Madame Secretary will be espousing her Clintonian views in t-minus two hours and I will be liveblogging on this fine post. Also, getting that Gilmore Girls question answered. No really, game on. Anyway, we’ve had some hiccups in the video situation; hopefully we’ll be able to get some of Natan Sharansky’s press op on YouTube tomorrow.
7:06 – Devastation, y’all. Langford Auditorium has blocked the Vandy WiFi!
7:08 – Loosening of the crowd. The secretary starts us off with quick, well-told anecdote with sharp little details (like a Container Store reference) about being recognized by a Bosnian-native security guard who asked for a photo, held the whole line up. The woman she’d been talking to: “What just happened?” “Well, I used to be secretary of state.” “…Of Bosnia?”
7:10 – Albright informs us that Old Commodore Vanderbilt wanted us all to “take actions that enrich people’s lives” among other things, while I was under the impression that the Commodore just sort of sent that preacher a check.
7:10 – “It’s true that America has a dynamic new young president.” In the slightly higher-pitched, head-titled tonal inflection of the great Robin Scherbatsky…is it?
7:11 – Albright really warmed us up well, b the w. She went to school “halfway between the handle-held Blackberry and the invention of fire,” which, solid, but secondary to my father’s completely improvised response to my brother’s request to study biology, “Well, I went to high school with Darwin.”
7:13 – The clicking of laptops has, apparently, replaced the clicking of knitting needles in class. One awesome professor, tired of the noise, announced he consider any knitting needles an admission of pregnancy. Which must be turned into an epithet immediately. Yesterday.
7:14 – Aw, Madeleine, using the same line you did at UPenn two weeks ago – Obama is “inheriting an emergency room.” Shucks. I’m pretty positive the body of this speech is the same as that one.
7:15 – She employs Kosovo as an illustration of effective diplomacy, beginning with economic sanctions against Milosevic, etc. etc., then moving into engaging NATO to move militarily, as each step of the process breaks down into failure. Critically, she says, she “talked to allies everyday.” I caught my dad on the phone while I was on my way over; before we moved onto baseball, he expressed his disbelief that I would go voluntarily to this, but also that all Albright ever wants is to talk.
7:19 – She mentions our status as a humanitarian rights defender has diminished. While I’d admit that our reputation in the PR sense has diminished, I think we’re seriously neglected parts of the non-Darfur whole of Africa in that assessment. The U.S. did more under George W. Bush in Africa than in any other administration ever. Ever. Whether that’s recognized worldwide, or even in North Africa, may be another thing.
7:22 – “Our economy will not recover if people lack the confidence to invest and employ other…Responsible regulation is not the enemy of freedom, it is the arbiter of democracy.” Hmm. That’s starting to sound a lot like…
7:23 – “The market is a powerful force, but it lacks a social conscience.” Blaaaaagh. Sorry, I just threw up on Jiminy Cricket. Then shifts into a discussion on anti-nativism, which sure, now’s not the time for any protectionist Hawley-Smoot-Ferris-Bueller tariffs, like the Democrats originally wisely tried to pull in an early iteration of the stimulus package.
7:25 – Our president must deal with: North Korea, Iran, Darfur, two armed conflicts and America’s 25 greatest movies. The word “priority” could scarcely be found anywhere tonight, probably lost in the big cloud of toxic emissions.
7:27 – Did give a tip of the hat to the past year in Iraq. Though without any nod to Bush. Naturally. To confirm all that, watch this fantastic, “relentlessly positive” report from Iraq courtesy ABC News.
7:30 – Explicit, strong language: “Terrorists are murderers…We must destroy the fiction that America is hostile to Arabs and Muslims.” She mentioned that the primary means of defeating terrorism and its recruiting is to make clear terrorism offers nothing besides hate and destruction. Which, I agree with; having said that, in that aforementioned ABC News report, 64 percent of Iraqis now say democracy is the best form of government, over strong man dictatorships and an Islamic state. So, not that I’m quite advocating the Electric Iraq Slide (aside from other bigger issues, it just isn’t feasible), but it’s interesting to compare.
7:31 – Somebody brought an infant to this. Wise.
7:34 – Ah, now the Q&A portion strikes up, which typically involves people approaching the microphone and performing a self-congratulatory generalization and/or a partial life story. “I think we all learned a great deal.” Huzzah. One for one.
7:35 – Cap’n’Trade Crunch traipses about Langford Auditorium. I stage whisper to one of the Hustler reporters “Doesn’t matter until China caves,” which then Madame Secretary picks up, but then ignores the dangers of oligarchical economics. Or even, wait what is that, Honest Cue Card?
7:38 – A non-Vanderbilt professor provides us with an oral history about his career and the Great Ohio State Fiasco of the Clintonian Years. I hate Ohio State with a burning passion, so I am willing to accept that, but apparently Albright and others got heckled by students? Charming. Fortunately, the Vandy student population’s only issue was the learning the proper address for a former secretary of state — Madame Secretary. What we call Clinton, what we called Condi. Not difficult. Madeleine Albright, after all, WROTE A BOOK, OF THAT TITLE, ABOUT HERSELF.
7:42 – “I have a whole lot of questions, but the one I thought would be best…” (three for three) is one that assumes we live in a multipolar world currently.
7:44 – Albright uses the term exceptional when describing America (”because she’s an immigrant and understands that,” as Mike said afterwards), and discusses that we’re still more of a unipolar world, which was refreshing. She says her main criticism of GWB was unilateralism and unidimensionism (only focusing on the Mideast), which, again, whither the priorities?
7:47 – “At the end of the Holocaust…” a cheerful beginning! Rwanda and Darfur and the atrocities therein are discussed. Albright considers Rwanda her biggest regret, but also did some “we had the information we had” circles around it.
7:53 — My attention wanes as the infant sitting rows in front of me starts to weep.
8:00 – “What is it that that I can do?” [sic] Which do I/we prefer? The royal we, or the individualized question to a former secretary of state in front of several hundred people?
Albright was surprisingly witty and entertaining; her subject matter, of course, causes my eyes to cramp from the near constant rolling. Nonetheless, I appreciated the candor and the directness on issues like Iraq and Darfur, though she never quite supplied a priority or an immediate plan of action. As Everclear apparently told us, you can’t be everything to everyone.
