“Excuse me Miss? You are on in 5 minutes. I’ll be back for your two-minute warning.”

She caught herself staring blankly at the production assistant as he gave her the standard spiel about showtime. As she stood up and looked in the mirror, hairdresser fidgeting on her left, makeup artist prodding on her right, she was feeling good tonight and continued to sell that to the public, just like she could sell her shell of a self when she was a little girl. Now as an adult, she could sell the Pope a double bed if she wanted to. That maniacal whimpering little girl voice in her head that sounded the presence of a giant tunnel, “Look at me, my hair, my posture. I’m going to be so great. I’m going to be the one that fixes all this. I’m a game changer.” “I’m a game changer” she whispered aloud. She wiped the tear away from her left eye, passing off the motion as her just merely wiping excess eyeliner with her finger.

The red guys have failed her and her people, a decade or two of complete deflation and collapse over physiological stupidity that manifested itself as a Tommyknocker that only saw it’s own belly button, machining secret wars in assembly-line fashion.

But change was nigh. She was different. She knew she’d always be ‘the one’ and now tonight was her night to shine. As she gets her last curtain call, 3 men in suits, earpiece monitors in place, move in, flanking her on each side while the 3rd stood behind her. The door to her dressing room opened. She took a deep breath and charged forward, security at her sides. For a split second her senses failed her as everything and everyone, all around her, seemed as if someone had pointed a remote control at them and just hit the “Mute” button. Crowds of people cheered and screamed, fists in the air, sleeves rolled up on every starched dress shirt that witnessed her take the podium. The children wave their little flags as vigorously as their blonde pig-tailed hair, the flags “issued” to them at the door.

That voice came back again, “Why can’t I hear them? I can see everyone in slow motion, the streamers and balloons all floating around me, the huge crocodile tears made out of hopes and dreams that are supposed to be caught by my proverbial tissue. Men, women and their little children, they want me to be the one so badly. I’m glad it’s my time now. I’ll be good. Right?”

She rose to the podium, soaking in the furnace-like stage lighting, ready for it to be over before it even begins.

Traversing through the words on the teleprompter felt like a soldier’s experience taking Normandy. Each word felt like the last 50 yards of a marathon in 110 degree weather. As these tones and vibrations thrust through her vocal chords and turned into sound waves, the crowds emotions erupted as if to say, “You fill all of our voids. Thank you. These tears of joy are for you!”

Did she finally arrive? It felt like they were not even really listening or watching her but the sheer velocity of her denial kept her believing all of it, every word, every response, every teary-eyed family that lifted their hands towards her when she looked at them and spoke.

After the final “Thank You” to the red minions of the past, present and future, the crowds lept to their feet in an eerily syncopated fashion, as if they were merely designed to do so. She waived her hands, smiled the smile that helped her stick out in a state that never even really made the news.

Tags: 47, hillary clinton, political speakers, prose, rich harris, sarah palin, short story, speeches, women in politics