Dick Morris's account of what he refers to as President Bill Clinton's comeback in the presidential election of 1996--in the wake of the 1994 midterm elections in which the Republican Party took over a majority in both houses of Congress--is part melodrama, part history, and part confessional. Most of all, however, it develops into something of a handbook, or instruction manual, for shaping strategy, or the big picture, and tactics, or implementation of big-picture goals, during the American electoral process. That is not to suggest that Morris's information, the strategies he developed, and the procedures he adopted to assist Clinton in being reelected to the presidency in 1996 could be guaranteed to work for any particular candidate, since each national election--indeed every election anywhere--is at some level sui generis. Nevertheless, in the context of America's political history during the mid-1990s, Morris argues, his approach to campaigning and positioning Clinton with the voters turned out to be effective. Accordingly, Behind the Oval Office is offered by Morris as the most satisfactory account, in his eyes, of what it took for Clinton to hold on to his office.
In the background of this overview of Morris's book is development of a narrative thread that focuses on the key issues that surfaced in the US after the 1994 midterms. However, Morris's own background is also relevant to the themes that he sought to focus on for 1996. Indeed, the foundation on which Morris worked with President Clinton explains much about the shape that such work took. Accordingly, the first 50 pages or so of the text are devoted less to Clinton's biography than to Morris's. After a point of narrative attack that describes Clinton's telephone call recruiting him as a campaign strategist, and after stating up front that he jeopardized his marriage and entire political future in politics in 1996 with a scandal in which a prostitute played an important...