Albright Then, Albright Now - Sec of State Madeleine K. Albright

National Review, June 28, 1999 by Jay Nordlinger

Albright has led a genuinely impressive life, and there is much to admire about her, as made unmistakable by two recent biographies of her-one by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs and the other by Time's Ann Blackman. She has always been privileged by material wealth, but she is acquainted with struggle, not least because of a brutal divorce in 1983-without which, she has said repeatedly, she would not have been spurred to her present success. But neither of her biographers really touches on her positions in the final stage of the Cold War or seeks to hold her to account for them. Nor does anyone else. We are surely not in the business of handing out white feathers, but we may well ask, Where were you when we needed you, and, Have you gained any appreciation of the hard, often thankless work performed by those who concluded the "long twilight struggle"? It is they, we might cluck, who made it relatively safe for Albright, Clinton, Talbott, and Berger to hold high office. Caspar Weinberger concedes that it is tempting to resent the near-total absence of self-examination and humility in this bunch: "They fought us every step of the way."

So Madeleine Albright has flexed her muscles in Kosovo. She is heralded as the conscience of the West, the benefactor of millions, the scourge of another genocidal-though this time not mustachioed-dictator. In May, turning to her, Clinton said, "Secretary Albright, thank you for being able to redeem the lessons of your life story by standing up for the freedom of the people in the Balkans." Albright is indeed a heroine to Kosovars and others staving off murder and degradation. To them, she is a positively Reagan-like figure-just another miracle of this new, decidedly better age.