Hillary Clinton deflected continued speculation over whether she will run for president in 2016, telling ABC News in an interview yesterday to promote her new book she will decide “when it feels right to decide”.
The former secretary of state also said she would be “on the way to making a decision” by the end of the year and would “certainly not” decide before then.
Mrs Clinton is the clear leader in polls concerning possible Democratic candidates to fight the 2016 election, gaining a number of high-profile endorsements despite not having declared her hand. Vice-president Joe Biden, Maryland governor Martin O'Malley and first-term Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren are also considered possibilities.
“I just want to get through this year, travel around the country, sign books, help in the midterm elections in the fall and then take a deep breath and kind of go through my pluses and minuses,” said Mrs Clinton.
‘Hard Choices’
Mrs Clinton's memoir of her time as secretary of state in the Obama administration, Hard Choices, will be published tomorrow. A series of excerpts, some authorised and some apparently not, have appeared.
On Saturday, the Associated Press, quoting from a copy of the book it said it had purchased, detailed how Mrs Clinton writes about disagreeing with the White House over its policy towards the Egyptian revolution and the Arab Spring.
On Friday, CBS, saying it had “obtained” a copy, reported that Mrs Clinton writes about disagreeing with the administration over past negotiations with the Taliban over Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier whose release last week in exchange for five prisoners from Guantánamo Bay has stoked a furious political controversy.
Asked about the Bergdahl deal by ABC, Mrs Clinton said: “I think this was a very hard choice, which is why my book is so aptly named.”
Mrs Clinton also, CBS said, writes about disagreeing with official policy regarding the Syrian civil war. It said she wanted to arm rebels fighting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Asked if she will testify before a congressional committee investigating the 2012 attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans including the ambassador, and which has become a key Republican rallying point against President Barack Obama and herself, Mrs Clinton said that would be up to the people running the hearing.
“I’m not going to say one way or another,” she said. “We’ll see what they decide to do, how they conduct themselves: whether this is one more travesty about the loss of four Americans or whether this is in the best tradition of the Congress, an effort to try and figure out what we can do better.”
She may well face questions on Benghazi in a scheduled Fox News interview, to be broadcast on June 17th and arranged to promote her book.
Commentators on both sides of the US partisan divide suggest Mrs Clinton is seeking to distance herself from Mr Obama, ahead of any announced candidacy.
Mrs Clinton's intentions have been at issue since she stood down as secretary of state, in January 2013. In a promotional interview for her book this week, she told People magazine she had not decided on a run, but added of her prospects of being the first female president: "I'm certainly in the camp that says we need to break down that highest, hardest glass ceiling in American politics."
Health issues
AP also reported on Saturday that Mrs Clinton does not write about her hospitalisation following a fall and the discovery of a blood clot in December 2012. Republicans have sought to focus on her health as a possible disqualification for running for the presidency, even after the former George W Bush strategist Karl Rove attracted intense criticism for suggesting she may have suffered brain damage as a result of her fall.
In the ABC interview, asked if she would release her health records as previous presidential candidates have done, she replied: "I would do what other candidates have done, absolutely." – (Guardian service)