New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: Clinton vs. Rice? Now, that's the ticket!

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: Clinton vs. Rice? Now, that's the ticket!Clinton vs. Rice? Now, that's the ticket!

First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Rice left Washington last week for Liberia. They were flying to attend the inauguration of the first female president in all of Africa, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

When the First Lady was asked by CNN when she thought this country would elect a woman, she answered that she thought it would happen fairly soon, perhaps in the next two presidential elections. The reporter then asked who she thought would be a good candidate for the job. Bush said she would want the woman to be a Republican and that she thought Rice would be just fine, even though Rice has said that she has no interest in running.

Things have changed so much in our nation since the civil rights era that there was no talk of Rice's ethnicity. All Bush said after acknowledging the secretary's stated lack of interest was, "I'd love to see her run. She's terrific."

I don't know if the First Lady was voicing an opinion that has a strong standing in the Republican Party, since many of its members have learned to wear high collars that keep their red necks from view. But we cannot be sure of anything at this moment, especially since one of the most remarkable developments in the 20th century was Lyndon Johnson evolving from a segregationist into the nation's most revolutionary President in the arena of civil rights since Abraham Lincoln.

If a strong call for Rice begins to build, those elephants who are more politicians than they are suspicious of black people in power might just leave their hoods in the closet for good and start an unprecedented campaign for the White House. They might then live up to their history of being "the party of Abraham Lincoln," which seemed even more ironic during Richard Nixon's presidency when the "Southern strategy" meant opening the arms of the party to Southern rednecks disenchanted by the destruction of segregation by the Democrats.

Colin Powell might have been the first black American President if he had run against Bill Clinton because big guns would have backed him and he was, at that time, a man who would have given Clinton far stronger competition than Bob Dole did. But things would be rough for Rice if she were to run.

Because she is an elephant and because she will have been in the Bush administration through two terms, her "authenticity" will be called into question. Because she is neither a hard- nor a soft-core leftist, Rice is considered a "race traitor," a problem special to black people who do not adhere to an agenda from the Black Power era of the late 1960s.

That is the kind of single-mindedness that keeps black Americans out of big-time politics. That is because the "leadership" always seems to be calling for a reservation modeled on Leisure World, not high-quality public education, safer communities and a chance to compete.

Whatever Rice is and whatever she represents, she has the right to be what she wants and has no obligation to repeat the clichés of the civil rights establishment, which have become little more than predictable clouds of hot air. If she and Hillary Clinton were to square off in 2008, that campaign would be one of the most exciting in our time. Let's hope we see it.

Originally published on January 15, 2006