Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

HILLARY AND TRICKY DICK: BIRDS OF A FEATHER?
by Terry Heath, 2006

No 20th Century American politician re-invented themselves on more occasions to appease the ever-changing mood of the fickle American voter than Richard Milhous Nixon, this country’s 37th president. But our late, lamented leader now has competition in the re-invention department by someone who is busy creating a new political persona so they can make their own run for the presidency in 2008. So who is this person doing a complete political makeover? None other than former First Lady and now New York U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton who appears to be ready to fulfill her life-long dream of becoming this country’s first woman president.

Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon. We have always been led to believe that they were political opposites in their philosophies and potential governing styles. But are they really? They have more in common than we originally suspected as the nation prepares for the upcoming presidential election.

Hillary has had but one ambition her entire life. To be the first female President of the United States. And now we can presume she’s finally about to make that run for the job she’s always dreamed and schemed to accomplish once she gets the minor task of getting re-elected to the U.S. Senate out of the way this November.

She’s been married for three decades to a man who himself served for eight years as our nation’s leader so she has had an insider’s view of what it’s like to be in the bubble of being our nation’s chief executive and knows the pressures that job offers. But the president she’s most likely to emulate when making her own run for the nation’s top job is not her husband who held that position but one of his predecessors and, ironically, the man whom Hillary helped chase from that same office.

It’s seeming obvious to everyone that Hillary is going to make that run for the Democratic Party nomination in 2008 now that George W. Bush is being termed out. Think about that for history. We’ve had a Bush, then a Clinton, another Bush and now we face the possibly of another Clinton. Not to change the subject too much but does this mean we get stuck with Jeb Bush in 2012 or 2016, only then to be followed by Chelsea a few years later?

But getting back to ‘Thrillary Hillary’ and ‘Tricky Dick.’ They do seem to have a lot in common as they made their climb up the political world in seeking this nation’s highest job. Nixon was always adjusting his beliefs for political advantage, both when he was in office and out; some of which worked for his benefit while other changes did not.

So, if Hillary is going to be successful in her quest to be this country’s first female president, she is going to have to re-position herself into a centrist politician just like Nixon did forty years earlier when he returned from the wilderness of national political defeat at the hands of John Kennedy in 1960 and got himself elected as chief executive in 1968 while the nation was in turmoil.

Nixon was always willing to modify his core beliefs for political expediency when necessary. When Dwight Eisenhower selected him as his vice-presidential running mate in 1952 the young California senator was forced to abandon many of his hard-line anti-Communist beliefs to appear in agreement with the more moderate one-time five-star General of the Army. And it was this same staunch anti-Communist who opened the door for relations with Red China in 1972 and began nuclear weapon reduction talks with the Soviet Union the same year as he wound down the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War.

It’s not generally known now but Hillary was heavily involved in Nixon’s impeachment hearings by the House Judiciary Committee in 1973. She was an investigative lawyer on that committee’s staff and constantly made claims that a sitting president could and should be removed from public office for malfeasance. Rumors have always circulated that a plan she allegedly helped to develop was to get Nixon from office as soon as possible after Spiro Agnew resigned as vice-president in 1973 to get Ted Kennedy into the Oval Office through an appointment as vice-president when Democrat Speaker of the House Carl Albert took over as president.

The plan would then be that Kennedy would become the nation’s chief executive after Albert would step down via alleged health reasons. If that’s true then it’s obvious that Hillary was politically scheming as far back as the mid-1970’s. Unfortunately for her, she later had to worry that her arguments on Nixon’s possible impeachment on moral lapses could be used against her husband during his own 1998-99 impeachment proceedings.

Only Nixon and Franklin Roosevelt were elected four times on a national ticket so Tricky Dick knew what it took to appeal to the middle of the road voter. Hillary got to spend eight years in the White House on the coattails of her husband with his two wins and recognizes she has to reach the moderates on both ends of the political spectrum if she wants to do the same. So she’s going to have to spend the time between November, 2006 after her presumed re-election as senator to the summer of 2007 to prepare herself and the country for her run for the big office by portraying herself as a viable, middle of the road nationwide candidate. Nixon used the time after the 1966 mid-term election to travel the country and gather support for his successful 1968 comeback. She’s going to have to do the same.

What will Hillary’s political platform be in 2008? An unrepentant liberal? A moderate? Willing to be a pro-border enforcement, anti-illegal immigrant candidate? She surely doesn’t expect that she should be elected just for the honor of being our nation’s first female president. She must have a strong platform with ideas, not straddle the fence and take both sides of an issue and hope for the best from the skeptical voters.

During Bill Clinton’s eight years in office he talked as if he was a centrist, yet governed like the typical tax and spend Democrat. It’s doubtful that the American people will believe that same campaign strategy in 2008 by another Clinton.

So what would Bill’s role be in a 2008 Hillary run? Pat Nixon obviously played the supporting role of the faithful candidate’s spouse in Nixon’s 1968 win. But Slick Willie is too much of a media attention freak to do the same so Hillary must find some way to mitigate his larger than life presence on the campaign trail. It’s not yet clear if the public’s fading memory of his eight years in the White House will be helpful or a hindrance when she makes her run as he still has the baggage of being the only elected president ever to be impeached by Congress.

Consider Hillary’s actions following the 2004 presidential election and the upcoming 2006 mid-term contest in which she must win to keep her senate seat. She’s talking tough on homeland security and reducing the number of illegal aliens coming into the country because even she realizes that it is inevitable another attack on American soil will take place and wants to be ready to claim that she warned us. So she realizes she has to change the perception of her own extremist leftist beliefs to millions of suspicious American voters in the middle of the voting spectrum if she has any chance to win.

Nixon had to appeal to those in the middle and to the left for his win. But Hillary will have to earn the trust of the so-called conservative ‘red state’ voters who chose George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 to accomplish the same thing. The only way for her to do that is to move to the right of her current core beliefs, yet not go to far and risk losing her base support on the left with these obvious changes.

Can Hillary win in 2008? Bill Clinton won twice on a centrist Democratic platform but he benefited from Ross Perot’s Reform Party run that divided the Republican voters who were less than satisfied at then President George H.W. Bush and later with Senator Bob Dole. It’s doubtful she will get that same opportunity, as the presumed Republican Party nominee will not be bound to defend the policies of the outgoing Bush administration. So she must model herself less like hubby Bill and more like her early nemesis Richard Nixon who successfully appealed to the ‘silent majority’ constituents in his 1968 triumph. If she can reach the mainstream voters with a similar platform in 2008 then anything is possible. Can you already hear the musical tune ‘Hail to the She-Chief?’

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com