Regan Books/HarperCollins £14.99 pp326

Bill Clinton was the great triangulator, who adopted positions from the left or right that were calculated to win the centre ground of politics. The guru who provided him with all the angles was Dick Morris, who scrutinised the polls and advised him how to hit the spot.

Morris did not hit it off with Hillary, who resented his position as confidant and correctly perceived that her husband’s political consultant was not on her side. In the Bush era, after a minor sex scandal of his own, Morris has built a shiny new career out of Hillary-bashing, aided by his inside knowledge of her character and politics. He was a hilarious commentator in the 2004 American presidential election on how the Clintons were loyally pretending to be for a John Kerry victory, without ever quite pushing the boat out.

Had Kerry won, Hillary would be yesterday’s woman, whereas today she is the runaway favourite for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2008. Morris compellingly shows how she has capitalised on Bill’s considerable skills at wooing the public, raising money and using his own campaign strategies — in her case by forging alliances with free-thinking Republicans such as John McCain and Newt Gingrich — to stake out the political middle ground. It has been a highly successful tactic, reducing Hillary’s supersize negatives (too shrewish, too ambitious, too feminist, too left wing) to such a point that 52% of Americans say they would consider voting for her. With no clear frontrunner to succeed George W Bush for the Republicans, Morris believes she could romp home to the White House with Bill as first gentleman. Lest anybody doubt the determination of the Clintons, Morris reveals that they began discussing her succession during Bill’s first term in office.

Morris is determined to stop her winning, believing she would revert to left-wing type the minute she reached office, although why she should when she has to start plotting immediately for a second term is not clear to me. He has done more than anybody to talk up the prospects of a presidential bid by Condoleezza Rice in 2008 on the grounds that “Condi alone could win the nomination, defeat Hillary and derail a third Clinton administration.”

The prospect of two women fighting for the chance to make history is genuinely exciting, but Morris is so busy working out the angles he sometimes misses the main point. For all his admiration of Rice’s talents and her remarkable rise from segregated Birmingham, Alabama to secretary of state, she comes across as little more than the “un-Hillary”, a characterless meritocrat who is useful only in so far as she can be contrasted point by point with the former first lady and make off with enough votes of African Americans and women to sink the Democrats.

Rice deserves better than to be a vehicle for Morris’s stop-Hillary machinations. She is a supremely capable political appointee, but she has never run for office, not even at school, whereas Hillary has spent her life campaigning for herself and Bill. Rice is certainly ambitious enough to run, although she keeps ruling it out in interviews, but she is not as hungry for the White House as Hillary. She could well stumble on the campaign trail and, unlike Morris, she knows it.

A more likely scenario is for Condi to join somebody else’s ticket as vice-president, limiting herself to a few months of public scrutiny. As the first black woman to run, she would still be epoch-making, but would have to take her chances with a possible second-rater in the driving seat. In any case, there is a risk she is so identified with the faltering Bush that a future presidential nominee might prefer their own person.

That is not good enough for Morris, who has invested heavily in Rice’s future. It explains why he is all over the airwaves right now eagerly suggesting that vice-president Dick Cheney is in serious trouble for his role in telling Scooter Libby, his indicted chief aide, about Joseph Wilson’s CIA wife, Valerie Plame.

For those who say that Rice is not ready for the top job, Morris has the perfect answer. Step aside, Cheney: it is time for Bush to appoint Condi as his new vice-president. Should it happen, Morris’s book will look remarkably prescient. As it is, his passion for Condi seems inspired by the wish to get his own back on Hillary.

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