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E-mailHillary & her 'Weird Sisters'
Four hundred years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a play telling the story of King Macbeth of Scotland. A good story loves to repeat itself:
Macbeth reveals the tragedy of a woman's lust for power and betrayal of friends; Lady Macbeth is aided in her purpose by three aged creatures, the Weird Sisters. These three hags -- witches -- call up "snakes, newts and the toes of frogs" to conjure a "hell's broth" of "furies" to plague man as they hobble and prance around a steaming cauldron on a wind-swept heath.
But that was then, and this is now. Hillary Clinton is seeking the power of the presidency and three very respected elderly ladies have vowed to form a "rapid rebuttal force" of well-known women to defend and promote Sen. Clinton's candidacy.
This force, bringing together 200 years of mostly bitter experience to Hillary's presumed need for champions, is led by a candidate for vice president 23 years ago, Geraldine Ferraro. She recently joined the prestigious Washington law firm of Blank Rome at the Watergate complex. She says that her backing of Hillary is not "because she's a woman, but isn't it wonderful that she is a woman?"
This former three-term New York congresswoman of Queens remains the mistress of the tart retort. Asked recently if she would want to re-enter national politics, she quipped, "No way. For one, I'm 71 years old -- a full 12 months older than John McCain -- and my health is not the best."
Ms. Ferraro brings to her role as Hillary's champion her own family's male-created problems. These included allegations of financial misdeeds against her husband, John Zaccaro, a real estate magnate when she was running for office, that endangered her campaign.
At the time, Zaccaro was targeted by Rudy Giuliani, then the U.S. federal prosecutor, of whom Geraldine says, "Without 9/11, Giuliani would be an asterisk, a footnote, in New York's history."
However, as the one-time vice presidential candidate knows, it's not what their nearest and dearest do but how it affects their access to the office they hope to hold.
Her teammates know well these self-inflicted tribulations. Madeleine Albright, another septuagenarian on the response team, is known for her wonderful ability to juggle friends and business interests with politics. Bill Clinton made her secretary of State because she had won power and friends in the Democratic Party by advising losers.
She counseled Ed Muskie, Ferraro, Michael Dukakis and the Carter and Clinton administrations. Her weird decisions at the State Department resulted in thousands of deaths, ranging from Somalia through the deadly Bosnian-Serbian conflict and Kosovo killings to the Rwanda massacres and the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Africa. She fully earned the honorific "Madeleine Halfbright."
The third acknowledged member of the Hillary "truth squad" is the world tennis professional Billie Jean King. She is remembered by many for her wonderful net play and her saying, "Victory is fleeting. Losing is forever!" She also is known for winning the Battle of the Sexes in 1973 against male tennis pro Bobby Riggs, the high point of her (if not his) career.
Putting Shakespeare and his snakes, newts and caldrons aside, Hillary's ladies, unlike Macbeth's witches, have "fear" as a vital ingredient to add to their 2007 mix. By telling her detractors that Hillary, and she alone, can save America from the disasters prophesied hourly on television, they hope to make Bill "the first gentleman."
Danger flags have risen to full staff because of climate change, pandemics, cyber attacks and retirements. In turn, these horrors bring floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, tornados and droughts. The threat of war and of losing war is omnipresent as are economic fears generated by job losses, rising prices and immigrants swamping our society.
Suddenly there is a realization that the three men who have managed a town's water system for 30 years will retire next month. No replacements have been trained, nothing has been documented and everything has worked so no one bothered.
We are becoming a fear-ridden society!
For those who watch television, the immediacy of waking up one day, finding areas devastated by flood and fire while others have been turned into dust bowls by windstorms, is all too real.
Stories that a pandemic will cut 50 percent of all health workers from their hospital posts are too true to be ignored. And what happens when an industry -- tourism -- is driven from an area because of changes in the weather?
Many of us may put ideology first while we should be looking for a leader who can accept reality and demand that his subordinates are competent to do the same. So, let's ask Hillary's wise women for their answers. And why not ask every candidate seeking your vote the same question: What is your consequence management plan?
Hillary's team is attempting the impossible: It must demonstrate she has the skills to govern competently and control the furies the media claim will be released upon us.
Dateline D.C. is written by a Washington-based British journalist and political observer.
