On Monday, May 7, 2012, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she hoped to see the United States elect its first woman president in her lifetime, but that it wasn’t going to be her, The Atlantic reported back then.
Clinton made her statement during a visit to a girl’s school in India, as part of her ongoing Asian tour. She was asked about the prospect of a female American president and appeared to have given up any prospect of her own participation in another election.
She told the crowd that the US political system is “very difficult to navigate, for men and women, particularly for women” and that “I feel it’s time for me to get off the high wire.”
The Atlantic’s reporter, Dashiell Bennett, commented: “Obviously, anything can change in next four years, particularly when we don’t even know who will be our president in the next one, but Clinton — who will be 69 years old in November 2016 — seemed to be shutting down any more rumors about her future political prospects. After a week spent fighting China over human rights and trying to convince energy-poor India from doing business with Iran, you can hardly blame her for looking forward to retirement.”
Much earlier, in an ABC News TV interview in 2009, Hillary said: “I have absolutely no interest in running for president again.”
In March, 2015, the National Journal, which is not suspected of being a pro-GOP, right-wing publication, wondered “Maybe Hillary Clinton Should Retire Her White House Dreams.” Ron Fournier (formerly Washington bureau chief of the Associated Press), opined: “My concern is that Clinton does not see this controversy (the private email scandal) as a personal failing. Rather, she sees it as a political problem that can be fixed with more polls, more money, and more attacks. In a Politico story about the push to assemble a presidential campaign staff, a former senior Clinton aide said, ‘We have had our head up our ass. This stuff isn’t going to kill us, but it puts us behind the eight ball.’ Due respect, Clinton’s problem isn’t a lack of staff. It’s a lack of shame about money, personal accountability, and transparency.”
But now, of course, things are different, and Hillary has been clear about her true path. In April 2015, she tweeted: “I’m running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that champion.”
Finally, because it’s Sunday morning, a cheap shot: As part of Hillary’s criminal justice reforms, she supports “banning the box,” meaning the box former criminals have to check on a job application acknowledging they committed a misdemeanor or felony. But as she was explaining her position in an October 2015 keynote speech at the Charleston NAACP, she made the mother of all Freudian slips and said instead:
“Earlier today, I announced that as president, I will take steps to ban the box, so former presidents won’t have to declare their criminal history at the very start of the hiring process, that way, they’ll have a chance to be seen as more than just someone who’s done time.”
She meant “former prisoners.”
H/T Rivkah Rybak