With the demented face of Heath Ledger’s splendidly wicked Joker flickering on the drop-down screens behind her, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood serenely in the aisle of the press cabin aboard her plane, beverage in hand, and spoke off the record for almost 30 minutes. She had just logged 20,000 miles on her first foreign trip as the nation’s top diplomat, a weeklong tour of Asian capitals that had taken her, and some 20 journalists, to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China.
Animated and amused, completely at home bantering with the slightly stuffy media gang that likes to call itself “the diplomatic corps,” Clinton sported around her neck one of the custom-made pendants she had given to her former campaign staff reading “18 Million Cracks.” And while the content of Clinton’s off-the-record session must remain undisclosed, the reporters present for it–including seasoned veterans of Washington journalism and overseas official travel–all agreed it was the most shockingly candid they had ever heard from the lips of a senior American official, on or off American soil.
