THERE’S SOMETHING OF A Condi bubble in American politics at the moment. As George Bush’s political stock sinks, pushed lower by scandal in the White House and setbacks in Iraq, Republicans are nervously casting around for alternative investments for the 2008 presidential election.

Some potential contenders are familiar, perhaps too familiar: the Arizona Senator and Vietnam veteran John McCain, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Others are unheard of outside their own small band of supporters — Senator George Allen of Virginia, Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

The name that really sets the pulse racing is that of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State and the Bush Administration’s chief foreign policy practitioner.

There are, by my rough estimate, at least a dozen websites dedicated to Ms Rice’s presidential prospects. At www.rice2008.com, you can read a Condiography or buy a Condi bobblehead doll or a bumper sticker with a picture of the Statue of Liberty and a device that reads “Condoleezza Rice 2008. The New Lady Liberty”.

At americansforrice.com you can join the Team Condi Online forum and swap heartwarming stories of Dr Rice’s elegance or towering intellect.

Rice herself has done her small part to boost the stock in her candidacy. Though she publicly disdains the idea of a presidential run, she often behaves like a candidate-in-waiting. Last month she took Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, on a bizarre and highly publicised tour through the byways of her home state of Alabama — not a natural destination for someone whose main daily business has her huddled across the negotiating table with foreign diplomats. She was received like a cross between a rock star and a tele-evangelist, fuelling expectations that next time she’ll be back asking for votes.

All the time, rumours continue to swirl around Washington that Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, weighed down by a dodgy heart and a dodgier chief of staff, will soon resign to be replaced by Ms Rice, giving her the perfect springboard from which to launch her campaign.

Sadly, as with all bubbles, the chances that this one will burst, with bad consequences for all who have bought into it, are high. But, less sadly perhaps, also as with all bubbles, the chances that it will continue to inflate for a while are even better.

Part of what makes the Condi 2008 story so appealing is that everyone knows that on the other side of the political divide in three years time will be Hillary Rodham Clinton. The idea of an all-female presidential contest has raised the blood pressure of the alpha males who dominate political business in Washington.

No one is more aroused by the prospect than Dick Morris. Morris is the doyen of American political consultants. A hired gun, he gives unprincipled opportunism a bad name. He has made millions advising Republicans and Democratic candidates alike on how to beat the opposition to a pulp.

He shot to real fame in the 1990s when a beleaguered Bill Clinton brought him into the White House to rescue his presidency from oblivion. Morris came up with the “triangulation” strategy, a wholly cynical and brilliantly successful gambit of politically positioning the President equidistant between Democrats and Republicans. It helped Clinton to sashay to an easy re-election in 1996.

But, in the process, Morris fell out badly with Hillary Clinton. In those days she had some principles, and she never much cared for this blow-dried Machiavelli. When Morris was caught on tape with a prostitute in a Washington hotel room, the First Lady pounced; Tricky Dick was gone.

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