2008: The Battle for a Generation By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

HILLARY CLINTON is about the last major Democrat from the left-wing of her generation capable of taking on her generation's right-wing for the presidency. The year 2008 will witness Hillary and her fellow opportunistic 1960s student protesters known as the Coat and Tie Radicals campaigning against the young conservatives who in the late 1960s were dismissed as negligible but a decade later manned the Reagan Revolution. It is going to be an epochal match-up and a very bitter one.

Though the generation that fought World War II is called the "Greatest Generation," the 1960s generation is the most momentous political generation of the 20th century. Now its left and right are squaring off for one last battle to claim title to their generation. Whoever triumphs, it will be as memorable a victory as Franklin Roosevelt's defeat of President Herbert Hoover or as Ronald Reagan's victory over President Jimmy Carter. What will make it even more momentous is that Hillary now represents the political heritage of liberalism that Roosevelt began. Though in the Clintons' hands that liberalism has been disfigured, Hillary embodies an Old Order that is desperate for victory. The looming battle between the two wings of the 1960s generation -- one championing the Roosevelt heritage, the Old Order, the other championing the Reagan heritage, a New Order -- explains much of the bitterness of contemporary politics.

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