I’m in charge here!
An angry Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to shake her husband’s outsized shadow yesterday in a rare burst of public bitterness after an audience member asked her what Bill might think about an international issue.
“My husband is not secretary of state, I am,” Clinton fired back when a university student in Africa asked her what “Mr. Clinton” thought of a World Bank concern about a Chinese loan proffer to the Congolese government.
Hillary Clinton spoke just a week after her former president husband was showered with global praise and attention for helping get North Korean officials to release two captive US journalists — obscuring his wife’s first African mission.
“What does Mr. Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton?” said the translator, which was followed by Clinton’s anger a moment later.
“You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?” the irritated former first lady said at the town hall in Kinshasa, Congo.
“If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion,” she added. “I am not going to be channeling my husband.”
Clinton, dressed in a light purple pantsuit, opened her eyes wide and leaned forward as she pointed at the young man who’d asked the question.
With that, she quickly moved on to another topic.
ABC News reported that the translator made an error and the question was actually about what the secretary of state’s boss, President Obama, thought on the issue.
But that didn’t change the substance of Clinton’s response, which left political insiders and party wags astonished at the public display of apparent frustration and jealousy over all the attention her husband continues to receive.
“It’s either jet lag or jealousy. Either way, she needs some more rest,” said one insider.
Another observer said, “Today’s event should erase any doubt that Bill Clinton’s shadow looms large behind her. Her sensitivity about the question seems to indicate a sense of jealousness.”
“I suggest she go back to channeling Eleanor Roosevelt to navigate through” this kind of issue, said one Democratic source, adding that jealousy over Bill and North Korea has “gotta be a factor. Because she’s been ignored throughout the process.”
Another said, “Sounds to me like these are issues better left worked out in therapy than through reporters.”
One source said she was likely “peeved and thinks it’s sexist. Here she is, a former senator, and current secretary of state, and these people from other countries are asking her what her man of the house says about an issue.”
Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Obama after a bitter, hard-fought, two-year battle that began with her seeming like the inevitable nominee.
But among her problems throughout was her husband’s penchant for generating damaging headlines with his criticisms of Obama.
In June, the secretary of state was sidelined after breaking her elbow. While recuperating, stories began circulating that she was being given a limited role in foreign policy, especially on crucial issues such as the Mideast peace process.
She responded that she may have broken her elbow, but “not my larynx,” and tried to re-establish herself as a global force.
But as she touched down in Africa, her husband once again upstaged her by traveling to North Korea.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s travels kept her from attending Bill’s 63rd birthday celebration last night in Las Vegas at Craftsteak in the MGM Grand Hotel.