BEIJING, Oct. 17 -- Dick Morris, one of former US President Bill Clinton's key advisers, believes that the United States will have its first woman president in 2009.

    In his new book, Morris says that a woman is likely to be former First Lady Hillary Clinton. However, there is one woman that has the potential to stop her reaching the Oval Office, that's Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

    Rice, in fact, poses a major threat to Clinton's success. With her broad-based appeal to voters outside the traditional Republican base, Rice has the potential to cause enough major defections from the Democratic Party to create serious erosion among Clinton's core voters. She attracts the same female, African-American and Hispanic voters who embrace Clinton, 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 US 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 Rice as number one and Clinton as number 26 in its 2005 list of the most powerful women in the world. For the first time in US history, a majority of voters say they would support a woman for president. In a May USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, an amazing 70 per cent 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.

    Clinton does not want any other woman to take what she regards as her just place in history. Yet, ironically, it is her candidacy that makes Rice necessary and, therefore, likely, according to Morris.

    The first woman nominated by the Democrats can only be defeated by the first woman nominated by the Republicans, he says, adding that if Rice and Clinton to face one another, it would be the next great US 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, Rice vs Clinton.

    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 Clinton grew up in the middle-class security of white, Protestant Park Ridge, Illinois, Rice 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; Clinton'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: her husband.

    Unlike Clinton, Rice has never married and her success has never been a matter of hitching her wagon to the political fortunes of a powerful man. It was always Rice's record of accomplishment that made her a prominent national figure.

    She was only 34 when she became the chief expert on the Soviet Union in the administration of President George HW Bush. Rice, in short, reached her position of power on the strength of her achievements, argues Morris.

    But both women deny having plans to run for President in 2008. In Clinton'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.

    Rice'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,"

    The fact that Rice has not laid out a plan to run for President does not, by any means, signify that she won't run, says Morris, arguing that compared with Clinton, she merely approaches her future in a very different way. She has never planned her advancement with the same degree of precision that Clinton has. She hasn't had to. Her obvious talent has stood out among her peers and her rapid promotions have always been the result. Clinton 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.

    But Rice, also a woman and an African-American, blocks Clinton's built-in advantages. How would Rice 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 Rice would run well among America's blacks. Espy was one of two African-Americans in Clinton's first cabinet.

    Many questions remain unanswered until 2008, but one thing is certain, the election is set to be the next great presidential race. With the possibility of two popular women as candidates, voters will make history.

(Source: China Daily)