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.

The outspoken political advisor and commentator offers a survey of history's most memorable coups and failures. Dick Morris is one of the frankest and most incisive political observers in America today. A fiercely intelligent advisor to candidates at the highest levels of government, Morris is a popular columnist and a political analyst for the Fox News Channel, bringing his brilliant strategic mind and insider's political savvy to a weekly audience of millions. Now, in Power Plays, Morris reaches into history to create this fresh and fascinating survey of the most dramatic political moves ever made, from the wildly effective to the disastrous. The result is a strategy playbook that holds lessons equally valuable to the planning of a political campaign, a business venture -- or even the War on Terror. Drawing on American and international examples, Morris identifies five different types of power play, and focuses on politicians whose careers have skyrocketed after implementing them successfully -- or foundered in the wake of misjudgment. Morris explores ideologues like Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, who stood on principle and waited for their moment to shine, and "triangulators" like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and François Mitterrand, who seized the opportunity to defang their opponents by stealing their pet issues and solving them. He looks at figures as diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon -- who rose to power by dividing and conquering their enemies -- and at reformers like Britain's Tony Blair and Japan's Junichiro Koizumi, who ascended by purging their parties of corruption. And he shines a light on how Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used technology and new media to electrify their political careers. In a chapter inspired by the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Morris also reviews the efforts of FDR and Churchill to mobilize their nations in the face of Nazi Germany -- and compares their performance to that of George W. Bush in mounting America's ongoing campaign against terrorism. Morris also devotes attention to unsuccessful power plays, from Woodrow Wilson's failed attempt to launch the League of Nations to the disavowal of environmental issues that, he argues, cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. His analysis is surprising, often irreverent, but always enlightening. And the conclusion he draws -- that candidates who best serve the people also serve themselves -- is a breath of fresh air in the often bloodthirsty arena that is politics. - Jacket flap.