Caveat lector

The Daily update: BZZZ!!

Synopsis: Phew! In back-to-back evenings with Bill O'Reilly, Dick Morris showed that integrity counts.

Commentary by Dick Morris, Bill O'Reilly
The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, 10/24/00

Commentary by Dick Morris, Bill O'Reilly
The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News Channel, 10/25/00

Phew! Politics can be a rough, tough game, as Dick Morris showed Bill O'Reilly. Tuesday night, Bill asked Dick about the two leading hopefuls:

O'REILLY (10/24): This "lesser of two evils." Many, many Americans—do you believe that?

MORRIS: No. No. I think this is one of the better choices we've had for president.

When Bill asked Dick to explain himself, he gave a free pass to Vile Gore:

MORRIS: I think for one thing they're pretty similar. I think they're both honest men. I do not think that Al Gore is a "pathological liar"—

Dick referred to Ol' Reliable, Betsy Hart, who had made the charge a few minutes earlier, saying she wasn't necessarily a Republican. Morris labored on:

O'REILLY: What about the campaign finance stuff?

MORRIS: He was loyally trying to raise the money for Clinton that I was pressuring him to spendI don't think that one misrepresentation about the Buddhist Temple or that stuff is that—and I frankly think the Reno thing, issue as to whether he made calls in the White House is inherently phony because the guys all make phone calls from the government offices. I sat there while they did it.

Jeez! If that's true, then the other "guys" are the dishonest ones, for saying nothing while Gore took his lumps! Anyway, we agree with most of what Morris said (we're not sure what the Buddhist Temple "misrepresentation" is). So imagine our surprise the very next evening! Morris was back, telling Bill that Gore was running some darn good ads attacking The Dub's Texas record:

MORRIS (10/25): I think [Bush] should do two things. First, I think Bush should rebut the attacks and secondly, what I think he should do is he should put the integrity issue back into the race. I think he should take the film clips—

O'REILLY: I agree with that.

MORRIS: —of each of Al Gore's misrepresentations—

O'REILLY: I agree with that.

MORRIS: "I was Father of the Internet." BZZZ, No he wasn't. "I went to Texas for the flood damage." BZZZ, No, he didn't...

Morris was pretending to do a game show buzzer:

MORRIS: And then my tagline would be, "If you can't trust Gore on the little things, how can you trust him on the big things?"

Jeez! The night before, he said Gore was honest, and now he was planning a campaign about trust! Here at THE HOWLER, we were thinking, "If you can't believe Morris on Tuesday night, how can you believe him the very next evening?" At any rate, as Morris completed his vision, he brought our analysts out of their chairs. Remember how the Buddhist Temple wasn't that big a thing? That was on Tuesday, dear friends:

MORRIS: The point that Bush needs to do now is to pin the integrity issue on Gore. He needs to bring it back into play.

O'REILLY: So you'd have the Buddhist Temple footage—use that?

MORRIS: I would use Buddhist Temple and I would say, "It was not a fund-raiser." BZZZ.

On Tuesday, the temple was no big deal. On Wednesday, it was running in big, naughty ads. We agree that integrity is a big issue this year. We're just not sure it's an issue for Gore.