Why not Hillary? She can win the White House.

• Author: Cannon, Carl M.
• Position: Hillary Rodham Clinton

In 1978, while covering California politics, I found myself on election night at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, which was serving as a kind of election central. Waiting for the returns to come in, I was sitting in the lobby having a drink with my father--who, then as now, was the leading expert on Ronald Reagan. As if on cue, the former actor and ex-California governor came striding into the hotel. Even then Reagan looked the part: wide-shouldered, flanked by a security detail, sporting his trademark blue serge suit, every black hair in place.

The only thing missing, I thought, was the Marine Corps Band.

No one back east took Reagan nearly as seriously as he seemed to be taking himself. Despite a devoted following among what were then known as Goldwater Republicans, the Washington cognoscenti casually dismissed Reagan as too conservative, too old, a B-movie actor who once played second fiddle to a chimpanzee. "Who does he think he is?" I asked my dad. "The president of the United States?"

"No," came the reply. "He thinks he's the next president of the United States." After a pause, he added, "And he might be."

I remember that vignette every time a political sage says authoritatively that Hillary Rodham Clinton will "never" be president.

This is a particularly entrenched bit of conventional wisdom, which seems to have metastasized into a kind of secret handshake. If you "know" Clinton can't be president, you're a member of the Washington in-crowd. If you don't, you're an outsider, some boob from the sticks of, I don't know, Sacramento or somewhere. Suburban Chicago, maybe. You know the rap: She's too liberal, too polarizing, a feminist too threatening to male voters. Too much baggage. Too ... Clinton.

And these are Democrats talking. Bizarrely, the party's insiders are going out of their way to tear down the credentials and prospects of one of their rare superstars. Conservative columnist Robert Novak ran into this phenomenon recently while speaking to eight local Democratic politicians in Los Angeles. Novak told them matter-of-factly that Hillary was the odds-on favorite to be their party's 2008 nominee--and that no one was in second place. Novak was surprised by their reaction: Not one was for Mrs. Clinton. Why? "They think she is a loser," said one of the Democrats.

With some exceptions, the journalistic pack seems nearly as negative about Hillary Clinton's chances. I'm a charter member of an informal lunch group of writers who runs the gamut from conservative to liberal, and each month when we meet, Hillary's name arises. Around the table it goes: She can't be elected in a general election; men aren't willing to vote for a woman like Hillary; women don't think much of her marriage--or her, for staying in it; which red state could she possibly carry? What swing voter would she convince? Each month, I marshaled my arguments in favor of Hillary's candidacy, until finally I began sparing my friends the whole rap by just noting--for the minutes of the meeting, as it were--that I disagree with them.

Perhaps my lunch mates, those worried activist Democrats, and the majority of Washington pundits are correct. But I don't think so.

They certainly weren't right about Reagan.

Conservatives (and liberals) would consider it heresy to compare Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton. And Reagan is certainly a hard act to follow. He combined Main Street sensibilities and a soothing Middle America persona with an uplifting vision of America's place in the world that earned him a stunningly decisive victory in 1980--and 60 percent of the vote when he ran for reelection four years later. Sen. Clinton is a more polarizing figure, in more polarized times. Yet Clinton, like Reagan, can lay claim to the passions of die-hard grassroots members of her party. With the exception of incumbents and vice presidents, no candidate late since Reagan has had a hammerlock on his or her party's nomination this long before the election. And like Reagan, the charisma gap between her and any would-be challengers in her own party is palpable.

Of course, the question is not whether she can win the primary. Most Democrats concede the primary is probably hers for the taking. "I don't know how you heat her for the Democratic nomination," former Sen. Bob Kerry told New York magazine. "She's a rock star." But that, as the cognoscenti see it, is the problem. She can't lose the primary and she can't win the general election. And so they look vainly for an alternative--Warner? Biden? Bayh? Oh my!--always circling back to the same despairing fear of another four years in the political wilderness. Democrats have raised this kind of defeatism in a high art. But it's time for Democrats to soap out of it and take a fresh look at the hand they've been dealt. Hillary Rodhan Clinton can win the general election...