Ready for a McCain-Clinton face-off?

The other night I was at a dinner in New York where 20 or so journalistic heavy hitters were chatting about the next presidential election.

"How many of you think Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president?" asked the conversation meister of the evening. Not a single hand was raised.

"Well, if she did get the Democratic nomination," he went on, "could she be beaten by some Republican like (Virginia senator) George Allen or (Kansas senator) Sam Brownback?" Not a single hand was raised.

On the Democratic side, the present political handicapping is that Hillary is the front-runner and that Democrats like Joe Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards and Al Gore (Al Gore! Are you kidding?) who dream of wresting the nomination away from her had better get real.

On the Republican side, the present wisdom is that if Hillary should get her party's nomination, the Republicans had better run someone who could not be blown away by Clintonian charisma. (Yes, Bill would be right there beside her.)

Able candidates among others whose names are in play include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Nebraska's Sen. Chuck Hagel and South Dakota's Sen. Lindsey Graham. But conversation inevitably turns to Arizona's Sen. John McCain, whose directness sometimes disturbs his conservative colleagues but whose valor while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam enamors him to many voters. When some Republican Party operatives engage in political hallucination, they whisper of a dream ticket of McCain for president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for vice president. But Rice has never run for political office, and her frequent denials of interest in running for the presidency or vice presidency make that prospect fanciful.

(A cautionary word about speculation by theoretically knowledgeable journalistic mavens: When I was on the Pulitzer Prize board, Scotty Reston of the New York Times made us all write down our predictions about the coming year's presidential election in which Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford. Reston kept our ballots until we met again after the election. Jimmy Carter had won. Gleefully, Reston produced our predictions of a year or so ago. By a wide majority, these journalistic "experts" had opined that Carter had no chance. For obvious reasons, I refuse to divulge how I voted.)

The presidential election is more than two years away, and much could happen by then, not the least with the U.S. economy, or in foreign lands like Iraq, Iran or North Korea, or with the world's oil supply, or in the inaccessible border lands of Afghanistan and Pakistan where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding.