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The Random House publicity machine is always careful to refer to Morris as a scholar, but the jacket copy reminds us that his first occupation was as an advertising copywriter, a fact that surely explains why so much of this queer book reads like an advertisement for himself. Part of Morris' scholarly stance is his boast, stated repeatedly on television during the past two weeks, that "every fact" is footnoted. But in reality dozens of them aren't; as a result, many of his "factual assertions" are wild enough to demolish the career of any cub reporter.

In rapid succession, he tells us that in 1965 Lyndon Johnson's decision to send combat troops to Vietnam "marked the end of popular support for the war" (in fact, popular support for the president's policies remained robust until the Tet Offensive, almost three years later); that "a majority" of voters "wanted Richard Nixon" in 1968 (it was a tiny plurality -- 43.4 percent, against 42.7 percent for Hubert Humphrey); that one of the many sins of the Carter administration was the "cancellation of supersonic transports" (an action taken by Congress long before Carter reached Washington); and finally that William Clark was assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration (he was deputy secretary).

But these mistakes pale next to Morris' larger reportorial failures, especially around well-known Reagan aides like Clark. Thirty-three pages after Morris first introduces him, he finally gets Clark's title right. But then he goes on to describe him in a way that betrays an almost pristine ignorance of the bureaucrat's modus operandi. According to Morris, Clark "made almost an art form of taciturnity" and "neither leaked nor courted personal publicity -- a recipe for image attrition in a town that requires press collusion." In fact, as Lucy Howard and I reported in Newsweek back in 1982, in a feature that unmasked several of America's most practiced media handlers, knowledgeable Washington hands learned almost as soon as Reagan was inaugurated that "you could pick up the phone and ... ask for Judge Clark, and half the time he'd come on the phone. That's unheard of at that high a level in the State Department." Another correspondent told us that "he made himself available to serious reporters covering foreign affairs as often as he could." As a result, in less than a year Clark metamorphosed from an object of derision into the recipient of "cheers fit for a Super Bowl champion," as Joseph Kraft put it in a January 1982 column.

Next page | One way Morris could still redeem himself