Hillary Clinton is in Singapore to promote NYC's flailing Olympic bid, and she's a hit.
Even the Clinton-hating NY Times gritted their teeth and wrote:
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was greeted like a rock star as she made her way around this tidy Asian island on Tuesday promoting the city's bid for the 2012 Summer Games. Delegates sought to have their picture taken with her, or at least get her autograph. And while many showed up late for their meetings with representatives of the five cities bidding, for Mrs. Clinton they showed up early, sometimes standing in line.
and later:
Wherever Mrs. Clinton went afterward she was thronged by autograph-seekers, television cameras, photographers and well-wishers, who often restricted her movement as she tried to make her way to meetings with I.O.C. delegates from around the world, whose votes she was trying to land for the city.NY Times
This morning I heard the same term, rock star used on a report done by our local NPR station. Actually, what the reporter (I believe it was Jim Ruta from the LA Times) said was as a journalist it pains me to say this, but Hillary Clinton is a rock star here.
Regardless what one thinks of Hillary, and as a New York progressive I have plenty of areas in which she's disappointed, not the least the war in Iraq & the Middle East in general, that's not the point here because Hillary's not the issue
On the most immediate level, one can't help but notice the disconnect between again the Clinton-hating American media & the rest of the world. As a journalist is pains me to say this, he says, indicating this it's a given in his world, that of the American press, to not credit the Clintons with anything, in spite of the disastrous years since the return of the Bushes. Even the Times article's URL indicates it's in "sport," not news, and ends on a negative note
But the larger issue that becomes crystal clear from this adulation of Hillary -- in spite of the past 5 years, in spite of the fact that we are universally hated across the globe, the world still gets it and longs for the days of American leadership of the type that Bill Clinton provided, leading by cooperation, intellectual engagement, respect for other nations great and small, the idea of working together on this completely interconnected planet.
Hillary wasn't being mobbed in Singapore for being the junior senator from New York; the adoration was for an idea personified by her husband's years as truly the leader of the world, and as much as the neo-imperialists have tried to replace that ideal with brute hegemony, parochial political advantage and religious zealotry, the world will still forgive this interlude of madness in the hope of a return to what can only be called Clintonian internationalism. If only the American media & people could see the same.