Welcome to Carolina Journal Online’s Friday Interview. Today the John Locke Foundation’s Mitch Kokai discusses a possible Hillary Clinton vs. Condi Rice presidential matchup with author, columnist and former presidential adviser Dick Morris. The interview aired on Carolina Journal Radio (click here to find the station near you).
Kokai: The next presidential election is still more than two years away, but potential candidates are already making plans and political experts are already making predictions. How about this one: Hillary Clinton versus Condoleezza Rice in 2008? That prediction is the subject of the latest book from Dick Morris, the nationally known political consultant and commentator and he joins us now with more. Thanks for stopping by Carolina Journal Radio.
Morris: This is the fourth time I’ve been in North Carolina to give a speech for the John Locke Foundation. It’s such an important and good organization. I wish there were 49 others in the United States.
Kokai: Well I’m sure that they appreciate the plug and we thank you for stopping by Carolina Journal Radio. So Condi versus Hillary, how did it come into your mind that this was going to be the 2008 race?
Morris: Well I don’t know if it’s going to be the ’08 race. It’s what I want the ’08 race to be, because it’s the only way we can avoid having President Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Kokai: And explain why that’s true.
Morris: My book opens with a terrifying scene, which is that she’s getting sworn in and Bill is holding the family Bible and smiling broadly. I believe that Hillary is a cinch to get the Democratic Party nomination. The only serious competition it looks like she is going to have is from retreads like Kerry or Edwards or Gore or people who I don’t think will be able to win. The only thing they have in common is they’ve all run and lost. That includes Biden and Dean. But I think that she clearly is going to win the nomination. She’s the overwhelming favorite of the party faithful. She has vastly more money than anybody else and the super delegates, the statutory ex officio delegates, the congressman and senators and stuff, are all for her because she’s raised a huge amount of money for them. So I think that — and I believe — that the swing vote for the election these days is the white female vote. The men vote Republican all the time, 63 percent for Bush in 2000 and 64 percent against Kerry. They can’t do much more. But white women voted for Gore by one point over Bush in 2000, but voted for Bush by 14 points against Kerry in 2004. So that 15-point swing is what elected Bush. And I believe that unless a woman runs against Hillary, I think that Hillary is going to be elected. I also believe that Condi can get the African-American vote, or at least a piece of it, and I think that would doom Hillary’s chances. But I think if the Republican nominee is one of the usual white male suspects, I think that Hillary is going to win, and I don’t want that happen. I think she’d be a bad president.
Kokai: In your book you talk about not only the prospect of Hillary becoming president as you outlined at the very beginning. You talk about the political strategies that both of those candidates would or should use if this does turn out to be the race. How would this race unfold?
Morris: Well I think that initially there’s going to be a tremendous level of excitement about a woman running for president. The ABC-TV series, “Commander in Chief” with Geena Davis, is kind of ginning that up, and in fact there are some Hillary staffers who assisted production of that film, of that TV series. But then I think if Condi got into the race, the issue would be which woman, and there would be two models of feminists. One which is where the upward mobility is entirely of her husband’s achievements: She became a partner at his law firm when he became attorney general. She moved up when he became governor. She became a senator because he was president. And the other, which is somebody who’s done it entirely on her own, which is Condoleezza Rice, rising from the black ghetto in Birmingham, Alabama and to her current heights, and I think that the contrast biographies in female role models, I think would be very significant.
Kokai: But a lot of folks might say, “Wait a minute. Condoleezza Rice hasn’t even said she’s interested.” Why do you think at this point, more than two years away from the election, that Condoleezza Rice will or should be the Republicans’ candidate?
Morris: Well I don’t think that — she has a pretty demanding day job, and she can’t look at running and be a good Secretary of State. It has to be — they have to be totally divorced in much the same way that Eisenhower could not be Commander-in-Chief of NATO and still look at running for president in 1952. It had to happen without him and then he stepped into that. I think that’s probably what would happen in the event that Rice is running. I do think it was significant that [recently] Laura Bush was asked if a woman would ever president, which was a pretty neutral question, and she could have taken it into a political science lecture. Instead she said, “Yes, and I hope it’s Condoleezza Rice and I hope she runs.” I don’t think the wife of the president would say something like that unless the president knew she was going to say that, and I don’t think that the president would authorize her to say that unless that was indeed a trial balloon.
Kokai: And do you think that if Condoleezza Rice is going to be the candidate for the Republicans that the Bush establishment will play a major role?
Morris: I think it would play a hidden role. I don’t think that Bush would ever endorse anybody, but I think his preference would become clear, and I think that the intimacy of their working relationship and the extent to which Rice embodies the heritage that this administration would leave to the future would make that natural.
Kokai: You’ve drawn quite a bit of attention to this potential match up. What have you heard from the other political pundits about what they think about a Hillary/Condi race?
Morris: Well the most interesting reaction has been from the black Democrats who have told me that they think that Condi would make huge inroads in the African-American vote. For example, Mike Espy, who was the Democratic Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton Administration, the first black congressman from Mississippi, predicted that there would be 50 percent defection from the Democratic Party if Condi ran, and that was echoed by a black Democratic congressman, one of the leaders of the Congressional Caucus. In fact the editor-in-chief of the Amsterdam News, Jamal Watson, which is the largest black newspaper in the country, said he thought Condi would get the majority of the black vote, and I was very surprised by those predictions, but heartened by them.
Kokai: You mentioned at the outset of this interview that this is the race that you would like to see happen. How likely do you think it will be that this will be the 2008 match up?
Morris: I think that it’s very likely, because I think it will become increasingly clear to the Republican Party that Hillary is going to be the nominee and that Condi is the only one that can defeat her. You know there is a metaphor I use that might be close the hearts of North Carolinians. When the North was running its blockade of the South during the Civil War, the South came up with an ironclad, the Merrimack, to run that blockade, and it sank all the wooden ships it encountered, and the only way to stop it was for the North to come up with its ironclad, the Monitor, the stop the Merrimack.