Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- There comes a time in the life of every successful hedge-fund manager when he realizes that his political opinions are seriously undervalued.

For me, that time has been slower in coming than for most. Even after I bought my first jet I thought of myself, politically, as an ordinary American citizen, not some ``thought leader.''

It wasn't until one night, a couple of weeks ago, as I sat alone in my $17 million apartment, that it finally dawned on me: Ordinary people don't have a net worth of $475 million. If my political opinions were as valuable as everything else I've done, it'd be a kind of crime to keep them to myself.

This night of my political awakening started out just like every other night. I was preparing to spend it with a young woman I took to be perfectly rational. She'll remain nameless because I don't want to pretend that I actually caught her name. I like to keep things real.

Anyway, I'd talked her back to my place, persuaded her to shed a certain amount of inhibition and, in general, had the mojo working overtime. Then the clock struck midnight and I checked my Blackberry -- just like I always do.

Maybe it took me longer than it should have to unwind yet another highly successful Japanese yield-curve trade, or maybe this woman was just smarter than your average bear. But while I was gone she figured out how to use all the remotes. And when I walked back into my own bedroom, staring down at me in high def and talking to me in surround sound, was Hillary Clinton.

Keep It Light

Not wanting to spoil the mood, I kept it light. ``Now there's a lady who knows how to use her teeth in a street fight,'' I said.

``You're talking about Hillary?'' asked the woman in a cold tone that I've rarely heard from a woman in my own apartment.

``She smiles when she's angry,'' I said. ``Only it's not a smile. She's using her teeth as fangs.''

In less time than it takes to buy subprime mortgages, the woman was fully clothed and wanting to argue with me about Hillary Clinton. She went on about how powerful men like me didn't understand Hillary, didn't respect Hillary, couldn't accept the idea of a Powerful Woman, etc., etc.

An hour later she was gone.

That was the moment I realized that I might be the one man left in America willing to come out and say what every other man was just thinking. And so for the past two weeks, as a kind of public service, I've paid closer attention to our presidential campaign, so that I might share my views of it with you.

Prepare to Starve

I now have two of them.

Opinion No. 1: Before this thing is over, every straight male in America is going to realize that if Hillary Clinton wins he's looking at years of sexual famine.

As I write these words, millions of ordinary working-class people -- the doctors and lawyers and whatnot -- must be juking and jiving like Wayne Newton to get their wives into the mood only to see their efforts routinely undermined by a stray political comment that they probably didn't even think up themselves, but picked up on the golf course.

The American Female's lack of humor about anything regarding Hillary Clinton has a momentum all its own, with the women inching their backs ever closer up against the wall and the men growing ever more certain that this Clinton woman is a serious problem. It reminds me of a stock market crash, without a natural bottom.

Which brings me to my second point: the so-called issues of these campaigns are overrated. The only two subjects that mean anything in politics, as in life, are sex and money.

Lucre Trumps Lust

In healthy political times money trumps sex -- thank God! Americans as a group vote their perceived financial self- interest. I can hear you saying, ``If that's true, why do a handful of rich keep getting richer and the great masses of Americans struggle to pay their bills?''

And it's true; the policies of our democratic government have generally favored a handful of rich people over the masses of poor people. But that's only because rich people are better at voting. We vote for candidates who actually will make us richer, while poor people vote for candidates who pretend that they are going to make them less poor while, in fact, doing nothing at all to help them. That's why we're rich and they're not.

At any rate, I look around Wall Street and see many signs that our times are not normal -- that sex has overwhelmed money as the issue of primary political importance.

The guys at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., for instance. They gave more money to Hillary -- 113 grand in the last quarter alone -- than to any candidate. I promise you that no male Lehman Brothers trader is under the impression that Hillary Clinton will be good for him financially.

Render Unto Hillary

Those people didn't give that money to Hillary because they liked her, or even because they hoped she might win. They gave it to her to mollify their wives. Family values suddenly matter. These are lean times in big Wall Street firms and keeping the marriage together is cheaper than divorce.

An even more troubling sign is the rise of Barack Obama. Here's a guy we all know is going to raise taxes on hedge-fund managers without offering them a dime in kickbacks. But when hedge-fund guys hear him talk they forget, maybe for the first time in their entire lives, their own narrow interests. Ask them why and they can't explain it. They just go all gooey on you.

In my experience this is how people behave when they're thinking about sex. Seriously, Obama has got me wondering if a lot of the guys in my industry have suddenly gone a little gay on me. It's not like any of them would ever actually do it with a dude; I wouldn't go that far...yet.

Flamers, Cavemen

But there's a spectrum on which the total flamer is a one and a total caveman is a 10. Let's just say I'm less surprised than I might have been that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is now paying for its traders to get sex-change operations. Objectively speaking, I've always been a 10 -- and so have most of my colleagues. Now, I see that look in their eyes as they talk about ``Barack this'' and ``Barack that'' and I'm thinking that a lot of them are, at best, 8 1/2s.

In the long run that's an emotional weakness I can exploit the next time I take the other side of one of their trades. But in the short run it's not a good sign for my class. Or for America. America needs its rich people. And if we aren't rich, who will be?

(Michael Lewis is an author, most recently of ``The Blind Side,'' a Bloomberg News columnist, and not a hedge-fund trader. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Michael Lewis at mlewis1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 11, 2008 00:34 EST