Hillary is one tough cookie. Can you imagine all the traveling she’s done and speeches she’s given — with pneumonia?
I spoke for four minutes at the same event she keynoted Friday night — having done nothing much the two or three days before — and was pretty well shot for the rest of the weekend.
By contrast, she participated in the Commander-in-Chief forum (and was solid as a rock, despite her pneumonia), held a press conference the next morning, flew to Charlotte and spoke brilliantly and substantively for half an hour — watch! — then flew to Missouri for another joyful half hour — watch! — sat for photos and posted two deeply personal, affecting stories on Humans for New York — read them! — and who knows what else she did (oh, yeah; she coughed — well, she had pneumonia) — and then showed up at our dinner the next night and greeted 100 guests (that alone would knock me out for the day, but she does it several times a day) — and gave a strong speech, during which she deplored racists and homophobes.
Doesn’t Trump?
She said “half” his voters seemed to fall into that basket — which was a political faux pas she quickly walked back.
But consider: more than half Trump’s supporters think our President is a foreign-born Muslim (this poll put it over 60%). And more than a few tweet horrible racist or homophobic or Islamophobic things. In 2016, shouldn’t this be deplored? David Duke doesn’t think so, of course. But is he on the right side of history? And is it not deplorable that Trump has amplified the message of fringe white supremacists to millions of his followers?
There’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim or having been born in Kenya, of course, any more than there would be anything wrong with Trump’s having been born Heidi Drumpf in Essen before undergoing surgery and coming to America. It’s just that neither is true. Trump and Obama were born in America and neither is Muslim or transgender.
But I digress. My point is that, yes, Hillary can fall ill.
Who can’t?
(If she ever fell truly ill, we’d still have, in Tim Kaine, a President vastly preferable to Trump.)
But boy is she rugged.
I was at a “panel” 20 or so winters ago whose two participants were: Mr. Justice Harry Blackmun and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Some of us were aware that Hillary had the flu. Justice Blackmun spoke for about 15 minutes — I forget the topic — and then it was Hillary’s turn. She came up to the standing mike — there was no podium, so you could see her from head to toe — put her hands calmly by her sides and, where I would have begun with excuses, “I hope you’ll forgive me, I’ve been hacking all day and am flying on Sudafed” — she began exactly where Justice Blackmun left off . . . seamlessly segued to her own remarks . . . and then, after 15 minutes — without notes or a script or a single grammatical error, lost thread, or infelicitous phrase — came back to Justice Blackmun’s final thought long after I, at least, had forgotten that’s where she started.
It was a tour de force. With the flu.
And do you know what? She recovered from the flu, just as she will recover from pneumonia.
She went on to become a fine Senator and Secretary of State, just as she will go on, I think, to be the most qualified President ever elected.
Trump’s lab results are “astonishingly excellent.” Bizarrely, he would be the “healthiest.”
But he would also be the least qualified.
