Harriet, Hillary and MacKenzie

Twenty-five years after Margaret Thatcher became the British Prime Minister, thirty years after Golda Meir took the reins in Israel, forty years after Indira Gandhi ruled a population of half a billion, and four hundred years after the death of the most successful monarch in English history, Queen Elizabeth I, Americans are still reacting to the concept of a female Head of State as though it's a bizarre and dangerous experiment (unlike electing a dunderhead male, which we're happy to do every couple of decades or so).

Our nation's kneejerk sexism, a byproduct of our stodgy religiosity and cultural conservatism, has rendered exotic the premise of this year's most popular new TV series, "Commander in Chief." This program was an outgrowth of creator Rod Lurie's screenplay for "The Contender," about the bouhaha concerning a female Vice Presidential appointee, much like "The West Wing" was an episodic follow-up to his "American President." Geena Davis plays the lead, President MacKenzie Allen (named after Joan Allen, star of Lurie's movie), and she supplies convincing gravitas in her portrayal. In a concession to our current political climate she is no wish-fulfillment liberal like Jeb Bartlett on "The West Wing," but an "Independent" of Republican/Libertarian sympathies with impossibly photogenic children.

"Commander in Chief" does not have any of the gritty improvisational realism of "The West Wing," but takes a much more middlebrow approach, with broadly drawn characters, the most heinous of whom is the Machiavellian House Speaker played Snidely Whiplash-like by Donald Sutherland. This guy makes Tom DeLay seem like Mister Rogers. And he's never without some appallingly sexist rebuke, which his sycophantic--and female--aide seems to lap up joyously, like Mr. Smithers. Other characters are similarly clear-cut, with no interesting ambiguity at all. The plots seem evenly divided between predictable White House crises and predictable domestic problems of adjustment for the family members. Mackenzie's husband has to adapt to First Spouse spouse status. The kids have their private lives complicated by the Secret Service. Stop the presses!

But because the dialogue is easy to follow, the story lines unchallenging, and the cast just dripping of TVQ, this show's success seems as assured as that of "Desperate Characters" and "Lost," ABC's two other forays into the twisted familiar. And I also find it watchable, along the same lines that I enjoy "Las Vegas," which does not mean I am enriched by the experience. Yet despite the bland pleasantness of this program, it could--just could--become one of the most influential TV shows of all time. Americans are so taken with their televised fantasies, and so apt to eventually confuse them with reality, that in a way this series could acclimate them to the possibility of having a real female First Executive. Conservative pundits and bloggers are already assailing "Commander in Chief" as a smokescreen advocacy for the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Which, perhaps, it is--but ultimately no more so than it would be for Elizabeth Dole or Condoleeza Rice.

Hillary Clinton spoke yesterday at a Beverly Hills synagogue during Yom Kippur services, and while the intent was obviously political ($$$), she apparently was very persuasive, humane and articulate. Let's face it, this is one very savvy person, probably smarter than her hubby, which is saying quite a lot. She has functioned efficiently and undivisively as a senator, and has wisely positioned herself in the Democratic center as she prepares for a likely Presidential run. If she were a man she would be a figure of universal respect, political views notwithstanding. But to the Republicans she is considered anathema, the She Devil, the closet Lesbian, whatever. This vituperation has something to do with her husband, but mostly to do with her gender. The Evangelical/Mormon hyperreligious base simply cannot accept a woman--even one whose intellect makes our current POTUS seem as perspicacious as a retarded gnat--exercising executive power.

Of course those Reps who are supporting the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court are leaping to the claims that Democratic opposition is largely sexist. They oughta know.