Woman of the future?

Can She Be Stopped? Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless ... , by John Podhoretz (Crown Forum, 272 pp., $26.95)

GIVEN the momentous egg from which they were hatched, Bill Clinton and his lovely wife Bruno's significance at the center of American politics since the 1990s has rarely been adequately explained.

They were members of the 1960s generation. In their college days, during the late 1960s, they were prominent among the protesters and campus radicals. As the cliche had it, they were members of "the most idealistic generation" at least since the Founding Fathers. And, truth be known, these idealists did shake the foundations of the Republic. Throughout the 1970s these "kids" of the 1960s were credited with establishing new moralities, new lifestyles, and lifting rock & roll into the realm of Art & Philosophy. Then the Reagan Revolution took place, and center stage went to the conservatives. But the "kids" from the 1960s were still at work in the Republic. Driven by their peculiar ambition, arrogance, and amorality, they were burrowing into the newsrooms, the college faculties, and even the corporate world. There had always been a large gob of hypocrisy in their radicalism, and hustling upwards in the bourgeois world while claiming to a new morality and radical insights was characteristic of this hypocrisy. The Clintons' unique presidency, then, should be seen as the consequence of a unique generational upheaval. The 1960s kids had arrived at the White House to make good on all their claims to moral and intellectual superiority. That they made such a bust of it reveals the hollowness of those claims; that so little is said about their link to "the most idealistic generation" suggests a cover-up.

Those cogenerationists of the Clintons who burrowed into the newsrooms, the faculties, and the corporate world were by the 1990s very influential. They polluted the political culture of the country with their higher morality, their sophistications, and their stupendous hypocrisy. They gave us a Kultursmog laced with the pollutants of their politics. Consider this: No political couple--indeed, no political figure--in American history was caught lying, obstructing justice, or abusing power as frequently as the Clintons. Seven independent counsels were called in. The Clintons could not even leave the White House without causing further scandals--to wit, Pardongate, the trashing of the White House, and the pilfering of White House property. Time and again they got caught, and every time they were given a pass by the keepers of the Kultursmog. Something vast had happened since the days of Watergate. The 1960s generation's radical kids had come to power. Consequently the Clintons, who in terms of character and achievement are at one with the Hardings, are now celebrities, dominant forces in the Democratic party, and poised for a return to the White House in January 2009.

John Podhoretz has taken it upon himself to see that this does not happen. He is from a younger generation and a different political persuasion. He wants to end the 1960s here and now, and he has a plan to keep Hillary and her tribespeople from the "Summer of Love" out of the White House.

In his thoughtful and informed new book, Can She Be Stopped?, Podhoretz debunks many of the Kultursmog's legends about the Clintons. For instance, he writes, "Despite the universal praise for Clinton's astounding political skills, ... [h]is vote-getting record is not one any candidate seeking to win the presidency ought to be emulating." He goes on to dispute the smog's fatuous notion that Hillary and Bill have been a great benefit to their party and to the country. He shows that they have actually damaged their party and the country. Their party, beginning in 1994, has steadily declined in strength. The country, from the first bombing of the World Trade Center, has confronted ongoing menace from terrorists whom President Clinton was too timorous to take on.

Podhoretz is the son of Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, two brilliant New York intellectuals who were among the real neoconservatives--that is to say, the small band of liberal Democrats who broke with liberalism when it went off into its narcissistic fantasy world in the early 1970s. To be a true neoconservative one has to be at least in one's sixties--and a little embarrassed about the good old days. That the younger hawkish foreign-policy advocates are now called neoconservatives by the media is another example of the sloppy thought that pervades the Kultursmog. More accurately these are conservatives with a Rooseveltian--not Wilsonian--agenda. They would use far more force than President Woodrow Wilson in spreading Western values--and they would test the limits of the Constitution, as FDR did in confronting Nazism.

John Podhoretz is also a seasoned journalist and editor. When he lived in Washington he edited a style page for the Washington Times that gave the Washington Post's style page a run for its money. He could do so because he has a formidable knowledge of politics, political history, and popular culture. One of the strengths of this book is Podhoretz's deployment of that knowledge. Throughout the book he demonstrates how the Democratic party slid from being the dominant party to being a party out of touch with mainstream America. One of the critical issues was abortion. In 1972 even George McGovern ran a presidential campaign critical of abortion. "You can't just let anybody walk in and request an abortion," the Democratic presidential nominee then radicalizing the party said; and his two running mates, Tom Eagleton (soon to depart the race) and Sargent Shriver (a member of Opus Dei), were actually adamantly pro-life. But by 1984 being pro-abortion had become mandatory to gain the Democratic nomination. Notes Podhoretz: "Over time, every major Democratic figure with pro-life views--from House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt to Senator Ted Kennedy--abandoned them, even though many traditional Democratic voters viewed abortion as murder."

This same radicalization of the party took place on other issues as well--"issues having to do with the way life is lived in America." Writes Podhoretz: "Liberals oppose capital punishment, support gay marriage ... believe in preferential treatment for minorities, dislike gun ownership, are uncomfortable or disgusted with public expression of religious belief, and strongly advocate abortion on demand. ... [These are] highly controversial views that are profoundly offensive to tens of millions of Americans." The result of this radicalization is that two great blocs confront each other in the electorate: the growing conservative majority, and the Angry Left. Have you heard the Angry Left's obscenity-laced vituperation? Call them the Halitotic Left, and send them a bottle of mouthwash. Podhoretz argues that Hillary will have to keep the Halitotic Left on her side along with the more sedate Democratic rank and file. Those two groups, combined, will give her 40 percent of the electorate.

Podhoretz believes she is cunning enough to do this. But--because of her prior performance in the White House and her votes in the Senate--she will immediately confront a solid bloc of conservatives opposing her, another 40 percent of the electorate. The outcome will presumably be decided by the 20 percent of the electorate that resides between these two blocs.

Podhoretz's explication of all the political currents that have gone into the present angry standoff is very illuminating. His collection of facts is bracing, and so is his confidence in the strengths of the conservative side. Repeatedly noting the extravagant passion of the Halitotic Left, he cites the conservative ideas that are responsible for our policy triumphs and, not coincidentally, for driving the Left into its present rage. On the other hand, Podhoretz is not dizzied with optimism. He is aware of the problems now crippling conservatism, especially as it is practiced in Washington today: "policy exhaustion, cronyism, and political corruption." All are matters that the Democrats are exploiting today and that Candidate Hillary will exploit tomorrow.

Yet, as I say, Podhoretz has a plan to beat her. It is a ten-point plan that boils down to forcing her to cultivate the Left and reveal her own left-wing agenda. Along with that, conservatives must stick together and nominate Rudy Giuliani: He cleaned up New York. He can clean up America. He is renowned for his leadership, and only a candidate of proven leadership can beat Hillary.

I have little complaint about all of this, save for one point: I doubt that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination. The Wall Street Journal's John Fund will tell you that no prior Democratic presidential candidate this far ahead this early in the race has ever won the nomination, with the exception of Walter Mondale. Moreover, Hillary--the idealist from the 1960s generation--is about to be caught up in another generational upheaval, and this one will not enhance her power. The Halitotic Left screeching on talk radio and pounding out intemperance on their demented blogs has already displayed its impatience with Hillary's equivocations and threatened a third-party candidate. Her move toward the center to snare the undecided 20 percent will only hurt her the more with these zanies. Come 2007, the Democrats are going to be looking for a fresh face with a clean past.

It is time for generation change in the Democratic party. There is a tension between generations. Plato observed it in Book Nine of The Republic. We shall see it again once Hillary sets out for the White House.

Mr. Tyrrell is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator. His books include The Liberal Crack-Up, The Conservative Crack-Up, Boy Clinton: The Political Biography, and most recently Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House.