ABC’S NEW SHOW, Commander in Chief, starring Geena Davis as the first female president of the United States, along with new books by Democratic political consultants Dick Morris and Susan Estrich, is fueling the notion that a woman can lead America. No one need guess who the liberals in Beverly Hills and Georgetown would like to see in the Oval Office.

But before anyone else in the Democratic party suggests short-circuiting the 2008 presidential nomination process and just handing the crown to Hillary Rodham Clinton, consider this: the Democratic party has rarely nominated its front runner in non-incumbent years. John Kennedy was not the frontrunner in 1960, it was former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson . . . or Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson . . . or Missouri Senator Stuart Symington . . . or Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey . . . which is why Kennedy had to campaign and win in all seven primaries that year to prove himself to the party elders.