Albright addresses overflow crowd at Webster University
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright told a standing-room-only audience Thursday night in Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium that the next president — Democrat or Republican — faces stiff overseas challenges because of missteps under the Bush administration.
They include nuclear proliferation, threats to U.S. security and genocide. But underlying much of those issues, Albright said, is what worries her the most: “the growing gap between rich and poor” countries. That heightens world tensions, she said.
Albright was appearing as part of the Holden Public Policy Forum’’s “Issues for the 21st Century” speaker series.
However, the event also had a political angle. Albright made clear that she supports Democrat Barack Obama for president, and a few of his campaign signs were posted around the auditorium (and a bunch were available at tables outside, along with voter registration forms).
But Albright spent most of her address focusing on issues, not candidates.
On the domestic front,she said, troubles include the United States’ low image in the world and the two wars it is engaging in.
Albright made sharply different views of the wars:
– “The war in Afghanistan has gotten out control, mainly because President Bush has taken his eye off the ball,” Albright.
– The war in Iraq, she said, will be viewed historically as “the greatest disaster in American foreign policy…worse than the Vietnam War…because of the unintended consequences.”
Those consequences include the rising influence and power of Iran, Albright said. She added that this week’s bombing outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen, which killed 16 people (including one American and six assailants), underscores the continued threats to U.S. security.
Albright said she recently had been part of a forum with four other former secretaries of state (the total panel breakdown was 3 Rs, 2 Ds), and that there had been unanimous agreement that the United States must close down its prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, in order to regain its moral footing internationally.
However, the first question from a member of the audience was a political one. The woman told Albright and the rest of the crowd that she remain angry over the way Democrat Hillary Clinton was treated during her primary with Obama, and that she felt Clinton had been robbed the nomination via an unfair selection process.
The woman concluded by asking, “How do you deal with a process that feels corrupt?”
(The implication was that she wasn’t sure she would vote for Obama, and might back Republican John McCain.)
In reply, Albright noted that she had been a Clinton supporter “and I believe it was a free and fair” process to select the Democratic nominee.
Albright added that she remains a close friend with Clinton and that both agree that “it is absolutely essential that we elect a Democratic president.”
Afterwards, in a brief interview, Albright — who made several foreign-policy speeches Thursday around Missouri — said she was traveling around the country on Obama’s behalf.
Friday, she expects to be in Indiana, another Republican-leaning state that some believe may now be up for grabs.
Article okay as far as it goes, but surely the sore-loser question from a Hillary fan was not the best question of the evening.