IT’S perhaps the least politically correct question imaginable: Can a woman win the presidency of the United States?

While the offensive quality of the question will prevent it from being addressed head-on in the next couple of years, the canny Clintons surely understand that they need to deal with it if Hillary is to win the presidency in 2008.

By far the greatest problem for Hillary, or any woman, in securing the presidency is that the qualities many people seek in the president have always been associated, fairly or unfairly, with being male.

A president is, first and foremost, a leader. And the very image that the word “leader” invokes is a masculine image – a fatherly image. Someone tough and decisive. Some who acts, not someone who is acted upon. Whether or not these are qualities possessed by democratic leaders, whether or not these are qualities possessed by most men, doesn’t matter. The body politic is very nearly hard-wired into seeing them as male qualities.

This is even more true at a time when national security is a paramount concern, as it is now. The very term “national security” evokes a sense of peril from without that requires a strong protector, a guard to keep the barbarians from storming the gates. The act of providing security may require a confrontational posture, and a willingness to fight if necessary. A nation at war is a nation reliant on testosterone for its defense and for the successful resolution of its aims.

THOSE indefinable “leadership” quali ties are the reason many quietly doubt Hillary’s chances in 2008. After all, we’ve been a nation at war since September 2001, the ultimate challenge in leadership. And to the extent that George W. Bush has had a successful presidency, it’s because people have associated him with strong leadership – by which they probably mean he is willing to use force and stick to his guns. (Bush led John Kerry by nearly 20 points when pollsters asked about leadership qualities).

And Bush’s political problems in his second term are entirely due to the growing sense among the American people (including some Republicans) that his leadership isn’t as strong as it had been after 9/11. That is, Bush’s problem isn’t that he’s seen as not enough of a liberal, but as not enough of a tough guy.

This is why many believe nominating a woman – nominating Hillary – will play into the GOP’s hands. If the public is looking for a tough guy, won’t the public want a guy?

Maybe. On the other hand, if there were ever an American woman politician who could pass for a tough guy, it’s Hillary Clinton.

START with the purely cosmetic. The fact that she never quite figured out what to do with her hair or her clothes, the fact that she’s not a raving beauty, and the fact that she has a manner that is almost pathologically unsexy all work in her favor – just as they worked against her as a traditional First Lady.

Those qualities have created an image of Hillary Clinton as unfeminine. This connects her to the successful female chief executives in other countries. Golda Meir was a hard-edged old broad, Indira Gandhi a dominatrix, Margaret Thatcher a battleaxe.

These sorts of characterizations may sound sexist – OK, they are sexist. But are they all that different from calling a male politician a “son of a bitch,” a term many people assign admiringly to politicians they like? Being seen as a “son of a bitch” may have gotten Rudy Giuliani into some hot water during his mayoralty – but at the same time his nasty demeanor gave him some distinct negotiating advantages with his adversaries on behalf of the causes and policies he held dear.

So what does all this mean for Hillary? Simple. Male pols these days have to show they have a touch of the classically feminine about them – compassion, caring, nurturing – in order (it’s thought) to appeal to women. Female pols need to show they can be manly. In this way, Hillary’s lack of femininity is the first, maybe the only, real political advantage her feminist toughness affords her. And it helps explain why she must be taken seriously as a powerful threat to Republicans and conservatives.

She possesses a hard-to-describe style that may be the perfect blend for the first woman president.

Hillary possesses a very complex mien. She is almost always calm and composed, but radiates an icy hauteur. When she speaks, she delivers her words in a loud monotone that possesses none of the breathy flirtatiousness with which so many female public figures try to seduce their audiences – and her tone ensures that the words she speaks enter and leave the ear without sticking there even for a nanosecond. She conducts herself in a fashion that seems almost to rebuff and ward off an affectionate response from someone who is watching at a distance.

THESE don’t seem like particularly at tractive qualities for a politician run ning in a national election. And they wouldn’t be – if she were a man.

A man running for president has to have at least a twinkle in his eye – but for a woman to become president, I think she needs almost exactly the opposite. She needs to be flat. She needs to be cold. She needs to have a hard, almost unbreakable shell. She needs to seem unambiguously comfortable with wielding power, because she may have to go toe-to-toe with Kim Jong Il. She has to be a little scary, a little intimidating, a little off-putting so that she gives the impression that she can handle the crises and catastrophes that come a president’s way.

For a woman to be president, she will have to demonstrate in her own person that she has transcended the qualities of traditional womanliness.

(I realize that sentence is guaranteed to bring the wrath of God down on my head. It is not acceptable, in many quarters, to explain why voters may have an instinctive hostile reaction to a female candidate. Yet most people will never confess their not-exactly-rational feeling on this to pollsters, or even to themselves. But people do interesting things in the privacy of the voting booth. And if they feel that a female presidential candidate is too much of a “woman,” they will vote her down.)

THE qualities that make Hillary Clin ton a not especially likable, even a dislikable, public figure are pretty good ones for the first serious female candidate for president. For here’s the bitter truth:

The first woman president must not seem over-emotional, or flighty, or guided by intuition rather than reason. She must not seem demure or delicate, nor can she seem brassy and sassy. She must not appear to be in a girlish quest of a strong man to help make things right. Above all, she must not seek to excuse any flaws in her conduct by suggesting that they are due to her being a woman – from the natural excuse, like a hormone rush jangling her emotions, to a political excuse, like an unjust society that won’t give the XX chromosome an even break.

Just for vulgarity’s sake, let me put it this way: She’s got to be a bitch. And Hillary is a bitch. Her challenge will be to play up her anti-feminine qualities without being completely without charm and appeal.

Republicans and conservatives are sure she has neither charm nor appeal. And indeed, she doesn’t have much. But she probably has enough.

Adapted for The Post by John Podhoretz from his new book, “Can She Be Stopped?”