Am I Ready? (For 2016? Probably Not.)

File this one under:  way too f***king early to talk about the next Presidential election news.  (Again, I apologize for this, but since the talk has begun, it's only going to get worse, so the way I see it, why fight it?)

Ready For Hillary, a pro-Hillary super-PAC launched their Iowa efforts this past Saturday in Des Moines and once again, the air of inevitability is beginning to build around the former First Lady/Secretary of State as the pace begins to quicken toward 2016 and yet another round of Presidential politics.

All of which raises the question:  Am I ready for Hillary?   'Possibly' is the best answer I can come up with right now.  (As the first sentence of this post should alert the reader:  what I'm not ready for is talk about 2016- but since it's here, I grit my teeth, take a handful of Tums and get into it.)  At this point, I'm certainly open to the idea of entertaining the possibility- it's worth noting that in the 90s, with a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, the spirit of compromise was forced, like rich, nourishing food down a goose's liver to make into foie gras, upon both parties and, barring Clinton's blowjob shenanigans and the Republican meltdown over them, things were more productive and generally all around better than they are now.

Or did they just seem better?  I've also got a certain amount of queasiness when it comes to the quasi-dynastic nature of her candidacy.  We had four years of one Bush, eight years of Clinton, eight years of another Bush and now we're going back to another Clinton?  Come 2016 that means that the Presidency for the past three decades will have been held by either a Bush or a Clinton a whopping 71% of the time.  If we're going to talk so much about income inequality, it sure looks like the power is being held by fewer and fewer people as well- something that needs to change and fast.  (And more to the point, why the dearth of qualified women in either party?  Of all the bright, talented, capable women out there- the only one up to the job is Hillary?  Really?)

But ignoring all that:  while the trumpets are starting to blare to announce the arrival of the Once and Future Potential President in the United States, something worth noting went down in Africa: Catherine Samba-Panza was sworn in as Interim President of the Central African Republic.  She is the first female leader of the CAR and only the third in Africa and despite the conflict tearing apart that country, no one seems to be batting an eye- to the contrary, a lot of people seem to be of the mind that since men seem to be the ones responsible for the fighting and the bloodshed, it might, in fact, be a good idea to put a woman in charge because they have less of a propensity to kill people.  (At least, thus far.)

President Samba-Panza has one hell of a task ahead of her, given the history and the current state of the CAR, but since this is a country and a conflict that's getting far too little attention from the news media in this country, it's a breathe of fresh air to read about a woman rising to power not because she's 'inevitable' and not because of her 'connections' but because she might be the best person for the job.

A leader like that, I could get behind.