Political Quotes

“When people sometimes ask me to name an unusual fun fact about myself, something that no one would quite believe would be true, I sometimes say that at a younger point in my life I had a chance to write and negotiate a four act parody performance of ``West Side Story'' with the Russian Government. I owe that experience to Secretary Madeleine Albright. I was a young speech writer at the State Department when she became Secretary of State. I was so thrilled to have that opportunity because here I was an immigrant from Poland when it was a Communist country. Our new Secretary of State was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, leaving that country under duress with her family when it became a Communist country. I felt a kinship with this extraordinary American, a sense that we saw the world in similar terms. I saw her in every part of the world stand up for our country, for our values, for our interest. I saw her face down dictators and comfort their victims. I saw her sense of fun. In 1997, we were on our way to a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, in Malaysia, and we learned a couple of days in advance that there was a tradition that every delegation would put on a skit at the end of this diplomatic meeting, something very, very unusual. We heard, furthermore, that the United States had developed a reputation for really sucking at the skit. That was not acceptable to Madeleine Albright.…”