We need a woman prez to clean up the mess

GEENA DAVIS will assume office as president of the United States on Tuesday, and that’s all right with me. I’ve had it with the testosterone-fueled leaders here and around the world who know how to pull a trigger or drop a bomb but are otherwise clueless when it comes to leadership. A woman has always led me, and I like it just fine.

Unfortunately, Davis’ ascendancy to the White House is only a television series, but it has already precipitated debate about who might be the first female president. Arguing about it in our household made my personal leader, Cinelli, so angry I thought she might have me whacked. Italians have no patience with dissent.

The subject came up because of a photograph of Condoleeza Rice on the cover of the AARP magazine. I mentioned casually that she was a pretty smart lady and the spit hit the fan, as we used to say in the Marines with a slight variation. My comment was a simple observation about a woman with academic credits, not a ringing endorsement of her politics, but Cinelli sees her as Bush’s alter ego, and she’ll have none of that.

She’s a Hillary Clinton backer and for good reason. Hillary is also smart and academically qualified, as well as being one hell of a fundraiser. She has raised zillions for whatever might lie ahead, not the least of which is a possible race for the Oval Office, where her husband distinguished himself, both as a president and a hunk.

Disregarding Bill Clinton’s tendency to unzipper, many would love to see him back as chief executive, but he’s got as much chance of that as Bush has of being voted into Mensa.

I asked members of our staff and a few others whom they would like to see as the first female president, and they were overwhelmingly in favor of Hillary. Well, the vote was 9 to 2 for the senator from New York over the secretary of State, but that’s overwhelming when you consider that only 23 people responded.

Others cast votes for everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Mary Carey, the porn star who ran against Arnold Schwarzenegger in the last gubernatorial election and who is looking better all the time. There were also votes for former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who has been dead for nine years, and Jordan’s Queen Noor, King Hussein’s widow, who has emerged as an author and women’s rights activist.

California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein were in the running, though barely, and so was Texas newspaper columnist Molly Ivins and, dare I mention she who must not be mentioned (whispered), Jane Fonda.

I’m not sure the country is ready for a newspaper columnist as president. A columnist is at the bottom of the list, after the first woman president, first black president, first Latino president, first Asian president, first Jewish president, first Arab president and the first identical twins as president.

As for Fonda, if you thought John Kerry lost the last presidential election because of the malicious attacks by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. A mere mention of her name and you get a face full of “Hanoi Jane,” “traitor” and epithets that I am not allowed to repeat. It wouldn’t surprise me, by the way, to see Swift Boat Veterans against Hillary, just because she’s there.

Others who received votes in my sort-of poll included two Maine Republican senators, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins; Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee; former Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Carla Hills; comedian Judy Tenuta; former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman; actress Emma Thompson; and KCOP Channel 13 anchor Lauren Sanchez. Oh, yes, and Cinelli, who received three votes, but if nominated won’t run and if elected won’t serve. When I pressed her, she said, “Get your poll out of my face.”

A Gallup Poll shows Rice in third place among Republicans (behind former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain) and Hillary in first place among Democrats. Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats and one of the few with the guts to speak out against Bush’s slow-motion reaction to Katrina, wasn’t mentioned, but I hope she will be soon.

There are indications that, given the mess Dubya has gotten us into, America is ready for a woman president. A Roper Public Affairs survey revealed that 79% of its respondents liked the idea. Forty-six nations have had female leaders, while we have mostly relegated them to lesser roles. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of a few who suffered the lesser role poorly, as did Jackie Kennedy, who was pretty, spoke French and elevated pearls and a little black dress to heights of cultural grandeur.

I am a former male chauvinist pig, as they used to say, but although I am still male, I am no longer chauvinistic, which similarly removes me from the category of swine. I have seen the light, I am not only receptive to having a woman in the White House, I’m lighting candles for it. Even Condoleeza Rice would be a breakthrough ... but I’m not saying that when Cinelli is around.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez @latimes.com.