Madeleine Albright honored by Biden, other world leaders
WASHINGTON — A veritable who’s who of Washington’s political and foreign policy elite gathered Wednesday to pay their last respects to the late Madeleine Albright, a child of conflict-ravaged Europe who arrived in the U.S. as an 11-year old girl and became America’s first female secretary of state.
The trailblazing diplomat and champion of her adopted country as the world’s “indispensable nation” was joyously remembered by President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton as a no-nonsense, valued adviser who did not suffer fools or tyrants and was most concerned about Russia’s war with Ukraine when she died last month of cancer at 84.
Biden said Albright’s name was synonymous with the idea that America is “a force for good in the world.”
“In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright,” he said. “Today we honor a truly proud American who made all of us prouder to be Americans.”
He said he had learned of Albright’s death while flying to Brussels for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine and was struck by the memory of her key role in pressing for the expansion of the alliance in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union to protect Europe from a repeat of the carnage of World War II and the Cold War ideological battle between communism and democracy.
And Clinton, the man who appointed her first as his U.N. ambassador in 1993 and then as secretary of state in 1996, said his last conversation with Albright just weeks before her passing were dominated by the situation in Ukraine and her fears about the future of democracy at home and abroad.
He recalled that Albright didn’t want to talk about her declining health at a moment when the West is on edge following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Albright, Clinton recalled, assured him that she was getting the best care she could, but didn’t want to “waste time” talking about that.
“The only thing that really matters is what kind of world we’re going to leave to our grandchildren,” Clinton recalled Albright told him. He added, “She made a decision with her last breath she would go out with her boots on.”
Biden and Clinton, along with former President Barack Obama and several of Albright’s successors as secretary of state, including Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, John Kerry and current officeholder Antony Blinken, were some 1,400 mourners who attended the funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral.
The service was punctuated at points by tears, laughter and applause during reminiscences from Biden, Bill and Hillary
Clinton and Albright’s three daughters, Anne, Alice and Katharine, who remembered her as a doting “mom” and “Granny Maddy” to their own children even amid a hectic work schedule that often took her around the world.
That schedule didn’t let up when she left government service in 2001 and returned to teaching at Georgetown University, started a successful international consulting company, served on the boards of numerous women’s and human rights groups and became a best-selling author.
Hillary Clinton recalled stories that she had lobbied for Albright to serve as secretary of state, a role that Clinton would serve in herself during the Obama administration. “It’s been said that I urged my husband to nominate her as our first female secretary of state,” she said. “Unlike much that’s said, this story was true.”
The two developed a strong friendship over the years. and Hillary Clinton recalled a pair of stories about her and Albright on visits overseas during which they bonded.
Once on a walk in a drenching rainstorm in the Czech capital of Prague, Clinton said they laughed so hard they forgot they were wet. On another occasion in Beijing, Clinton recalled that she and Albright had marched through mud in a torrential downpour and confronted Chinese security forces to meet women’s rights activists.
Clinton in her own tribute recalled some lighter memories of Albright, including the time she taught the foreign minister of Botswana the Macarena and danced the night away with a young, handsome man at her daughter Chelsea’s wedding. She also remembered Albright as a fearless diplomat that broke barriers and then counseled, cajoled and inspired women to follow in her footsteps.
“The angels better be wearing their best pins and putting on their dancing shoes,” Clinton said. “Because if as Madeleine believed there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women, they haven’t seen anyone like her yet.”