Condi vs. Hillary
by
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Book Description

Who will be president in 2008? Many believe that the White House is Hillary Clinton's to lose. As long-time strategists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal in Condi vs. Hillary, however, Hillary's plans for higher office are vulnerable to a challenge from a most unexpected quarter: the Bush administration's secretary of state and former national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice.

Rice is the only figure on the national scene who has the credentials, the credibility, and the charisma to lead the GOP in 2008. And, as this first book on the subject demonstrates, a race between these two commanding, but very different, women is a very real possibility -- and would inevitably prove one of the most fascinating and important races in American history.

Blending insider insight and political foresight, Condi vs. Hillary surveys the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, finding persuasive clues about what we might expect from each of them as a chief executive. It traces their very different childhoods -- Hillary Rodham's in unchallenging suburban comfort, Condi Rice's in Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights era -- and finds in each the roots of their latter-day selves. It explores their career in public life -- Hillary's as an ambitious liberal who attached herself to a governor on the rise, Condi's as a woman of broad and deep talents who has earned her own way. It turns a discerning eye on how each has spent her time in government, contrasting Condi's growth and maturation in office with Hillary's record of underachievement as both first lady and senator from New York. And it reveals how a draft-Condi movement could sweep the secretary of state into the presidency even as she forgoes campaigning to address her responsibilities as secretary of state.

America, in short, may be on the verge of a perfect storm of twenty-first-century politics, pitting two of America's most popular -- and controversial -- women against each other, and offering Americans a choice between fulfilling the ambitions of one of our most polarizing figures . . . or changing history by electing not just the first woman, but also the first African American woman, to lead the free world into the future.

"I, Hillary Rodham Clinton, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully

execute the office of president of the United States and will,

to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution

of the United States, so help me God."

On January 20, 2009, at precisely noon, the world will witness the inauguration of the forty-fourth president of the United States. As the chief justice administers the oath of office on the flag-draped podium in front of the U.S. 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 copresident, 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 presidential election. She has no serious opposition in her party. More important, a majority of all American voters-52 percent-now supports her candidacy.

The order of presidential succession from 1992 through 2008, in other words, may well become Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton.

But if the very thought of four-or perhaps even eight-more years of the Clintons and their predictable liberal policies alarms you; if you see through the new Hillary brand-that easygoing, smiling moderate; if you remember what a partisan, ethically challenged, left-wing ideologue she has always been, is now, and will always be, then you can see what the future holds.

That's exactly the kind of president Hillary Clinton would be.

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 Rice, 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.

This is a race Condi can win.

And Hillary cannot offset these losses of reliable Democratic constituencies with other voting blocs. White men don't like her. That won't change. And there is nowhere else for her to pick up support. It's simple: With Condi in the race, Hillary can't win.

The stakes are high. In 2008, no ordinary white male Republican candidate will do. Forget Bill Frist, George Allen, and George Pataki. Hillary would easily beat any of them. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain? Either of them could probably win, but neither will ever be nominated by the Republican Party. These two are too liberal, too maverick, to win the party's support; their positions are too threatening to attract the Republican base. Jeb Bush? Too many Bushes in a row make a hedge. He's not going anywhere. And Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger can't run. In the next election, none of the usual suspects can stop Hillary. Without Condi as her opponent, Hillary Clinton will effortlessly lead the Democratic Party back into the White House in 2008.

There is, perhaps, an inevitability to the clash: Two highly accomplished women, partisans of opposite parties, media superstars, and quintessentially twenty-first-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 twenty-six in its 2005 list of the most powerful women in the world.

As Hillary and Condi emerge as their party's charismatic heroines, they seem fated to meet on the grand stage of presidential politics. These two forces, two vectors, two women, and two careers may be destined to collide on the ultimate field of political battle. Two firsts in history. But only one will become president.

The year 2008 could, at last, be the year of the woman-indeed, the year of two women. Suddenly, the timing is right. Eighty-five years after the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote, the planets seem suddenly aligned to challenge history. American voters are surprisingly ready for a woman in the White House. Public opinion is rapidly settling into a consensus that a woman could actually be elected president in the next election. For the first time in our history, a majority of voters say they would support a woman for president. In a May 2005 USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, an amazing 70 percent of the respondents indicated that they "would be likely to vote for an unspecified woman for president in 2008."

What a revolutionary shift in thinking! No major American political party has ever nominated a woman for president. And only one woman has run for vice president-Democratic Party nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. But now there are two star-crossed, qualified, and visible women who may be presidential contenders in 2008. And the voters like them both: 53 percent of those questioned in the May 2005 survey had a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, while 42 percent rated her negatively. Condoleezza Rice fared much better: 59 percent liked her and only 27 percent didn't.

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. Of course, things didn't turn out quite that way; Hillary has had to wait a bit. But her election to the Senate in 2000 gave her the national platform she needed to launch her new image-the "Hillary Brand," as we called it in Rewriting History-and begin her long march back to the White House.

One thing is certain: Hillary Clinton does not want any other woman to take what she regards as her just place in history as America's first woman president.

Yet, ironically, it is Hillary's own 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. Two firsts of their kind, locked in electoral combat, with the future-theirs and ours-on the line.

Their potential battle recalls a moment in the Civil War when the South was suffocating beneath the blanketing blockade the Union had draped over its ports. Anxious to redress the balance, Confederate shipbuilders fitted the captured wooden-hulled Union warship Merrimack with a coating of iron skin and renamed it the Virginia. On March 8, 1862, a new kind of vessel-the world's first ironclad ship- sailed out to sea. There, in a single day, it demonstrated graphically its manifest superiority over every other ship in history. The Virginia rammed and sank the huge Union ship Cumberland and shelled the frigate Congress until she surrendered.

Once there was a Merrimack, however, there also had to be a Monitor, the Union's answer to this strange new creature of the sea. And so the Northern counterpart materialized, looking like a tin can set on a raft. The two ships met in mortal combat-two firsts of their kind, each made necessary by the other's potential to master the high seas.

The battle between the world's first ironclads ended in a stalemate. A race between Hillary Clinton and Condi Rice will have a more decisive ending. But the parallel is clear: If there is a Hillary, there must be a Condi. One will spawn the other.

Hillary's nomination as the first woman candidate for president by a major political party would generate extraordinary excitement and give the Democrats an undeniable advantage in the general election. The Republicans would have no choice but to respond by nominating a similarly compelling and popular candidate-one who would counteract the certain shift of women voters to Hillary. And who else could that be but Condi?

Consider this: If Hillary is nominated as the first woman ever to run for president, she is very, very likely to win. By maximizing her support among the 54 percent of the vote that is cast by women-and tapping into the enthusiasm that her husband elicits among African Americans and Hispanics-she is likely to sweep into office, easily defeating any conventional white male candidate the Republicans might send against her.

And there is only one viable Republican answer to Hillary's candidacy: Condoleezza Rice.

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.

But 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 their 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. But growing up as an African American in the segregated South did not mean that Condi came from an impoverished background. It was Rice who came from an educated, professional family; Hillary's was far more blue-collar. Hillary's mother, the child of a teen pregnancy who was abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandmother, was a high school graduate; her father, a physical education major and football player at Penn State, made and sold commercial draperies. Condi's parents and grandparents, on the other hand, were college graduates. Her father was a minister, teacher, and guidance counselor. Her mother was also a professional, a music teacher in the same school where her husband taught.

It is not only their family backgrounds and geography that were distinctive. Their careers also took very different paths. For more than thirty years, Hillary's success has always been coupled with her relationship with one powerful man: Bill Clinton. Wherever he went, Hillary followed, supporting him, advising him, rescuing him, and, at the same time, reaping enormous rewards from his advancement. Her own talents were often obscured, her ambitions put aside, as the two worked jointly to advance his career above all else.

It was Bill who introduced her to his colleagues at the University of Arkansas Law School when she was suddenly unemployed after her work as a legal researcher on the Watergate Committee came to an end in 1973. Though a bright and talented graduate of Yale Law School, Hillary had failed the D.C. bar exam and would undoubtedly have had a hard time landing a top position in Washington. Women lawyers were not yet in strong demand, and a bar failure would have been a major strike against her, as well as a humiliating admission to make in job interviews for a supremely self-confident person like Hillary. An easy alternative was Arkansas, where she had passed the bar the previous year and had since been admitted to practice law. Her decision to move to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and accept a teaching position in a clinic handling criminal law-a subject in which she had never before shown any interest-changed her destiny and paired her future with Bill Clinton's. From then on, as Bill moved up in Arkansas politics, Hillary simultaneously progressed in her legal career. When he was elected attorney general, she was offered a job at the Rose Law Firm, the most prestigious in Arkansas. When he was elected governor, she was named the firm's first woman partner. And when he was elected president, she ultimately evolved into a Senate candidate from New York.

Unlike Hillary, Condi has never married, and her success has never been a matter of hitching her wagon to the political fortunes of any powerful man. Instead, she advanced strictly on her own merits. She began her career by excelling as an academic and specializing in foreign affairs. Eventually, she brought that expertise to a family of presidents. But it was always Condi's own 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 H. W. Bush because she had impressed National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who met her at Stanford. She was only thirty four when she became the administration's chief expert on the Soviet Union. After her White House experience, she so impressed the incoming president of Stanford that he asked her to be his provost, even though the job usually went to a dean or a department chair. Through Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, she met then-governor George W. Bush, and prepared him for the foreign policy issues he would face in the 2000 campaign. The younger Bush was so awed by Condi's abilities that he appointed her national security advisor and then secretary of state.

Condi Rice, in short, reached her position of power on the strength of her own achievements.

The two women also came to the White House in characteristically different ways. Hillary arrived as a wife, with no experience in government, no portfolio, no administrative experience. Though her husband immediately granted her sweeping authority over health care, she was still the president 's wife, the first lady, who had no expertise in the very health care issues that she completely controlled. Her power was always derivative. She was not an elected official. She was not a cabinet member. She had no designated role or powers. The public policy issues she chose to address were centered on traditional women's issues: health care, advocacy for women and children, and protection of national treasures.

Rice entered the White House in a completely different way. She came in as a high-level expert, charged with guiding America through the delicate process of German reunification, the dismantling of the Soviets' satellite empire in Eastern Europe, and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union itself. A rare woman in a field long dominated by men, she held her own.

The work these two women did once in the White House likewise reflected their dramatically opposite characters. Condi quietly advanced and enhanced her reputation in the field of national security and Soviet relations with a keen understanding of how to make the system work. She was a success.

Hillary, on the other hand, created a chaotic bureaucracy just to draft her health care bill, which ran to more than one thousand pages. She alienated members of Congress-even in her own party-as well as health professionals and the press. The collapse of her reform plan was a colossal personal and professional failure on her first national public stage. Her reputation was salvaged only by her grace during the Lewinsky scandal and her enthusiastic willingness to campaign and raise funds for Democratic candidates all over the country. And, once she had rehabilitated herself, it was still her alignment with Bill Clinton that led her to the next rung in her career: a Senate seat from the state of New York.

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. Her unexplainable windfall in her commodities futures speculation; the circumstances of her Whitewater investment; the disappearance of her law firm's billing records; her role in the decapitation of the White House Travel Office employees; her solicitation and acceptance of personal gifts of expensive furniture, silver, and china during her last days in the White House while she was still first lady (but not yet a senator bound by rules about gifts); her acceptance of contributions and gifts from persons seeking presidential pardons; and the hiring of her brothers by drug dealers and others seeking pardons-all of these have led to the continuous cloud of doubt that has surrounded her personal and professional integrity.

Perhaps the most shocking example of her tin ear on ethical issues was her acceptance of furniture-and $70,000 in campaign contributions from Denise Rich, who was basically trying to buy a pardon for her fugitive ex-husband, Marc Rich. After a federal indictment charged Marc Rich with fifty-one counts of tax evasion and illegal trading with the enemy-Iran-during the hostage crisis of the late 1970s, Rich had fled to Switzerland and renounced his U.S. citizenship. In the wake of his ex-wife's gifts and campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and $450,000 donation to the Clinton Library, Marc Rich was pardoned in the very last minutes of the Clinton presidency.

In stark contrast, Condi's past is without blemish. In her long journey among the elites of our power structure-first at home and then globally-she has never sought to profit personally from her  position. It is difficult even to imagine her asking for expensive china, furniture, and silver from Hollywood stars, not to mention unsavory characters desperate for presidential pardons.

They are, indeed, a study in contrasts. If Hillary was tested in scandal, Condi won her spurs in war. As Hillary developed domestic policies, Condi mastered foreign affairs. While Hillary's candidacy is driven by enduring ambition, Condi's would be fueled by her own lasting achievements and experience in government service. Hillary has set her sights on a goal and pulled herself toward it. Condi has set her feet on her past and lifted herself above it.

Hillary's candidacy is obvious. Everything she does is calculated, carefully planned, and aimed at a White House run. With incredible cleverness and audacity, she successfully used her prestige as first lady to catapult herself into the Senate. Now she is using that Senate seat to jump back into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The prospect of Condi's candidacy is still obscure. As she rose to a pinnacle only one other woman before her had ever reached the office of secretary of state-Americans have watched her style unfold on the international stage. They are getting to know her in real time, as she grows into her position and taps into her own possibilities. Her style has been described as "diplomatic activism." Every day she is seen on center stage all over the globe, promoting democracy by lecturing and cajoling our allies and standing tall against our adversaries. Her substance-but also her poise and elegance-are attracting attention and admiration. There is no sense that she is acting in a supporting role so that she can land the leading role later on.

No, while Hillary is always of tomorrow, Condi is uniquely of today. Echoing the Fleetwood Mac song that came to be an unofficial anthem for the 1992 Clinton campaign, Hillary never stops thinking about tomorrow. Each day is devoted to plotting, scheming, preparing, and positioning to advance further toward her goal. But Rice is fully the creature of today, fully involve in her current job, her current focus.

Of course, both women deny having any 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 editors and reporters of the Washington Times in March 2005, 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." Her language, though at times it echoed Hillary's, was notably more modest: "I'm going to try to be a really good of state," she told the Washington Times. "I'm going to work really hard at it. I have enormous respect for people who do run for office. It's really hard for me to imagine myself in that role."

But when the reporters pressed Rice for a "Sherman pledge," the time-honored definitive refusal first uttered by General William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War hero ("If nominated, I refuse to run. If elected, I refuse to serve"), Rice backed off with a chuckle, saying that such a statement did not seem "fair."

She went further on the following Sunday during an appearance on Meet the Press, perhaps after conferring with the communications people at the White House. As the New York Times reported, "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pressed by several television program questioners on the latest gossip about her in Washington, said repeatedly Sunday that she had no intention to run for president, no plans to run and no interest in running. Just to be sure, she finally said she would not run for president." But, as the newspaper also noted, her statements "did not rule out" a future candidacy.

So what does Condi really think? Obviously she cannot jump into a presidential campaign within weeks or even months after assuming the mantle of secretary of state. There's no evidence that she has ever harbored a real ambition to run for president, and even now she seems to consider the possibility of a candidacy remote at best. But that does not mean that she would turn aside, as General Sherman did, if circumstances should create a genuine demand for her candidacy, with strong support in the Republican Party.

Hillary, on the other hand, approaches her candidacy in a much more traditional, political way. Through long and careful planning, she has nurtured her deeply ingrained ambition toward a run in 2008. Her step-by-step preparations to run have made her nomination almost inevitable. She has a master plan, and she follows it religiously.

And always, looming like a Sequoia in her background, is Bill, advising her, promoting her candidacy, raising money, winning support, running interference with the media, attracting a crowd, and, most important, holding out the promise of another Clinton presidency, another "two for one." Four more years of a President Clinton. He will be there throughout the race and beyond, a large and indefinable presence. What of her lack of administrative experience? Bill will help her out. No foreign policy background? Bill will be there. Her crash-and-burn record in her foray into health care reform? Don't worry. Bill will be around to take the blame and point out how much she has grown.

She'll do what presidential candidates must always do. She'll cross the country raising funds, winning primaries, cajoling delegates, massaging the media. Her ascent will be programmed, piloted by the smoothly running Clinton machine. All her life has been aimed at this moment, this contest. After eight years in the White House and five in the Senate, she knows how important each fund-raiser is, how much each handshake and letter means to her supporters, and she will not fail them. She'll memorize her lines and avoid mistakes assiduously. All of her public statements will be carefully scripted. There will be no spontaneous public outbursts, no chance for embarrassment.

And, whenever the going gets rough, she'll take refuge behind her spokespeople and refuse to comment. She'll remain above it all. While she may occasionally give vent to her innate sarcasm and loud partisanship at closed events, the public Hillary will be demure, on message, and aggressively and visibly moderate. Only on extremely rare occasions, where she is comfortably surrounded by her most liberal supporters, will the shrill attack-dog rhetoric of the real Hillary escape from behind her new, muzzled public face. But these windows into the true Hillary will be scarce; her road to the White House depends on hiding her true self, and she will carefully restrain herself.

Condi's path, if she chooses to follow it, should be very different: It must be the logical outcome of success at her day job as secretary of state. It is there that she must prove herself, winning the plaudits that can open the way to the White House.

Hillary's campaign will go through the usual pre-candidacy period. She will spend busy months raising money, recruiting support, and building her organization in the party centers of California, New York, Washington, and Florida. Condi's preparation will involve journeys of a different sort, as she builds up the diplomatic momentum to face the challenges of her mission: Paris, London, Moscow, and Beijing. Condi will be a statesman, a leader, a representative of the United States to the rest of the world.

And while Hillary's candidacy will take her to the early primary states-Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Delaware, and Arizona-Rice's will take her to trials of a different sort in Iran, Syria, Russia, China, Sudan, North Korea, and the West Bank. Her debut in the national spotlight will be anything but programmed. It will involve living by her wits, responding to changing circumstances, and showing herself to be a master craftsperson at this exalted level of global diplomacy.

But never has a secretary of state faced so many difficult tasks at once and yet been so well positioned to overcome them. The consistency of American might and determination in the caves of Afghanistan and the streets of Iraq has made the success of diplomacy-and democracy-much more feasible. It is the insight of the Bush-Rice foreign policy to reinterpret Carl von Clausewitz's dictum, "War is the continuation of policy by other means." For this new secretary of state, diplomacy is war by other means. The American military mission in Iraq-and the sacrifice of so many good young men and women-has made diplomacy workable.

As Rice proceeds on her diplomatic odyssey, overcoming all the trials the gods of chaos can put in her path, she will look more and more like a possible president.

The process seems already to have started. Robert D. Blackwill, U.S. ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003, recently observed in the Wall Street Journal that "diplomacy is flourishing once more at the State Department" under Rice. Citing the increasing alignment of the United States and India, the increase in international support for American efforts in Iraq, the revival of six-party talks in Korea, the unity of the West in demanding that Iran not to make its own nuclear fuel, and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, he notes that Rice is already having an impact on American diplomatic fortunes after only a few months on the job.

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 own 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. She needed no secret strategy or plot to ascend to the National Security Council under former President Bush, to the position of national security advisor to the current president, and now to the position of secretary of state. She was a woman on a mission, all right, but one with a substantive purpose, not a personal agenda.

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 on the team. For the past fifteen 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. Like old-time ward heelers, 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. In their post–White House years, they've invited their A-list people to the Clinton Library and to Chappaqua and Georgetown for fund raisers. They've stroked the backs of the key people in each state. Together, the Clintons still control almost all the levers of power in the Democratic Party. They know all the activists, and they work hard to keep them happy.

Recently, Hillary has been particularly focused on courting elected Democratic officials who will be automatic delegates to the 2008 convention. (They don't need to run in primaries to get seated.) Since her debut as a Senate candidate in 2000, Hillary has held more than three hundred fund-raisers for other Democratic senators, congressmen, and governors, collecting IOUs that she can redeem for votes on the convention floor in 2008.

And Hillary has the ground troops-the fund-raisers, the spin doctors, the speechwriters, the schedulers, the political handlers. Like the old Kennedy horses who answered the fire bell as it sounded, sequentially, for each new family member who entered the political fray, the Clintonistas are there waiting to help, anxious to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons and be part of their own version of Camelot. The games have already begun.

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 center. 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.

For Bill has taught her the power of cutting against the image of our own political party. In 1992, Bill ran as a "new Democrat," advocating capital punishment, backing a work requirement for welfare, pledging to balance the budget and pass a middle-class tax cut. When Clinton criticized black rap star Sister Souljah for seeming to advocate black violence, he distinguished himself from he tapestry of liberalism that had been the backdrop of the failed presidential candidacies of McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis. Now, against the history of another failed liberal candidacy, she is set to emerge as the new Clinton, the new moderate savior of a Left-addicted party. Playing off the extreme liberalism of the new Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, Hillary will position herself as the voice of reason and centrism.

Many have wondered why Hillary would allow a radical like Dean to win the DNC chairmanship. For one answer, one may look back at how her husband worked to narrow the 1992 field of candidates, until the final contest was between Clinton and California's Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown. Against Brown, Bill looked moderate. Against Dean, Hillary looks reasonable.

But Hillary's newfound centrism focuses only on issues at the margins of our 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. When some Democrats crossed the aisle to work with moderate Republicans to avoid filibusters and speed judicial confirmations, Hillary was not among them. She hunkered down with the Left, resisting all compromise. When the time came to render judgment on the Bush tax cut or on his social security reforms-the key domestic issues of his presidency-Hillary led the attack on the president. Her centrism is manifest only when the cameras are rolling, and the issues aren't very important.

Hillary wants to be seen as defying stereotypes of party ideology-and of gender as well. In a time when women are still suspect as wartime leaders, she has actively positioned herself as a hawk in the War on Terror. When liberal female senators find their commitment to fiscal austerity in doubt, Hillary headlines her husband's success in balancing the budget and attacks Bush's war-driven deficit spending.

But 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.

Money will be raised for Condi, but she won't be the one raising it. Support will flow to her, but it will not be through her importuning. For once a presidential candidate will not be a senator courting publicity, but a secretary of state solving problems throughout the world.

Can Rice be nominated? The vacuum in the Republican 2008 field makes it quite possible that she can. There is no heir apparent. 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. They are the early frontrunners, but they'll fade in the opening rounds.

Their likely demise will leave an enormous vacuum. Candidates like Bill Frist, George Allen, George Pataki, Mitt Romney, and Chuck Hagel will get serious attention. The dominant reaction of Republican primary voters to this cast of unknowns will be "Who?" 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. Well known, well liked, and well tested, she will rise to the top of the heap even if she isn't actively running.

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: George Washington himself was essentially drafted into the role of chief executive. Republican voters will draft Condi because they need her; she will attract their support, without meaning to, as she shows the nation what an international force she can become.

A draft is especially possible at this time in our history, for-as the 2004 election results revealed-there has been a seminal change in U.S. politics. That was the year that the political ruling class was turned upside down: The opinion leaders and journalistic elite became the followers, while the mass populace-frothing with political interest and activity-emerged to take its place at the forefront of political change. Politics is no longer a spectator sport. Instead, it has become America's foremost hobby. An informed electorate is actively and regularly participating in the electoral process in innovative ways.

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 center 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-and go out and get her into the race.

This grassroots domination of politics in 2004 began when the Internet impelled Howard Dean upward so far and so fast that he almost beat John Kerry for the nomination. Then, when Kerry decided to build the edifice of his candidacy on the shaky foundation of his Vietnam record, the Swift Boat veterans, with very little money and no political experience, bested the Democratic publicity machine and brought the truth to the voters. And when CBS News and Dan Rather smeared the president's National Guard record, it was the bloggers who exposed the forgery on which their report was based. Finally, it was the 1.6 million Republican workers-and their Democratic counterparts-who brought out twelve million more votes for Bush on Election Day than he got in 2000, and nine million more for Kerry than Al Gore received four years earlier. America had never seen anything like it in the entire twentieth century. One had to go back to the hurrah politics of Andrew Jackson and "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" to find an equal for the street-level politics of 2004.

If the street beat Kerry, it can also nominate Rice. The same avalanche of individual activists, each doing their own thing, 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.

As Condi distinguishes herself with her performance as secretary of state, her growing flock of supporters will come together online until they have reached critical mass, raising funds, generating volunteers, e-mailing friends, blogging, and reaching out to neighbors to fashion a real grassroots organization for her. As the political season approaches, volunteer groups will spring up in the early primary states, gathering signatures to put her name on the ballot. Condi herself need not endorse the movement. She simply needs to avoid giving a definitive no as these efforts gather force around her.

Each month, new national public opinion polls will show her to be gaining ground among Republican nominees. While the declared candidates battle it out, slinging negatives at one another, Condi can rise to the top precisely by abjuring the artificial fray of U.S. politics and earning her credits by mastering the real tests of international crisis and diplomacy.

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 was giving him. "They won't ask him tough questions," Clinton would complain loudly. "They're all guilty white liberals and they want to use him to beat me," he shouted.

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. "It's the modern man-on-horseback," Clinton complained, drawing a comparison to the generals who would periodically stage coups in Latin America. He worried about how to run against a phantom, a creation of popularity, rather than the product of a conventional political surge.

Then came the bad news: Powell couldn't beat 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." Clinton stared blankly at me, doing the math in his head, then nodded. 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 fueled by her own real-time accomplishments on the world stage. She will demonstrate her ability to be president by acting out part of the job before a global audience. Her accomplishments will be current, vivid, and part of a growing legacy. Powell's blitz happened when his fame was on the downtrend from the Gulf War. Condi's will come on the upswing.

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.

And the national stain that began to spread throughout our land when the first slaves landed at Jamestown, Virginia, would be erased. Condi's election would be the last battle of the Civil War, the last civil rights demonstration, the end of a saga that has haunted us since our nation was born. In a land where the signs once read "No Irish need apply," wasn't the election of John F. Kennedy the death knell of anti- Catholic bigotry? When he sat down after giving the most inspirational inaugural address since FDR's, you could feel the prejudice recede.

Racism remains one of the most fundamental problems of our nation. Its scars are so deep that they often have threatened to rip us apart. What greater social good could there be than its eradication- and what better way to do it than to elect a black woman as our next president.

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