Politics & Power Quote by Dick Morris

Political insiders rarely waste a perfectly good election on winning it, and Dick Morris is banking on that cynicism here. The line is engineered to sound like a leak from the smoke-filled room: “one central idea,” “uncluttered, ambitious minds,” “clean out the underbrush.” It’s not just an argument about strategy; it’s a character assassination rendered as campaign analysis. By framing the Clintons as so ruthlessly future-facing that they’d tolerate a Bush re-election, Morris recasts them from party leaders into political arsonists who’d torch the present to clear the field for 2008.

The phrasing does heavy lifting. “Uncluttered” pretends to be complimentary but lands as a sneer: their minds are simple because their motive is simple. “Underbrush” dehumanizes other Democrats into disposable foliage, implying that the primary is less a contest of ideas than a controlled burn. “Proceed unimpeded” borrows the language of bureaucracy and conquest, making the nomination sound like a pipeline project, not a democratic choice.

Context matters: Morris isn’t a neutral commentator but a former Clinton adviser turned public critic, famous for turning proximity into authority. That history gives the quote its bite and its agenda. It’s less prediction than preemptive delegitimization: if Hillary runs, it’s not because voters want her, but because the machine has been clearing the runway for years. The intent is to seed suspicion early, so every Democratic contest looks like choreography and every compromise looks like calculation.