On
20 January 2009, at precisely noon, the world will witness the
inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. As the
chief justice administers the oath of office on the flag-draped
podium in front of the US Capitol, the first woman President,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, will be sworn into office. By her side,
smiling broadly and holding the family Bible, will be her chief
strategist, husband, and co-President, William Jefferson Clinton.
If the thought of another Clinton presidency excites you, then
the future indeed looks bright. Because, as of this moment, there
is no doubt that Hillary Clinton is on a virtually uncontested
trajectory to win the Democratic nomination and, very likely, the
2008 election. She has no serious opposition in her party. The
order of presidential succession from 1992 through 2008, in other
words, may well become Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton.
But her victory is not inevitable. There is one, and only one,
figure in America who can stop Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State
Condoleezza 'Condi' Rice. Among all of the possible Republican
candidates for President, Condi alone could win the nomination,
defeat Hillary and derail a third Clinton administration.
Condoleezza, in fact, poses a mortal threat to Hillary's
success. With her broad-based appeal to voters outside the
traditional Republican base, Condi has the potential to cause
enough major defections from the Democratic party to create
serious erosion among Hillary's core voters. She attracts the same
female, African-American and Hispanic voters who embrace Hillary,
while still maintaining the support of conventional Republicans.
There is, perhaps, an inevitability to the clash: two highly
accomplished women, partisans of opposite parties, media
superstars and quintessentially 21st-century female leaders, have
risen to the top of American politics. Each is an icon to her
supporters and admirers. Two groundbreakers, two pioneers. Indeed,
two of the most powerful women on the planet; Forbes magazine
recently ranked Condi as number one and Hillary as number 26 in
its 2005 list of the most powerful women in the world. For the
first time in our history, a majority of voters say they would
support a woman for President. In a May USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll,
an amazing 70 percent indicated that they 'would be likely to vote
for an unspecified woman for President in 2008'.
Hillary Clinton has always wanted to be the first woman
President of the United States. Shortly after her husband's
election in 1992, the couple's closest advisers openly discussed
plans for her eventual succession after Bill's second term. Things
didn't turn out quite that way, but her election to the Senate in
2000 gave her the national platform she needed to launch her new
image - the 'Hillary Brand' - and begin her long march back to the
White House.
Hillary Clinton does not want any other woman to take what she
regards as her just place in history. Yet, ironically, it is
Hillary's candidacy that makes Condi's necessary and, therefore,
likely. The first woman nominated by the Democrats can only be
defeated by the first woman nominated by the Republicans. Were
Condi and Hillary to face one another, it would be the next great
American presidential race and one of the classic bouts in
history: Hector vs Achilles; Wellington vs Bonaparte; Lee vs
Grant; Mary, Queen of Scots vs Elizabeth; Ali vs Frasier. And now,
Condi vs Hillary.
These potential combatants are as different as, well, black and
white. In many ways, they are mirror images of each other: not
only white/black but north/south; Democrat/Republican;
married/single; suburban/urban; and, in policy interests,
domestic/foreign.
Their backgrounds are not in the least similar. While Hillary
grew up in the middle-class security of white, Protestant Park
Ridge, Illinois, Condi came of age on the wrong side of the racial
divide in pre-civil rights Birmingham, Alabama. It was Rice who
came from an educated, professional family; Hillary's was far more
blue-collar. It is not only their family backgrounds and geography
that were distinctive. Their careers also took very different
paths. For more than 30 years, Hillary's success has always been
coupled with her relationship with one powerful man: Bill Clinton.
Unlike Hillary, Condi has never married and her success has
never been a matter of hitching her wagon to the political
fortunes of a powerful man. Instead, she advanced strictly on her
merits. She began her career by excelling as an academic and
specialising in foreign affairs. Eventually, she brought that
expertise to a family of Presidents. But it was always Condi's
record of accomplishment that made her a prominent national
figure.
When she was still in her twenties, she was elevated to the
Stanford University faculty because she amazed her colleagues with
her abilities. She came to Washington during the administration of
President George HW Bush because she had impressed national
security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who met her at Stanford. She was
only 34 when she became the administration's chief expert on the
Soviet Union. Condi Rice, in short, reached her position of power
on the strength of her achievements.
Condi's and Hillary's respective reputations in politics, too,
were diametrically opposed. Condoleezza Rice has never been
involved in personal or professional wrongdoing; Hillary has been
embroiled in scandal after scandal, ever since she entered public
life. She has always teetered on the ethical edge.
Both women deny having plans to run for President in 2008. In
Hillary's case, the demur is traditional, usually couched in an
often-repeated coy and calculated answer - 'Right now, I am
focusing on being the best senator from New York that I can be' -
rather than a flat-out rejection of the idea.
Condi's dismissals have been more emphatic. During an interview
with the Washington Times in March, she said she had no intention
of running for President. A denial, but a soft one: 'I have never
wanted to run for anything,' Rice said. 'I don't think I even ran
for class anything when I was in school.'
The fact that Condi has not laid out a plan to run for
President does not, by any means, signify that she won't run. It's
not that simple. Compared with Hillary, she merely approaches her
future in a very different way. She has never planned her
advancement with the same degree of precision that Hillary has.
She hasn't had to. Her obvious talent has stood out among her
peers and her rapid promotions have always been the result.
Hillary is different. She is a plodder; she approaches the
presidential race like a long to-do list. For her, the path to the
West Wing in 2008 is already laid. The strategy is in place, the
players are on the team.
For the past 15 years, the Clintons have systematically built
up a network of wealthy donors, influential supporters and opinion
leaders throughout the country, creating a Rolodex of millions.
They used the power of the presidency to reward these people by
appointing them to jobs and commissions. They also understood the
allure of invitations to the White House and used events like
state dinners and Christmas parties to solidify the loyalty of
their stalwarts.
Under Bill's tutelage, but with the discipline he lacks,
Hillary will scrupulously follow their jointly developed plan to
recapture power. They may not spend much time together, but they
are united on their journey back to Pennsylvania Avenue. Hillary
will absorb all the lessons her husband's history has to teach and
dramatically and obviously move to the centre. The Clintons have
always understood that they cannot attract swing voters with a
leftist agenda. So, for the campaign, Hillary will become a
moderate, at least in public.
But Hillary's newfound centrism focuses only on issues at the
margins of American politics. She may attack sex on television or
call for more values in public life, but when the chips are down,
she votes like a solid liberal, backing her party more than 90
percent of the time.
Condi's way to 2008 is totally different. She has none of the
presumptive-nominee aura that Hillary has working for her. Her
viability as a contender for the 2008 nomination will depend on
whatever successes she has as secretary of state. She will first
be seen as plausible, then as desirable, and, finally, as voters
see Hillary move to the fore, irresistible. In the end, it is not
Condoleezza Rice who will come to the voters asking for the
nomination, but they who will come to her, imploring her to run.
Can Rice be nominated? The vacuum in the Republican 2008 field
makes it quite possible that she can. There is no heir apparent.
Dick Cheney's health isn't strong enough, and nobody else from the
cabinet stands out. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain are the early
front-runners, gathering together more than four out of every five
decided votes in the polls. But Rudy is too liberal to win the
nomination. And McCain showed his limited appeal to GOP primary
voters in 2000, when he won the votes of Independents but lost the
vast majority of registered Republicans to Bush.
As meritorious as these two men are, they aren't going to win
the Republican nomination. Their likely demise will leave an
enormous vacuum. There will be a search for a real candidate,
someone of stature, someone charismatic who can beat Hillary. And
the party faithful will turn to Condi Rice. America has not seen a
real draft of a presidential candidate since Dwight D Eisenhower
in 1952. Yet popular acclamation can be one of the highest
expressions of democracy.
A draft is especially possible at this time in America's
history, for, as the 2004 election results revealed, there has
been a seminal change in US politics. That was the year that the
political ruling class was turned upside down. On the left and on
the right, ordinary people found themselves in the vortex of the
national campaign in 2004, each battling to be heard, outshouting
the mainstream media and creating in the process a new, lower
centre of gravity for our politics. It's just the kind of
environment in which the grassroots activists can decide who they
want to be President
The same avalanche of individual activists can animate the
draft-Condi movement. So widespread is the admiration for this
self-made woman and so ubiquitous the fear of the Hillary
juggernaut that it may well be the spontaneous outpouring of
hundreds of thousands of people that could propel a Rice
candidacy.
It almost happened once before. In the autumn of 1995, General
Colin Powell, newly resplendent in his post-Gulf War prestige,
published his memoirs just as the pre-primary process for the 1996
Republican nomination to oppose Clinton was gathering steam.
Inside the White House, Clinton was panicked. He ranted and railed
apoplectically, to all within earshot, that Powell didn't deserve
the 'free ride' the media were giving him.
For a while, Powell seemed unstoppable. As he careened from one
packed book signing to the next, his name soared to the top of all
the presidential polls. Enigmatically, he refused to acknowledge
the political firestorm around him and would not address the
possibility that he might run in 1996.
Then came the bad news: Powell couldn't beat Bob Dole in a
Republican primary. His support for affirmative action, gun
control and an array of liberal positions undermined him and left
him without a party. 'Congratulations,' I told Clinton after
showing him the poll demonstrating that Powell wouldn't get the
nomination and therefore, I said, would not run. 'You just won the
election.'
But Condi is not Colin. And 2008 is not the same as 1996. Back
then, Powell had to live off the residual legacy of his Gulf War
achievements. But Condi will find her inadvertent candidacy
fuelled by her real-time accomplishments on the world stage. And
wouldn't a Condoleezza Rice candidacy change America? The very
fact that an African-American woman could actually become
President would send a powerful message to every minority child
that there is no more ceiling, no more limit for black Americans
in elective politics. The sky would now be the limit.
Make no mistake about it. If the next presidential election
were held today, Hillary Clinton would be in your face,
exuberantly delivering her victory speech on every television
network and beginning the redecoration of the White House,
starting with the designation of the office for her chief adviser
and the new first husband, Bill Clinton. (His would be the one
right next to the President's dining room, the one with the small,
eye-level window in the door, so she can easily see what he's up
to.) Hillary is hot. She's popular. She's confident - and with
good reason. She is by far the Democrats' top choice and she has
the support of women voters, the key swing group who make the
difference in American elections.
Hillary has found her groove. Her message is tight, clear and
controlled. It reads: Hillary Clinton is a hardworking, effective
moderate who can collaborate with even the most conservative
Republicans on joint, highly visible (and usually uncontroversial)
projects. She's highly supportive of the military, capable in
foreign affairs and fighting to keep pornography and violence away
from children. She's experienced; she spent eight years in the
White House. She's independent of her husband, although very much
married, and she's serious. She is not - repeat, not - a liberal.
Condoleezza Rice can defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. Were she to
run, her candidacy would strike directly at the three pillars of
the Democratic Party's political base: African-Americans,
Hispanics and white women. The Democrats cannot win without fully
tapping all three sources of votes. A Hillary Clinton candidacy is
particularly strong because of her appeal to all three bastions of
Democratic power. Because of her husband's long identification
with minority voters, her efforts to court Hispanic voters and her
own gender and record of feminism, she stands to cash in on the
support of all three groups in a huge way.
But Condoleezza Rice, also a woman and an African-American,
blocks Hillary's built-in advantages. How would Condi fare among
blacks? Would she crack the solid phalanx of African- American
support for the Democratic party, something no Republican has done
in 50 years?
A number of prominent black Democratic politicians think she
could. Bill Clinton's former secretary of agriculture, Mike Espy,
the first black congressman from Mississippi and a lifelong
Democrat, thinks Condi would run well among America's blacks. Espy
was one of two African-Americans in Clinton's first cabinet.
'They are two brilliant women,' Espy says, 'evenly matched,
both well rounded, both with interests outside politics.' How
would the black community vote? 'Their heads would be for
Hillary,' Espy predicts, 'but their hearts would be with Condi.'
And which would they follow? 'We often are emotional and follow
our hearts. We would all like to have parents like Condi's -
focused, encouraging, nurturing - and we'd all like to have a
daughter like Condi,' Espy says.
When I pressed him for a numerical prediction, the former
congressman thought for a while and then said: 'My guess is that
the race [among African-American voters] would be pretty much
even. Hillary may have a bit of an edge because of the hegemony of
the Democratic party base, but Condi would run much, much better
than any other Republican. My guess would be a 60-40 Hillary
margin.'
Condoleezza Rice's public record at the White House is of
relatively recent vintage. It is her life story, more than her
public career, that tells us why she could be a great President.
Rice's biography is a unique story that bears elaboration.
Condoleezza Rice has been defying odds since she was born in an
all-black community in Birmingham, Alabama. Her family was solidly
middle class, but in the Birmingham of those days, racial barriers
could not be bypassed, even by money.
Shopping as a young girl with her mother at a local department
store, an employee told her she could not use the 'whites only'
dressing room and had to try on her clothing in a back storage
cupboard. When Condi's mother refused and threatened to leave, the
embarrassed employee relented. 'I remember,' Condi relates, 'the
woman standing there guarding the [dressing room] door worried to
death that she was going to lose her job.' But the event that
seared its way most powerfully into Rice's memory was the 1963
bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a few miles from
her house. She heard the blast. Rice recalls the terror she felt,
as an eight-year-old, that day.
'These terrible events burned into my consciousness,' she
remembers. And as America shook its head in disbelief at the
murder of four girls in the blast, Condi Rice was mourning the two
she knew, including Denise McNair, her kindergarten classmate.
'I remember more than anything the small coffins and the sense
that Birmingham was not a very safe place.' Racism also followed
her to the University of Denver, where her professor lectured the
250 students in his class on the genetic inferiority of
African-Americans, citing the pseudo-scientific work of William
Shockley. Rice simmered as her professor recounted Shockley's
belief that 'art, literature, technology, linguistics - all the
treasures of Western civilisation - are the products of the
superior white intellect'.
'Rather than crouch down in her seat to avoid the onslaught,'
her biographer Antonia Felix reports, Rice 'sprang out of her
chair and defended herself: "I'm the one who speaks French!
I'm the one who plays Beethoven. I'm better at your culture than
you are. This can be taught!'" Condi's mother and father
tried to shield her from the arrows of racism. As Rice told Ebony
magazine: 'Our parents really did have us convinced that even
though I couldn't have a hamburger at Woolworth's, I could be
President of the United States.'
In their differing backgrounds - and the life choices that
flowed from them - Hillary and Condi reflect the different
priorities of their political parties and the approach they take
to the problems of social betterment, upward mobility and race
relations. If the Democrats see individual upward mobility as a
danger to group cohesion, the Republicans see the tendency to herd
into a group and stick together as stimulating a sense of
victimhood and class identification that is alien to true
democracy.
Democrats accuse Republicans of callousness, saying they
neglect those at the bottom and work only for the few who are well
equipped to compete in life. Republicans accuse Democrats of
wanting to enhance bloc voting by trying to keep the poor and
minorities in a group, dependent on handouts from the political
system for their upward mobility.
So what kind of President would Hillary be? How would Condi
handle the job? Let's start with policy. Hillary Clinton would be
the most liberal President since Lyndon Johnson. Bill Clinton is a
moderate by choice and, sometimes, a liberal by necessity. But his
wife is the exact opposite. Hillary believes that government
delivers services well and that the quest for private profit is
the root of all selfishness and vice in American life.
In foreign affairs, Hillary's views are less clear. She is only
just learning about these issues and her real opinions have yet to
emerge - and probably won't until after she is elected. During her
White House years, she was a peacenik, opposed to foreign
interventions, against American involvement in Somalia and
concerned that the administration would be too preoccupied with
the Balkans. But now, who knows? For her part, Condoleezza Rice
shares the basic Bush/Republican outlook on public policy issues.
She would likely seek to hold down taxes, limit the role of
government and harness the private sector for the delivery of
public services.
Like Hillary, Condoleezza Rice is a woman on a mission. But
Rice's mission is the expansion of democracy. Where Hillary would
focus primarily on expanding the role of the government at home,
Rice would want to see America become more involved abroad. The
election of 2008 will be the next great presidential race. With
the possibility of two popular women as candidates, the voters
will make history. We can only hope it's the right kind of
history.
Extracted from Condi vs Hillary: The Next Great Presidential
Race by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann published by Harper Collins.
(c) Dick Morris and Eileen McGann 2005.
(The Observer)
