A Woman President? Why Not?

WASHINGTON -- I am often asked if we will ever have a woman president. My reply always is: "You bet! Early in this century."

Sounds glib, I know, but I believe that some women have already proven they can measure up to the tough task of leadership and decisiveness in the highest echelons of public service. Despite the obstacles, they have to make a quantum leap and prove that any little girl can grow up to be president.

Of course, the obscene amount of money it takes to run a campaign is a deterrent. Take, for example, Elizabeth Dole, who quit the Republican primary fights earlier this year on the basis that she couldn't raise the vast sums needed to proceed.

The other obstacle you hear about so often is that women cry and are emotional. Men are not, according to this theory. So what's so great about a poker face?

True, it's not easy at the top. Harry Truman's famous admonition to aspiring public servants was: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," and it still applies.

The odds for a woman president, not too far in the future, are looking better every day. Some 72 women have made it to the House of Representatives for the next term and it looks like there will be 13 women in the Senate. Some of them -- such as Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York and Maria Cantwell in Washington State -- went through grueling campaigns.

Clinton is always asked whether she has presidential aspirations. She, of course, denies it and insists that she only wants to serve her New York constituents. But a woman has the right to change her mind, especially if opportunity knocks.

While Clinton has not seemed to savor the traditional role of first lady, she has been accused from time to time of wanting to be a co-president with her husband. In fact, President Clinton told the American people they would get a "two-fer" when he first campaigned for the White House in 1992. She even had her office in the West Wing directly over the Oval Office.

In Texas, there is talk that Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has her eye on the governorship -- and then perhaps on the White House.

Other nations have had women leaders. The formidable British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher served for 10 years and gave as good as she got from the back benchers in the House of Commons. The late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and India's tough Prime Minister Indira Gandhi were hardly shrinking violets.

So what's the problem with the United States?

It's not for lack of women with the brains or stamina that it takes to serve in the most demanding job in the nation.

For too many years in the last century, women were discouraged from reaching for careers beyond the safe professions, such as teaching and nursing. World War II was a turning point, when even Rosie the Riveter did what was considered a man's job. The women's movement in the seventies spurred women to challenge male dominance in medicine, law, journalism, engineering, space -- you name it.

Would there be gender prejudice against women invading the last male political stronghold, the White House?

Absolutely, yes! Just ask two of the top women in the Clinton cabinet who were the first females to serve as secretary of state and attorney general.

Both Secretary Madeleine Albright and Attorney General Janet Reno proved they had the right stuff to make their mark in those previously all-male bailiwicks. They stayed the course, and still are holding their heads high after being targeted with merciless criticism by their GOP opponents.

Both of them are preparing to step down and we might learn more of their personal trials and tribulations when they write "that book," which each has indicated she plans to do. They may look back at the highs and lows of their Washington experience and wonder how they had the courage, the skill and perseverance to carry on under the siege.

Take Albright, hardly your striped-pants diplomat, but unsurpassed in her expertise in foreign affairs.

She takes pride in the on-going peace efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo, which her detractors once dubbed "Madeleine's war."

Even so, she guided the successful U.S. moves to depose Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.

Reno still has to live down the horror of the 1993 Waco, Texas, inferno when government agents were given the go-ahead to move against the Davidian cult compound of David Koresh.

She still says "I don't know if I made the right decision." It was her Bay of Pigs and occurred shortly after she was appointed attorney general.

Her decision to ask for five independent special prosecutions against Clinton administration Cabinet officials hardly endeared her to the White House.

That may explain the unseemly amount of time that Clinton took before deciding to reappoint her to the Cabinet when he began his second term.

She became a heroine to most Americans for standing her ground with the Cuban exiles in her native Miami and sending government agents into a home to rescue six-year-old Elian Gonzales from his defiant relatives and return him to his father in Cuba.

With all their ups and downs, both Albright and Reno showed they could stand the heat in the kitchen. And so can a lot of other women, if given the chance.