THE LAST YEARS of the twentieth century, the key issues that have dominated our global politics have come to closure. Communism is dying. Global democracy is on the rise. On the domestic front, the budget is balanced, crime is dropping, welfare rolls have dropped by half. The key questions that have polarized our process in the past decades are fading from view as we enter a new century, a new millenium. What will be the issues of the future?
The environment will likely loom very large. If warnings of global warming and ozone depletion are correct, the environment must become one of our key issues. If the low-lying areas of our planet will indeed be flooded, displacing hundreds of millions of people, and if we are to be exposed to ever more carcinogenic emissions from the sun, the environmental issue will obviously dominate our politics. As disaster scenes of tornadoes, forest fires, mudslides, fierce hurricanes, and earthquakes proliferate on the nightly news, climate change is likely to rise to the top of our national agenda. Yet, these events are trivial compared to the major dislocations that true environmental catastrophe would trigger. When rain falls in the wrong place and traditionally arable areas become parched and dry, global images of famine will come to galvanize public opinion even further.
Just as the nuclear issue forced a global effort to avoid another world war and brought about a balance that largely preserved the peace, the environmental issue may well catalyze efforts to subordinate economic self-interest to a planetary consciousness. If the nuclear issue and the resultant superpower competition led to a global system of diplomacy and conflict management, the environmental issue will likely bring about a worldwide network of economic coordination and environmental regulation. In all likelihood, the environment will be a key issue of the next twenty years.
Just as the physics of Einstein, Fermi, and Oppenheimer laid the basis for the political issues of the last half of the twentieth century, it is likely that the Genome Project, the decoding of human DNA, will usher in a host of political issues in the next century. We are very close to seeing the last generation of human beings born in a natural, unaltered state. Genetic engineering, first to block hereditary diseases and later to alter personality and intelligence, will likely create a new race of humans during the course of the next century.
The political implications of this scientific capacity are staggering. The current debate about cloning misses the point entirely. Cloning is the opposite of evolution—it is a freezing of evolution by the exact recreation of a preexisting human being. It is, rather, the creation of new people with new abilities, life spans, and capabilities that must concern us. The old question of when the computer would out-think man is obsolete. The issue now is whether we are about to create a new man, endowed with capacities that dwarf our own.
I believe that such change, as Teilhard de Chardin points to in his Phenomenon of Man, is akin to “seizing the tiller of the world” by taking evolution into our own hands. I think that it is both inevitable and highly desirable. But its potential for misapplication is so substantial that it cannot fail to be one of the core issues of our political future.
Finally, if we are blessed with continued prosperity and real income growth within our nation, the generosity and ecumenical spirituality of the American people will increasingly lead toward a demand for America to play a greater global role in fighting poverty and helping people in the third world. Foreign aid has a bad name because the governments to which it goes have bad names. But while foreign assistance falls into greater disrepute, American charitable contributions have shot up in the 1990s, far outpacing the modest level increases in the equally prosperous 1980s. We are becoming a nation of philanthropists. Increasingly, the human suffering in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will concern the American people and become an important factor in our domestic politics.
Whether these speculations are accurate or not, one thing is certain. The issues of the twentieth century are largely over. Through two world wars and a cold war, we have arrived at an international consensus built around free-market democracies and human rights that is not likely to be altered. Domestically, the deficit is a thing of the past and the reductions in welfare and crime seem likely to last. The conservative challenge to the liberal idea of expansive government has led to a division of roles between the government and the marketplace that is unlikely to be relitigated successfully.
This period of consensus will be succeeded by one of polarization as the new issues of the twenty-first century call for different solutions from different ends of the political spectrum, and democracy works at what it is best at—solving the problems of our future.
Chapter 47
The Politics of the Future: A Peek at the Brave New World of Internet Democracy
THE MOVEMENT AWAY from representative democracy and toward direct control of public policy by voters is bound to accelerate as new technology and wider public familiarity with the Internet overcomes the logistical barriers to holding national town meetings. The politics of the future will be shaped by referenda in which voters directly indicate their policy choices. With fifty-four million Americans using the Internet, the day of the national town meeting is not far off. With more Internet users, such a forum is almost inevitable.
Here’s how it will likely work.
Private entrepreneurs will establish a Web site for a national town meeting. They will widely publicize its existence and sponsor referenda in which people will vote by logging on to the site. As more voters register their opinions, the media will take increasing notice. Within a few years, the Web-site town meetings will attract tens of millions of voters on each referendum. As the usage swells, so will the national attention to these votes.
Eventually, virtually every issue of any import considered in Congress will also be posted for voter participation on the Web site. When the House or Senate votes on Fast Track for trade agreements, for example, the national town meeting will take up the topic. Television and radio talk shows will likely hold discussions and debates on the issue. Interest groups will seek to shape public opinion by advertising. Newspapers will run specials on the question. All attention will be focused on the Web-site referendum.
On the day of the town meeting, tens and tens of millions of people will log on to the Internet, access the town-meeting Web site, and cast their ballots. The next day the results will be posted on the Web and likely broadcast through the media. Congressmen will anxiously pore through the results to figure out how t
heir district voted.
Will members of Congress be influenced by the town-meeting result? You bet. It will have an impact far, far greater than a poll. In a survey, a congressman can learn how his constituents feel about a given issue. He can follow their advice or reject it and hope that the issue won’t bite him on election day. But he dares not ignore a voter referendum where his constituents know they have participated and registered their views, know the outcome of the referendum, and can examine how their congressman finally votes.
If hundreds of thousands of people in a congressional district have indicated their preference for defeat of Fast Track legislation, the congressman who represents them will, in all likelihood, meekly follow their guidance. Were he to ignore a poll, he would suffer because voters didn’t agree with his position. But if he ignores a town-meeting Internet referendum, he will also have to explain why he didn’t listen to the will of the people of his district, which was so clearly manifest in the Web-site balloting.
As the power of the Web-site referenda becomes more apparent, media coverage of national town meetings will intensify. Eventually, these votes will become national dramas, anxiously followed by the political establishment. While Congress is not about to cede its power by permitting the same kind of referenda and initiatives permitted in California, national town meetings will become their de facto equivalent.
We are about to enter an era of pure Jeffersonian democracy, where Internet town meetings will convey daily or weekly advice to elected officials and structure most of the major decisions on important issues. In such an environment, our elected representatives will experience the same drop in power that the state legislators of California have already had to live through. In that state, most important issues are decided directly by voters, not by their legislators. Nationally, the Web site town meeting will dominate our politics in the future.
About the Author
Dick Morris grew up in New York City and graduated from Columbia College. He began his political career working in Democratic Party politics on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In the mid-1970s he began consulting for New York State Democrats such as Congresswoman Bella Abzug and Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. His long association with President Clinton began in the late 1970s and continued for twenty years. Mr. Morris is often credited with the strategies that led to Mr. Clinton’s move to the center of the political spectrum and his reelection in 1996. He has also worked as an advisor to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and other Republicans. Time magazine referred to him as “The most influential private citizen in America…a gleeful genius.”
Dick Morris lives with his wife, the lawyer Eileen McGann, in Connecticut and New York City.
Also by Dick Morris
Bum Rap on America’s Cities:
The Real Cause of Urban Decay
Behind the Oval Office:
Getting Reelected Against All Odds
Acknowledgments
I have found a publisher to love in Renaissance Books. May we grow old together. Arthur Morey is a skilled editor who leaves his superego at home. Bill Hartley is a man who sees the possible and makes it the probable. Mike Dougherty impresses even me with his public relations skills. Mike Levine introduced me to this crew and made it all happen. And can Lisa Lenthall design a cover or what?
THE NEW PRINCE. Copyright © 1999 by Dick Morris. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morris, Dick.
The new prince / Dick Morris.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7830-9
1. Politics, Practical—United States. 2. Political leadership—United States.
3. United States—Politics and government. I. Title.
JK1726.M65 1999
324.7'0973'09045—dc21 99-21767
CIP
P1