The power in Hillary Clinton’s small, freckly hands
While the rest of the world celebrates the historic occasion of the first female US presidential nominee, Martin van Beynen relives his moment in Clinton’s world.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and I go way back. Back in fact to 2010 when I covered her whirlwind tour of Christchurch.
I know she has small freckly hands, loves scarves and Oscar de la Renta suits and speed walks for exercise.
The short Christchurch stop showed some of the traits that make her a less than ideal nominee but more of that later.
The tour came a couple of months after the September earthquake that lured Christchurch into thinking nature had vented its worst and could now be ignored.
The city certainly didn’t ignore Clinton, who splashed down with her entourage, including a hairdresser and a doctor, on a wet, blustery day.
Surrounded by buffeted umbrellas, Clinton was whisked into a black BMW limousine that joined a 19-strong motorcade to drive across the road to Antarctica New Zealand’s base.
Clinton was touring in her capacity as the 67th United States Secretary of State and had come from Wellington where she had signed some declarations and reassured the Government the US was still interested in the South Pacific.
Clinton gave a routine speech and then went to a Christchurch Town Hall meeting where, as usual, the media were treated like lepers and confined to the back of the hall where it was hard to see anything.
Fortunately the light was good and I was able to detect a striking similarity to what an older Hayley Westenra would look like.
The town hall events were a trademark of her travels in Africa, South America, Europe and Asia. The Monday before the Christchurch event she had been talking to Cambodian students in the same sort of arena. It was her way of getting among the people.
For the Christchurch occasion Clinton wore an elegant black suit and a coral reef of red around her neck. Red and black. A collar of Canterbury colours.
The coral reef sparkled in the auditorium lights which fell also on a huge jewel on her left hand. Her hair, tinted blonde but not too blonde, was shoulder length.
From a media perspective the town hall event was about as disastrous as it could get. Clinton went into lecturing mode as audience members sent her a barrage of earnest, worthy questions which had obviously been pre-selected.
How had she gone about getting the Middle East factions back to the table?
Did Clinton know about sexual violence initiatives similar to one in Christchurch?
‘‘What do you believe are the geopolitical changes that will be witnessed over the next generation?’’
‘‘How will the Wellington Declaration help support indigenous peoples in the Pacific to attain and maintain autonomy in their own countries and in particular Aotearoa New Zealand?’’
I worked hard to suppress a primal scream back in my leper colony.
Clinton did her best and her answers were long and measured but what a tedious occasion. Her lecturing face hardly changed but her hands told another story.
They seemed an almost unconscious effort to enliven the depressing funk.
At times her hands formed a church steeple, at others they joined as if in prayer, and then they separated as though a basketball had come between them and she was about to spin it like a Harlem Globetrotter.
The hands worked the audience.
A hand would sweep across the podium when she talked about the reach of her subject, would soar when she talked about the north, and plunge when she talked about a drop or decrease. Then the hand would knock like she was a judge with a gavel.
From what I read there are a lot of Hillary haters in America. Aside from misogynists, she is disliked for her ‘‘invocations of gender’’, her ‘‘apple-cheeked certitude’’ and being a woman politician who acts just like a male politician.
She is accused of being in cahoots with the rich, robotic and ‘‘unrelateable’’.
Obviously many, like me, object to her simply because her husband has already had a crack at the job.
And I can sort of see what the haters mean. Somehow she needs to get the warmth of her hand gestures into her face and voice.
The morning after the atrocious town hall meeting I had another date with the future presidential democratic nominee.
I think I was sent to check out the George Hotel in Park Terrace where Clinton had spent the night.
I spotted two women deep in conversation walking in Hagley Park along a track by the Avon River. One was the Secretary of State and the other was Huma Abedin, then and still her closest aide. The rest of the park was deserted.
Abedin was married to Congressman Anthony Weiner who would notoriously come to public attention in 2011 for the unfortunate peccadillo of sending sex texts including pictures of his penis to other women.
I remember the tall Abedin leaning in to the shorter Clinton in the cold and wind. A touch of normality.
The two women now stand a vote away, admittedly a big vote, from being two of the most important women in the world.
Good luck to them.
I can sort of see what the haters mean. Somehow she needs to get the warmth of her hand gestures into her face and voice.