COMMENTARY: Hillary Now Channeling Richard III

Hillary Clinton let her inner Richard III out for a South Dakota spin. And the camera was rolling.

Of course her now-famous reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy as a reason to soldier on in her doomed cause is hardly the opening soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Duke Of Gloucester – who announces his intentions to disappear family members so he can achieve the throne and become Richard III.

But it does make one think that Hillary, an American royal in the House of Clinton, has the coldhearted conspiratorial instincts to have been at home with Richard’s House of York or as a key figure in Shakespeare’s historical plays. We always knew this. She’s just provided more evidence for the prosecution up there in Sioux Falls.

Here is Hillary in South Dakota:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.

Here is Richard III in Shakespeare:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul

We can’t blame Clinton for having this assassination thought in the back of her mind, because for those of us who have covered presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, it has a terrifying presence in our own as well.

But to put a voice to it? To indirectly (but very clearly) say the Democratic Party needs a strong No. 2 in case the No. 1 is felled is just too South American.

The prospect of an assassination is not spoken about often, sort of the way one doesn’t talk about car accidents while driving. In our plastic world the wood on which to knock is so very often out of reach.

This horror of one so gifted perhaps being snatched from us like King and the Kennedys is too much to bear. The New York Times dutifully reported before South Carolina and Iowa that some African-American women were considering voting against Obama out of a mother-protector instinct. In a November story for Iowa Independent, I asked Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, about this Times article as well as the untimely passing of their mother and Obama’s father — and placed it at the bottom of the piece.

Soetoro-Ng said the early deaths of her mother and Obama’s father did not factor into his decision to enter the 2008 presidential race, that he doesn’t feel fated to die young like his parents – a possible motivation for hurrying with life goals or missions.

“The reason he chose to enter it now is because he just really didn’t see anyone out there in the arena who could do it better,” Soetoro-Ng said. “He just felt I think what a lot of people feel – that he’s the right man for these times and that he’s only one who’s going to make us heal.”

If elected, Obama would be the first African-American president. Some members of his own race have told The New York Times they will vote against Obama to protect him from what they believe would be racially based assassination attempts. The Times recently quoted African-American women in South Carolina making those observations.

“My thoughts are that he would never make a decision based on fear, and I’ve got to be brave, too,” Soetoro-Ng said. “I think that the focus has to be on the many people who have set aside their differences to embrace him.”

In Des Moines the other night, I watched as Obama’s security detail positioned itself atop various buildings in the East Village – just as it did on Feb. 10, 2007, when Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Ill.

It’s inspiring to see those massive American flags cascading down buildings in back of the stage. But our nation’s wicked, bloodstained history is also present at these events. Above this majestic flag on that historic announcement day was a law enforcement official with some binocular device, scoping the crowd for trouble.

To raise, even in a hint or a stretch the specter of assassination is disqualifying for Clinton — both for the presidency and vice presidency. Can you image the “vast right-wing conspiracy” — and other speculation — if, God forbid, something were to happen to Obama, allowing Hillary to ascend to either the nomination or presidency? It might create the biggest challenge ever to our democracy, as her legitimacy would no doubt be thrown into question — with many suspecting Richard III-like motives.

In the end, those unforgivable comments from Clinton may be a sign that the Iron Lady is exhausted — and like someone in the bar just before closing time, speaking without a governor motoring in her brain.

If she were clicking, getting from A to B to C, she would clearly see that a more appropriate morbid reference would be for Hillary herself. At the August Convention, Clinton’s week there could be filed under the heading of the 1995 Andy Garcia movie, “Things To Do in Denver When You’re Dead.”

Politically, dead, that is.