During an October 12 interview on Fox News' DaySide, Dick Morris, a former adviser to President Clinton and a Fox News contributor, shifted from punditry to advocacy by pushing a campaign to convince Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to run for president in 2008. Promoting his latest book Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race (ReganBooks, October 2005), which he co-authored with his wife, Eileen McGann, Morris said that he doesn't think that Rice would “ever [choose to] run [for president],” but that grassroots efforts would get her to do so. “I think what's going to happen is that ... we're going to draft her into running. If we build it, she will come.” Morris warned viewers that unless Rice was enlisted, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) is “going to be the next president.”

Media Matters for America has reported Morris's previous attacks on Sen. Clinton (here, here, and here).

From the October 12 edition of Fox News' DaySide:

MORRIS: I don't think she [Rice] ever will [run], I think what's going to happen is that we're going to get her to run, we're going to draft her into running. If we build it, she will come ... just like what happened with [Dwight] Eisenhower in '52.

MORRIS: I think it's going to become more and more obvious to the American people that Hillary's going to be the Democratic nominee, and that Hillary's going to be the next president, and the Republican party is not going to nominate [Rudolph] Giuliani or [John] McCain because they're too liberal, and that none of this existing cast of pygmies can defeat Hillary Clinton.

JULIET HUDDY (co-host): You say that with the utmost respect.

MORRIS: Yeah. Oh, they're honorable pygmies.

HUDDY: But pygmies nonetheless.

MORRIS: But the only person that can defeat Hillary Clinton, that has a good shot to take away a large portion of the black vote, and to stop her from winning the female vote, is Condoleezza Rice. And, I don't believe she wants to run at this point, I don't think she has a burning ambition, but I think she has a sense of duty. I think she does an incredible job at anything she's asked to do. And I think what's going to happen is that Americans all over the country are going to form Condi clubs, draft-Condi movements, they're going to run their own slate of delegates, they're going to run people for delegate who are legally uncommitted but in fact are bound to Condi, and I think she'll start beating the candidates who are actually running. You know, there's a poem: “When I was coming down the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I do wish he'd go away.” And I think that's really what's going to happen with Rice. I think that she is going to the person who people are going to be looking to because she'll be the savior against Hillary.

[...]

MIKE JERRICK (co-host): You start your book with her swearing in --

MORRIS: Swearing in.

JERRICK: Say it.

MORRIS: “I, Hillary Rodham Clinton, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.” And then I say, “And holding the family Bible and grinning broadly will be her husband, her adviser, and her co-president, William Jefferson Clinton.” And there is only one person who can stop that from happening. And that is Condoleezza Rice.

[crosstalk]

MORRIS: I don't care if she wants to run. We have to get her into the race.