Well, sort of... Geena Davis is to star in a new ABC show named 'Commander In Chief' as the first female president in U.S. history, an independent who takes over from a Republican president who dies. (Donald Sutherland is in it, too!)http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1724135,00.htmlUS gives female president screen testSarah Baxter, Washington
WHETHER America is ready for a woman president is to be tested next month with the launch of Commander in Chief, a prime-time television series starring Geena Davis, the Hollywood actress of Thelma & Louise fame. With Hillary Clinton gearing up for a White House run for the Democrats in 2008, the timing of the show is no coincidence. Rod Lurie, the writer and director, said jokingly: “I am definitely going to take the credit if Hillary gets it.”
Made for ABC, the channel that brought the nation Desperate Housewives, the plot will mix domestic and political drama. Davis plays Mackenzie Allen, the vice-president and mother of two teenagers and a six year-old, who is thrown into the top job when the Republican president has a stroke.
In his dying moments, he asks her to resign so that somebody “more appropriate” can take over. Scheming for power in the wings is the wily Speaker of the house played by a dastardly Donald Sutherland. But the president’s widow is on her side. Emboldened, Davis’s character takes on the sexists of Washington.
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Clinton is not the only political model for Davis’s role. Clips reveal that she has a similar hairstyle to Condoleezza Rice’s “power-flip”. There is an enthusiastic “draft Condi” movement in the Republican party, but so far the secretary of state has shown little appetite for going on the stump.
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