WOMEN OF THE YEAR

While political pundits tout 1992 as the Year of the Woman, Hollywood, for once, is a step ahead of them. A slate of election-season projects is due out in October, casting women in political crises drawn from headlines past, present, and possibly future. Blair Brown plays a ''Norma Schwarzkopf'' figure (she's a three-star general) running for high office in Lifetime's Majority Rule. Brown knows the idea of an American woman campaigning for President-let alone winning-is still something that could only happen in the movies. ''Before I die, it's something I hope I'll see,'' she says. In HBO's Running Mates, Diane Keaton portrays a woman who gets a very different view of the political process when she begins dating presidential candidate Ed Harris-and suddenly finds her private past held up for public scrutiny. Although the script was written long before this year's campaign, the movie has ''parallels to (Gov. Bill) Clinton and all the stuff he was going - through earlier this year,'' says director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Brideshead Revisited). Scandal is also the focus of CBS' The President's Child. Donna Mills plays a TV journalist fighting to protect her 7-year-old illegitimate son from campaign adviser William Devane, who is trying to keep the boy's birth a secret to shield his father, a U.S. Senator running for President.