Hillary Clinton for President! (A Girl Can Dream, Can't She?)

I saw a picture of Hillary Clinton in a magazine the other day, and was surprised by the pang of longing I felt. I love Barack Obama (and think he's doing a pretty good job so far) but I was a big Hillary supporter leading up to the 2008 Democratic Primary. I still think she would've made a heckuva president.

I remember being a girl and looking through a big coffee-table book about the presidents that my parents had. I was amused by the weird facial hair (nice muttonchops, Martin Van Buren!) and strange names (Millard? Grover? Woodrow?) and enjoyed learning about American history. The tragic stories (Lincoln, McKinley, Kennedy) brought me back to the book again and again. But every single time I looked through that book, it bummed me out and made me angry that there weren't any women's faces looking back at me. A woman president! Wouldn't that be amazing?

A few years later it was 1984, and suddenly, having a woman as president in the near future seemed much more likely when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate against Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. It was the first time a woman was nominated for that position by a major party.

We all know how that turned out: No female vice president in 1984, and no woman was again nominated for that position by a major party for 24 long years.

Back in 1984, even though the Reagan/Bush ticket prevailed, I was optimistic about the chance of there being a woman V.P. or president in the near future. But election after election left me dejected. So many stuffy white dudes! (Except for Clinton, who's white and a dude but refreshingly unstuffy.) What the heck was going on? Where were the major-party chicas?

(Sure, plenty of ladies have attempted to win the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination over the years--starting with a couple Democratic gals way back in 1920--but none succeeded until Ms. Ferraro in 1984.)

Fast-forward 24 years, and Hillary Clinton had successfully sloughed off her poor-betrayed-wife image to get herself elected to the U.S. Senate. Her new image was as a smart, tough negotiator and problem-solver. I was happy to have her as one of my U.S. senators, but when she threw her hat into the Democratic presidential nominee ring, I was psyched!

Clinton quickly gathered momentum and she seemed destined to win the nomination. I thought: This is going to be our year, ladies! Because with Bush as unpopular as he was, the Democratic nominee was pretty much a shoo-in as president. Hillary's going to win! We're finally going to have our first woman president! It's about time, people!

Then came Obama, seemingly from out of nowhere. The man was on fire...and my dreams and hopes for a woman president were dashed.

I'm so, so proud of our country for electing our first black president, really I am! But I truly thought a woman would come first. I dunno...you hear about how people in the South are still racist, so I didn't think a black candidate could get enough of the non-urban vote to win. But what the 2008 election taught me is that, apparently, more Americans are sexist than racist. And that surprised me. I'm not sure why, but it did.

So now what? Is Sarah Palin all our gender has to offer? Say it ain't so! Hillary, darling, sweetheart...how about making another go at it in 2012? As much as I love Obama, the majority of my fellow Americans don't seem to agree with me. The last thing we want is a <shudder> Republican back in office two short years from now (or Sarah Palin anywhere near Washington D.C.).

Sure, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton" sounds pretty good, but nothing beats "President Hillary Rodham Clinton," right?

Do it for all us former little girls who dreamed that there would, one day, be a female President of the United States of America, but have grown into women voters (some with wide-eyed girls or our own) without yet seeing this dream realized.

We've waited long enough, don't you think?