August: When you’re on the beach you steal the show. Neil Sedaka
Those who follow the Secretary of State’s activities and the press coverage of them know two things about August: she spent an extended amount of time traveling through Africa, and, thanks to Jonathan Van Meter’s article in the December Vogue, she was on the beach.
On the way home we land in Cape Verde to refuel and stay the night. We check into an all-inclusive resort that feels like a Sandals. The next morning, I am up at the crack of dawn. I wander down a long path to the ocean and take a swim. I am the only person in sight. On my way back, I see Clinton in the distance with just one security guy, heading toward the ocean. She, too, is going for a swim. It is a bittersweet moment: Hillary Clinton is doing something purely for pleasure, for herself, but she is doing it alone, in a place designed for couples.
I would have felt very bad about that last sentence if I had not gone back into the archives and remembered that she did get some vacation time with her husband in Bermuda just before the arrival of Hurricane Bill (yep).
But it was the Africa trip followed by the death of Ted Kennedy that dominated the 
August news here. She went to some dangerous places, and she talked tough to some dangerous characters. She saw, as she put it, the best and the worst of humanity, and there were times on this trip when I was genuinely worried for her safety, but the media here seemed to want to focus on her brief blow-up at a student’s question in Congo and her dancing in Nairobi, and while I personally thought BOTH of those items were cute and newsworthy, the more serious items were not covered. Almost nothing came out of Angola despite her statement that she hoped Americans could see the beauty of that country from the press coverage. Well there was hardly any!
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sterday, the firecracker line was an odd coincidence here. Today, when I knew I would be reposting about the Africa trip, I was met, upon booting up this morning, with this Huffington Post article by Georgianne Nienaber in my newsfeed. Could a Hillary Clinton AVATAR Save Congo?. She states:
So, what would happen if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made good on her expressions of solidarity with the Congolese, and actually used her power to do something? She cried real tears and expressed sincere outrage when she met with women victims of rape and HIV/AIDS at Heal Africa while visiting the DRC as part of her seven-nation trip to Africa in August. Perhaps she needs to spend three months in a Congolese village, preferably one near the border with Rwanda. The transformation from cultural observer to participant in hell might cause her to dash aboard her State Department Boeing 757 and use it like Avatar Jake Scully used his magnificent Toruk bird of prey to establish authority and leadership.
And this: 
Would SOS Hillary sacrifice her role in the cautious Obama administration to actually affect some good? Clinton has more power than anyone at this point in history to do so. Certainly Obama is as ineffectual in world matters as he is at home.
*Big sigh* Well Hillary Clinton is not President of the World. Leadership must arise locally, and Nienaber does point out that Hillary is probably being very cautious in finding the right NGOs to assist. But it seems that she is ending out the year 2009 very differently from the way she ended 2008. Defeated in the primaries, she was content to settle back in the Senate before being tapped for State. Now, I am hearing and reading remarks that appear to indicate she has huge power that she is somehow for some reason not using to full potential. This causes me to wonder. Since she is not the President of the United States, either, I am ending the year saying what I said all along: the guy they elected in 2008 is an empty suit, the man who wasn’t there, and nature abhors a vacuum, so Hillary seems to be the one people think should naturally fill that space. Twice in two days I have seen a Hillary 2012 campaign video and a Hillary 2012 tee-shirt on Facebook.
She was never under the burqa that Tina Brown wrote about last Spring, but 
someone who was in the crowd on May 31, 2008 after her South Dakota victory when so many expected, encouraged her to concede said she was like a racehorse that night. Maybe it’s time to give the pretty little filly her head.
Still4Hill 
A couple things- First Nienaber is one of the few journalist/activists who cover what is going on in the DRC with any regularity and I have a lot of respect for her helping to ensure we don’t forget about the women in the DRC.
Second, I agree with your assessment that there is a leadership vacuum and many of us are looking to Hillary Clinton to fill it. Obviously, she’s not POTUS so it’s not clear that she really *can* completely fill it as SOS so some of our raised expectations may be a bit unfair. That said, there is a lot she CAN do and I think many people are looking to her to not just provide leadership on issues like terrorism, Afghanistan and Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions, but also on human rights in places like DRC, China, Honduras, Egypt, Gaza, etc.
A lot of progressives are absolutely stunned at how Obama has provided little to no leadership in the area of human rights and I know that I am certainly looking to Secretary Clinton to make up for that huge lapse in judgment/ethics/consistency. Obama did a lot of smooth talking during the campaign about his commitment to human rights but it was just that- talk. He hasn’t really delivered on anything. I guess the logical question is why so many progressives believed he would be such a staunch supporter of justice and democratic values? Well, hopefully people won’t make the same mistake again- next time around he will be judged by what he has done as opposed to talk about what he would like to do.
Hillary, on the other hand, has demonstrated her commitment to human rights throughout her career in public service so I think its only natural that some of us might pin our hopes on her. When she talks, the world listens, which is why she can accomplish so much good with respect to the struggle for human rights.
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OK, then here’s a point of interest. Notice this administration is referred to as “The Obama Administration” rather than as Obama – Biden. The last administration is referred to as Bush-Cheney, and why? Because W was also an empty suit, but in his case, it was his veep pulling the strings (and everybody knew it and said so) and never either SOS.
Is this actually a pattern Americans have habituated themselves to? A clueless, lame POTUS taking major advice from someone else. In this case, I guess people want that to be Hillary since Biden is in his bunker (where Cheney used to rule from) but they’ve jammed his walkie-talkie.
How screwed up is this picture? But if this IS the picture, then they should all stand back and, as I said – give the filly her head. (Of course Hillary, also, must recognize that this is what people expect and want – so articles like this one serve the purpose of bringing the expectation to her attention).
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