Madeleine Albright on Hillary Clinton

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is in the bag for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

The first female secretary of state and a close friend of Clinton came and spoke on her behalf at the Concord Women's Club on Wednesday morning. The 78-year-old Albright talked about her own personal struggles as a woman rising to a position of international prominence and answered questions about Clinton’s record on foreign policy issues.

"I have to tell you, I'm prejudiced. I'm completely in the bag for Hillary Clinton," she told a packed room at the club's house on Pleasant Street.

...Albright said Clinton's record on domestic issues, as well as her depth of experience on foreign policy, serving as first lady, a United States senator and most recently as secretary of state puts her in a unique position to be commander in chief.

She told the cheering crowd of women it was time to put a woman in the White House, but was adamant that was not the only reason she was throwing her support behind Clinton.

"Even if she weren't a woman, she would be the best candidate," Albright said. "I have never seen anybody better prepared to be president of the United States. Ever."

The thing is, it's because Hillary is a woman that she is better prepared to be president of the United States than anyone else ever.

I just said in comments on Tuesday: "The one glaring exception [to all of the other candidates in this election who are running for head of government but not head of state] is Hillary Clinton, whose extraordinary competence in diplomacy only highlights the deficiency in the other candidates. By virtue of having been First Lady, a senator, and Secretary of State, she is already a statesperson. It usually takes being president to elevate someone to that status (e.g. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton), but she's already achieved it. She's frankly overqualified for the position. Which underscores just what it really takes for a woman to even be considered for the presidency. To be fucking overqualified for arguably the most demanding job on the planet."

It doesn't take anything away from Bernie Sanders to note that he doesn't have the same preparation for the presidency as Hillary Clinton. That's just a fact, which isn't a personal criticism of him—not when the same observation could be made about any other presidential candidate ever (including Hillary Clinton herself in 2008).

So I really hope that I never again hear "It's a good thing Sanders is in the race to model progressivism for Clinton" (a dubious premise to begin with) unless it is immediately followed by "and it's a good thing Clinton is in the race to model statespersonship for Sanders."

Because it's pretty remarkable, for reasons that I'm sure are a mystery lost to the sands of time, how Clinton's extraordinary preparation for this colossally difficult job is rarely cited as a reason she might have earned it.