First and foremost, there are condolences to be expressed, and so,
wherever we stand on the political spectrum with regard to Margaret
Thatcher, we can all pray that she rests in peace.
While she was
secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely issued condolence
statements out of the State Department. In the case of personal friends,
she occasionally joined her husband in issuing joint statements via his
foundation website. Since her departure from the State Department, his
site has become the sole platform for such messages as exemplified by
this one
on the death of C. Everett Koop.
This statement
was issued a short time ago. Interestingly, the statement comes only
from the former president with his wife mentioned only in the final
sentence. The fact that Hillary did not have an official relationship
with Thatcher would not explain the absence of her name as both Colin
Powell and Condi Rice have released statements. So, while the former
president extends condolences
from his family, her name is not in this document header, and apparently no separate statement will be forthcoming from her.
Apr 8, 2013 | President Clinton | New York, NY | Statement
I
was saddened to learn of the death of Lady Margaret Thatcher. The
United Kingdom has lost its first woman Prime Minister, an iconic
stateswoman, and a fearless leader. The United States has lost one of
its dearest friends and most valued allies.
Lady Thatcher
understood that the special relationship which has long united our two
nations is an indispensable foundation for peace and prosperity. Our
strong partnership today is part of her legacy. Like so many others, I
respected the conviction and self-determination she displayed throughout
her remarkable life as she broke barriers, defied expectations, and led
her country. Hillary, Chelsea, and I extend our condolences to her
family and to the people of the United Kingdom.
While both Thatcher and Hillary have been perceived as polarizing
figures, similarities end there from my point of view. It is impossible
to imagine Hillary approving apartheid, calling Nelson Mandela a
terrorist, or turning a cold heart to the 1981 Long Kesh hunger strikers
and, particularly, to their mothers. In an attempt to track down any
story that might explain the juxtaposition of these two powerful women,
I found this.
Photograph by Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images
U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during state visit to the U.K in 2009
April 08, 2013
A little-known fact about Margaret Thatcher,
who died today:
Hillary Clinton modeled herself after the former British prime minister
when she ran for the White House in 2008. In a private campaign memo
written in late 2006 that was
later leaked to me,
Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, said he believed voters view the
president as the “father” of the country. But he also believed they
would accept a female “father,” provided she were tough enough. Penn
told Clinton there was “a yearning for a kind of tough single
parent—someone who can combine the toughness they are used to [from a
male leader] with the negotiating adeptness they believe a woman would
bring to the office.”
Penn’s Platonic ideal of such a female leader was Thatcher.
The
header is misleading, but we can return to that. Much has been made of
Penn's "packaging" of Hillary in 2007-2008. Many said at the time and
have repeated over the years that his attempts to neutralize, de-sex, or
masculinize her image hurt her campaign, and as we saw her free-up and
revel in her femininity as secretary of state, actually using it in
charm offensives as necessary, that criticism has stood its ground as a
major miscalculation by the Penn campaign.
But the surprise
here is the figure Penn choose as the "masculine" model. Thatcher!
Hillary's "man-up" imperative from her campaign manager came with
Margaret Thatcher as the blueprint.
To return to the header of
Green's article, it misleads. It was not Hillary who modeled herself
after Thatcher, but rather Penn who, like Pygmalion, attempted to turn
his creation into an Iron Maiden. The problem with this model was the
degree to which it conflicted with Hillary's true strength, her
empathy. Relatively late in the primary campaign, strategists rolled out
"The Hillary I Know," a series of short videos spotlighting ordinary
Americans whom Hillary had helped and their attestations to her
warm-heartedness, surely an attempt to correct course and counter the hard-edged image Penn originally implemented.
There
is plenty of metal inside Hillary Clinton, to be sure, but she is not
an Iron Lady. She has a spine of steel, a silver tongue, and a heart
of gold. This article describes her as an "iron fist in a velvet glove"
as, on one of her charm offensives, she negotiated with then-Pakistani
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi - one of her many "conquests" as secretary of state.
Hillary Clinton holds talks with Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad.—AFP
ISLAMABAD
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday went about with her
usual charm offensive, but maintained a hawkish position over Pakistan`s
strategic concerns in a reflection of the deep mistrust that still
exists between the two allies.
Secretary
Clinton, more importantly for the second day running, handed out a stern
warning to Pakistan that any future terrorist attack traced back to its
soil would have devastating consequences.
Read more >>>>
I
think it would be difficult to find a relationship like this between
Thatcher and an potentially adversarial figure, but readers here enjoyed
the Clinton-Qureshi encounters thoroughly for the warm relationship
they developed.
In the end, each of these
two leaders has been her own woman and they have been remarkably different from each
other. That Hillary chose not to add her name to the Clinton Foundation
statement today might indicate the degree to which she would like to
distance her image from that of Thatcher, but then, aside from the fact
that both were female, they never really were very similar at all. None of this precludes Hillary Clinton issuing a statement of her own
at some point. If she does, of course we shall see it here.
Robot J. McCarthy 
Still4Hill 
