Elizabeth Rodham Wurtzel

Elizabeth Wurtzel, who enrolled in Yale Law School some years ago after some intemperate remarks about 9/11 and has been remarkably quiescent since, has emerged with an intriguing piece in today's Wall Street Journal about Hillary Clinton.

The piece, of course, is far more about Elizabeth Wurtzel than it is about Hillary Clinton. No matter what Ms. Wurtzel writes, it always comes down to being about Elizabeth Wurtzel. She could write an article about aborigines in Australia and find a way to make it all about her. That's what made More, Now, Again one of the best books I've read in the past few years - and what makes this article so myopically wrongheaded.

The gist of Ms. Wurtzel's argument, once you get past the "this-is-really-all-about-me" paragraphs that precede it, is that what's currently happening to Hillary Clinton is somehow emblematic of what happens to women who try to get ahead in the world -- they get put in their place by men who just plain don't deserve the credit for all the hard work that women do.

Hillary is grotesque because she has gotten to where she is, indeed, by playing it every which way -- by being a career woman when that made sense, a wife when that was advantageous; working on her husband's behalf when that seemed the way to the top, then working for herself when the coast was clear; standing by her husband despite infidelities because she loved him, while belittling Tammy Wynette for offering the very advice she was ostensibly taking; pooh-poohing the prospect of having teas and baking cookies instead of having a profession, and then becoming first lady and having teas as a profession for a full eight years. Yes, Hillary Clinton will do anything, bless her heart: That is how you amass power as a woman. We hate her, because she exposes the sordid business of having it all for the grotesque thing that it actually is.

Get the feeling that more than a little projection is going on here? Did somebody get passed over for the Yale Law Journal?

Wurtzel closes her piece with a stirring peoration:

Right now, it looks like Barack Obama will be the nominee. Hillary Clinton is unlikely to win any more primaries for a few more weeks, and at that point, it may be too late for this championship season. But pundits count her out at their own peril. That woman is a force of nature. One of these years, Hillary is going to the White House. If she has to win every single vote one by one, she'll do it. If she has to take hostages, hold a gun to the head of every voter as he enters the booth, she'll do that too. She may even cry.

Never underestimate Hillary Clinton.

Sounds a little frightening, doesn't it? It doesn't seem to occur to Ms. Wurtzel that that is precisely the point -- that Hillary Clinton's near-psychotic Will to Power (or at least that's how it's perceived by many voters) is exactly what's going to keep her out of the White House, both now and in the foreseeable future. Because people know or at least strongly suspect that politics for Hillary Clinton is not about public service or about working to make life better for the American people. It's about power. Nothing else. Power for its own sake. Wanting it, lusting after it, being willing to do or say anything to acquire it. Voters want to vote for someone who makes it about them -- for Senator Clinton, clearly, it's all about her, and nothing else.

No wonder Elizabeth Wurtzel identifies with her.

It's becoming obvious that the tipping point in the 2008 campaign was the South Carolina primary. The Clintons showed a really ugly side of themselves in that race -- and Hillary has been feeling the effects of it ever since. She won some big states on Super Tuesday for no other reason than the clock ran out on Obama -- if those primaries were to be held today, he'd win them easily. I'm done with making predictions in this race, but it does not look good for Hillary Clinton. After all, if she's going to run the country the way she's run her campaign so far, why would anyone in their right mind want to vote for her?

In retrospect, I'm starting to wonder whether or not we'll look back and say that Senator Clinton's big mistake was in sitting out the 2004 election and not challenging George W. Bush. Granted, she had only been a senator for a relatively short time, but that doesn't seem to be stopping Barack Obama at the moment. Maybe by being prudent, by not grabbing the reins of the party when they needed someone to stand up to an incumbent president and take a risk on behalf of the American people, she lost her best chance at the White House, Because if she doesn't make it now, I don't see her making it later. Assuming (and granted it's a presumptuous assumption) that Barack Obama wins in the fall and serves two terms, that would mean the next shot a Democrat would have at the White House is in 2016, when Hillary Clinton will be 69 years old.

Do we really think Hillary Clinton will improve with age?

If Hillary Clinton's campaign flames out -- as it has every appearance of doing -- she will have no one to blame but herself. No matter what Elizabeth Wurtzel might think.

Tom Moran