About a month ago, a woman asked me if I thought the country was ready for a female president.

My response was certainly, but she would need to be as established of a politician as her male counterparts. That immediately meant that the female candidates for the job narrowed down to a short list.

The three obvious candidates on that list are of course, Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice and Elizabeth Dole.

Each of these women are Washington D.C. insiders who have accumulated a great deal of political currency in their lifetimes, and all three have proven to be savvy students of the political process.

Rice is the only one of the three who is not married, and if an unmarried male would have a difficult time getting elected president, then it is safe to say that an unmarried woman would have better odds at winning &uot;Powerball&uot; than winning the Oval Office. Add that to the fact that she is black and I’d say she has better odds winning &uot;Powerball&uot; twice.

Madeline Albright would’ve have been a good candidate, but she was not born in the United States.

Oprah Winfrey? Please get real.

Natalie (Dixie Chick) Maines? Not going to happen.

Angelina Jolie? Too much public nudity (and bad movies).

Since 1872, fifty-one women have managed to qualify for primaries in various states on the presidential ballot.

None of them with the exception of Dole was ever considered a serious contender, until Clinton.

While many people feel that Clinton should be a lock to get the Democratic Party’s nomination, she still has her fair share of enemies in both major parties, and there is still the underlying sentimentby many that a woman could not do the job.

I doubt very seriously if a one armed monkey in a tuxedo could do any worse job than the current president has done, so why would any woman be any less than qualified than Dubya?

I have worked with and for many women in my professional career. I have never felt that any woman was intellectually inferior or incapable of doing a job because she was not a man. Most women that I have worked for have been just as, if not more qualified than their male counterparts, and definitely more capable of thinking outside of the box.

If male presidents are inherently more qualified than women, then explain to me how our country has ended up in the mess that we find ourselves in today?

It boils down to the fact that most men don’t even want the appearance of having to take orders from a woman, particularly guys like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Arnold Shwarzenegger.

I’ve taken orders from a woman many times in my life; I use to be married.

There would no more surreal sight than to watch Dole and Clinton go head-to-head 20 years after their husbands competed for the same office, a prospect that currently is not very far fetched.

The males of the Dole and Clinton families, Bob and Bill, were both very intelligent veterans of the political process and each had the confidence of their respective parties. Their wives are equally adept at managing the travails of running for office.

In 2008 the Democratic Party will be looking to capitalize on the floundering of the current administration as well as garner the votes of Republican wives and mothers of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The Republican Party will be looking to counteract any bold moves by the Democrats and will be looking for either an African American or a woman to balance the scales. Rice fits both criteria, but aside from her bachelorette status, Rice affixed her cart to the George W. Bush caravan early on in her career and because of that she will sink with him.

It is truly a sad state of affairs that 230 years after this nation declared its independence, a country that claims to be as intellectually superior as ours would still have to navigate much of the same bigotry and sexism as it did two centuries ago.

A woman was good enough to bear and raise every male politician that has ever held office, but not good enough to lead them? Nonsense.

At least if we elect a woman president, people would be forced to address her as ma’am. In the White House, that smidgen of courtesy and respect would be a welcome relief from the insanity that currently presides over that office.

Holla back! curly.morris@r-cnews.com.com