Madame President

Now that Hillary Clinton finally declared herself a candidate for President in the 2016 elections, we hear of “My-damn-President” jokes aired by partisans, mostly those who are fearful of radical change that has swept the United States since it became a superpower. The venom was also aired against Barrack Obama of the White House!

BHO broke the color divide in his move to the Executive Office but he was not one of the guys who suffered from the aggressive tactics of the KKK in the South. That his father came from Kenya rather than from the West Coast of Africa where most of the slaves in the South and the Caribbean came from, he is nevertheless “foreign” to the civil structures that withstood the U.S. Civil War (we observed its 150th year anniversary this year), which enshrined the image of the genteel Aryan race in the bayou and beyond.

It is ironic that Bobby Jindal of South Asia descent (India) is Louisiana governor and aims to be President of the United States, while Marco Rubio of Florida of Cuban pedigree aims to be off into more northern clime by the Potomac. Rubio’s credentials by one writer is that he is not Obama! OK! Señor Ted Cruz of Tejas has Mejicano blood but was born above the 48th parallel in Canada, another ironic twist since the criticism leveled against BHO earlier was that he might not actually have been born in Hawaii but was delivered outside of the country.

Sarah Palin was woman enough of the dominant subarctic matriarchal type but too “manly,” perhaps for the ladies below the 48th parallel, for she alienated both female and male of the specie. Palin never stood a chance at being VP, to the great chagrin of the decorated Vietnam POW vet Arizona Sen. John McCain who, after Bush Jr., stood a slim chance at the executive office.

That’s what makes Hillary Clinton’s declaration of her availability to the White House most timely and formidable. The age factor is no longer a problem after the popular Gipper (Ronald Reagan), and her being female, after Bill’s wayward ways, holds enough sympathy with the skirted crowd that it might actually be a plus in her favor. Her stellar feat as the Secretary of State and her can-do attitude to overcome obstacles, with the endorsement of the current WH occupant, is enough to propel her to the Oval Office, barring any radical change to her yet to be tarnished reputation.

Much ink is spilled on the “dynastic” turn that American politics has become, with Kennedy and Cuomo, Bush and Clinton families on the limelight, so there is some hesitation with Hillary Clinton, except that she broke the laidback image of the first lady when Bill was in office, and allegedly tried to ramrod health, education and education measures into legislation.

Her program, progressive to many, is too radical to some. But she is a daughter of U.S. history. Before the Civil War, the country was the United States of America. After, it became the United States behind the acronym U.S. and US of A, a body becoming a single entity by itself and not just a loose confederation of states that had the Executive Office at the beck and call of state governors and US Congress reps.

Two entities at the moment dominate the global political scene: China and the U.S. Obama and Hillary both label China as the “bully” to Vietnam and the Philippines, the former building a station on South China Sea’s Mischief Reef to bolster its claims in the South China Sea. Should Hillary make it, her nimble finger and polished nails will not stay politically manicured for long.

© 2015 Saipan Tribune