Governors have stronger executive experience in the 2016 presidential campaign over senators, but they are weaker on national and global issues, political strategist Dick Morris told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"The disadvantage governors have is they're not used to handling national issues," Morris, who served in the Clinton White House, told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth.
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"They're not used to addressing issues in the round, 360 degrees.
"When Scott Walker was fighting the unions in Wisconsin and pushing through the boldest and most important education reform in American history since the invention of the public school system, nobody was going to ask him about gay marriage as he stepped over the people sitting in the rotunda.
"He could set the agenda by his own actions and his own proposals, but a senator can't set his agenda," Morris continued. "It's set outside of his control. Therefore, he has to be prepared to answer everything.
"When it comes debates, when it comes to Q&A on the campaign trails, many governors fall short, but few senators do."
The declared Republican presidential field so far includes six current and former governors, vs. five who are either serving or have served on Capitol Hill.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie entered the fray on Monday — and Walker is expected to announce his candidacy on July 13.
Morris is the co-author of the New York Times best-selling book,
"Power Grab: Obama's Dangerous Plan for a One-Party Nation."
Overall, however, he told Hayworth that governors have one great advantage over senators: "If a governor loses and he remains as governor, he has the power to punish and reward those who do and don't give him campaign contributions and money from your home state.
"A senator's one vote; governor runs the state — and all those contracts, all those goodies — so a governor has a tremendous advantage because he might lose," he added.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who stepped down in January as the state's longest-serving governor, "no longer has that option," Morris said. "With Christie, if he's defeated, he's still the governor of New Jersey. The same with Scott Walker in Wisconsin."
For his choice, though, Morris would rather have a governor as the eventual GOP nominee.
"He'd be easier to elect because he has more money," he told Hayworth. "Again, when you have 15 guys running for president and Hillary waiting around the corner, you're not going to give a lot of money, betting on somebody winning. It's way too early for that.
"In a 16-way field, maybe Bush, but nobody else. With a governor, if he loses and you were his biggest backer when he ran for president, hey, you're going to have a good two years."
Regarding Christie, Morris said that he was going to take the governor "at his word and tell it like it is.
"If it were not for Chris Christie, Barack Obama would have been defeated and Mitt Romney elected president. His virtual endorsement of Obama — a few days after Hurricane Sandy, a few days before the election — was partially to help the state, but partially a cynical, political strategy to get himself re-elected by posing as a bipartisan governor."
This came despite Christie "having run in his first term as a heavily partisan person enough to be the keynoter at the Republican Convention," Morris added, referring to the governor's 2012 speech at the Republican National Convention in Orlando.
"When he embraced Obama that day, Obama jumped in the polling and got elected," he said. "That's what I think about Chris Christie. He's running in the wrong party."
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