Hillary Clinton’s Africa Trip Viewed As A Success – This Is Like Saying The Titanic’s Maiden Voyage Was A Success

Clinton Needs A New Spin Master

Portraying Clinton’s African safari as a “success” will forever reign as the most unbelievable spin job in history.  It would have been far better to say nothing than to bring more publicity to what was a disastrous trip.  Besides being sent on a meaningless journey to countries that most Americans never heard of, Clinton had to put up with insulting questions from her hosts as well as being publicly upstaged by her own husband.

Here’s the official spin job – believe it or not!

Clinton’s Africa Trip Is Viewed as a Success

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently accomplished what she set out to do on her trip to Africa. She pressed governments from Kenya to Nigeria to Libera for reform.

She highlighted the plight of women in Congo, meeting with rape victims and hearing their stories.

But the trip did not go entirely as planned.

Media headlines instead focused on Clinton’s more controversial remarks on tangential issues, and America’s top diplomat found herself commenting more on someone who was not even there: her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

As Secretary Clinton embarked on the 11-day, seven-country swing through the continent, President Clinton departed for North Korea on what was described by officials as a “humanitarian” mission to retrieve two American journalists being held there.

President Clinton’s successful trip was a media coup, one that overshadowed his wife’s arrival in Africa. In interviews and press conferences soon after her arrival, reporters peppered her for information about her husband’s trip as the rescue dominated headlines around the world.

The comments, and video, ricocheted around the world, prompting commentators and analysts to wonder if the secretary was withering under her husband’s shadow. She had just spent the past month fighting rumors of her marginalization in the Obama administration while nursing a broken elbow.

At a town hall event in Abuja, Nigeria, she compared the 2000 U.S. election Florida recount to the allegedly rigged election in Nigeria.

The comparison drew sharp criticism from conservatives in Washington, who balked at the notion that Clinton would compare a United States election to one in Nigeria marred with missing ballot boxes, inflated voter counts, and shooting of voters at polling stations. Again, the headlines were concerned less with governance in Nigeria and more with whether Clinton made yet another misstep.

Perhaps if Hillary had simply brought Bill Clinton along with her, the trip might have been a real “success”.