Replies

Huma, Hillary’s secret weapon, very very much in Vogue

Mini Kapoor
Posted online: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST
New Delhi, September 4
This April 1, The New York Observer profiled a “mystery woman” of such spectacular qualities on Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff that the dateline appeared significant. Could it have been an April Fool’s hoax? Evidently not. Since then profiles of the women who inhabit “Hillaryland”, her campaign team organised around aides from her White House/ First Lady years, have left a trail of quotes that only enhance the aura of mystery surrounding Huma Abedin, Clinton’s traveling chief of staff.
Abedin, 32, born in the US to a Pakistani mother and an Indian father, enlisted on Clinton’s team as in intern in 1996. Now, as manager of every minute of the Democratic presidential candidate, her talents and attributes have been so effusively applauded that, as the Observer noted, she “has become a sort of mythical figure”.
The Observer profile did not have Abedin’s cooperation. But a lavish four-page spread in the August Vogue (“Hillary’s Secret Weapon”) did. No matter, in the quotes accompanying photographs of her in Vera Wang and Oscar de la Renta dresses, she was still better caught in others’ observations.
Examples. First, her boss, Clinton: “Huma Abedin has the energy of a woman in her 20s, the confidence of a woman in her 30s, the experience of a woman in her 40s, and the grace of a woman in her 50s. She is timeless, her combination of poise, kindness, and intelligence are matchless, and I am lucky to have had her on my team for a decade now.”
“I’m not sure Hillary could walk out the door without Huma,” Clinton’s key adviser, Mandy Grunwald, told Vogue. “She’s a little like Radar on M*A*S*H. If the air-conditioning is too cold, Huma is there with the shawl. She’s always thinking three steps ahead of Hillary.”
Fellow traveling chiefs of staff too are appreciative. Said Mike Feldman, who worked for Al Gore: “Campaigns are unwieldy, hard-to-control things. Decisions have to be made on the fly; you need somebody you can trust at that moment — Watch them together, and there’s this nonverbal communication between them. Sometimes it’s as little as a glance, but the senator knows she can hand off a head of state, a senator, or an important donor to Huma and that the conversation is going to end well.”
Vogue noted her flawless skin and hair after three hours of sleep and four cups of coffee. And de la Renta, Clinton’s close friend and host to both boss and personal assistant at his Dominican Republic home, noted how they were workaholics. He was more effusive in the Observer article: “She is an unbelievably feminine and gentle person, but at the same time she can accomplish so much.” But: “I really don’t know much about her history, because Huma is not such a talkative girl.”
Abedin did tell Vogue that she was two when her family moved to Saudi Arabia, where her late father founded an institute to foster religious understanding between East and West, and where her mother helped set up a women’s college and taught sociology.
But the mythologising is about her current persona. “She does make the trains run on time, and she does it well,” gushed Bob Barnett, the Clinton’s personal lawyer.
And in that Observer profile, a participant recalled a New York political meet: “It was like 110 degrees outside. We were all just pouring down with sweat. But I have this distinct memory of Huma traipsing in in this blue pantsuit — it was like this wool pantsuit — not a bead of sweat on her brow, not a hair out of place, with everything perfectly organised in her Yves Saint Laurent handbag.” All this, presumably, while keeping Hillary Clinton ahead of any possible PR disaster.