US may have a woman president

I arrived in New York via London for a couple of meetings with our principals, managing to squeeze in a Broadway hit The Odd Couple, a revival of Neil Simon’s comedy starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. The weather has been fluctuating from 30 degrees to 50 degrees and it’s been windy and cold this week. Like the weather, the political climate has been going up and down. But people are beginning to talk, saying that it looks like Hillary Clinton is getting ready to run for president in 2008. On the other hand, although she keeps saying she won’t run, Republicans are seriously looking at Condoleezza Rice as their next presidential candidate. Even First Lady Laura Bush had said so, intimating that she expected to see the first woman president of the United States within the next decade.

Perhaps the reason why people are talking more and more about a US female president is because the TV series "Commander in Chief" is such a big hit here in the United States. The show landed in the Top 10 most watched program list on its first week, and the interest was raised even further because its star Geena Davis won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a drama series. The success of the show is making many Americans start to believe that a woman could indeed become their next president. As some would say, it could be a case of life imitating art.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is an ambitious woman who is a staunch advocate of children and women’s rights. She’s heavy into education and health reforms. During her husband’s presidency, she had her share of criticisms because of her perceived "meddling" in the White House. But Hillary is a go-getter who earned the respect of American wives for standing by her man in the wake of the Monica-gate scandal that rocked Washington. She made a lot of firsts, including the distinction of being the first and so far the only presidential wife ever to be elected Senator. If she wins in 2008, pundits say that Bill Clinton should get used to being referred to as "Hillary’s husband."

Of course, Condoleezza Rice is an exceptionally intelligent person who speaks fluent Russian and was dubbed by Forbes as the world’s most powerful woman. She grew up in Alabama at the height of racial segregation where Ku Klux Klanners terrorized black neighborhoods and pitched homemade bombs at black homes and churches. Rice said the experience had taught her to be determined against adversity, and the need to be "twice as good" as non-minorities. In the book Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story, lent to me by my partner Max Soliven – which he bought in Paris – Condoleezza Rice was 10 years old when her parents John and Angelena took her for a visit to Washington, D.C. While they were strolling along the 1100 block on Pennsylvania Avenue, and as they approached the fence of the White House, the young girl turned to her father and said, "Daddy, I’m barred out of there now because of the color of my skin. But one day, I’ll be in that house." Little did we know that not only was she determined to work at the White House and become the adviser of Bush I on Soviet affairs, and subsequently as National Security Adviser for Bush II, but it’s beginning to look like what she actually meant was that she was going to be a resident of the White House.

In a Newsweek interview, Condi Rice said, "My parents had me absolutely convinced that ‘you may not be able to have a hamburger at Woolworth’s but you can be president of the United States’." Her parents had tried to insulate her from the prejudices brought about by segregation, and encouraged Condi to be the best, instilling in her the belief that education is the best way to do this.

Whether we like it or not, it would also be a race of color – between one black woman and one who is very much a Caucasian. While this may not be so overt, of course the issue of color would still be there at the back of American minds. Both are very strong women, intelligent, over-achieving and to a certain degree ambitious. And it’s no secret that Hillary Clinton was in fact the woman literally and figuratively behind Bill Clinton’s presidency. Condi Rice could have one advantage though – and that is, people are ready for someone like her. She is even jokingly referred to as the "Hillary Killer," and in fact, ardent supporters have put up an unofficial web site for her. Condi’s color also makes the idea of her becoming US president even more colorful.

The world seems to be moving towards having women leaders. More and more females are getting elected to sensitive, if not the top, positions of leadership. The more famous ones were Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and India’s Indira Gandhi, and now there is Angela Merkel, Germany’s first woman chancellor. Finland has President Tarja Halonen who just won her second six-year term; New Zealand has Prime Minister Helen Clark; Chile elected Michelle Bachelet as its first woman president and now Africa has Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first woman head of state of Liberia.

But in the Philippines, it looks like we were way ahead of the trend by having two female presidents. An informal survey seems to indicate that we’re now ready to go back to having a male president. After all, Filipinos fancy themselves to be "macho" men. The truth is, Filipinos are basically "pa-macho" but in reality they’re known to be "macho-nurin." The survey seems to be correct perhaps because we had turbulent years with the female presidents – Cory Aquino having nine coup attempts, and GMA with calls for her resignation and another impeachment coming up. And not to forget the July 2003 Oakwood mutiny.

While this country seems to have gotten stuck in time in ousting female presidents like the present "Black and White Movement" – in the United States, almost 38 years since the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the Americans are now ready for the first time to choose between a "black or white" female president.

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