A Lipstick President

New York Times - Maureen Dowd: "The president is working up a sweat, keeping that perfectly toned body perfectly toned. I slide past stone-faced men with earpieces and ask the president how it's going. 'Good,' she says, grinning. 'People ask me if there could really be a woman president and I say, Of course, it's the 21st century.' Geena Davis was shooting a rowing scene at the Potomac Boat House on Monday morning for her new ABC show, 'Commander-in-Chief,' about the first woman president. Luckily, the first woman president is tall, a shade taller than W., so she's eyeball to eyeball with generals and ambassadors. And she's a redhead. Redheads, a recent study showed, have a higher tolerance for pain. In the show's premiere, a lot of pain is dished up for Ms. Davis's character, Mackenzie Allen, the vice president of a conservative president who keels over before the first hour is over. Nobody wants the vice president, a political independent, to be Madame President. Not the president, who tells her before he dies to resign so his ally, the archconservative speaker of the House played by Donald Sutherland, can get the job. Not the president's chief of staff. Not her sulky, sexy conservative teenage daughter. Even her supportive (and faithful) politico husband gets skittish after East Wing staffers begin calling him 'the first lady' and arrange his meetings with the White House chef."