WASHINGTON – Sen. Claire McCaskill, who once joked she wouldn’t let her daughter near Bill Clinton, today gave Hillary Clinton a glowing endorsement to be the next Democratic Party nominee for president.
McCaskill’s support was spelled out in a statement posted by Ready for Hillary, an unofficial pro-Clinton political action committee.
“Hillary Clinton had to give up her political operation while she was making us proud, representing us around the world as an incredible Secretary of State, and that’s why Ready for Hillary is so critical,” said McCaskill.
And McCaskill — who provided useful early support to then-Sen. Barack Obama’s successful campaign against Clinton for the 2008 nomination — is already punching back at any critics of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, in a preview of what could be a more aggressive response strategy.
“I’m sure that there will be many efforts to take the shine off of Hillary Clinton,” McCaskill told a small group of reporters in the Capitol.
“Yes there will be political games played as this process moves along and there will be attempts to distort her record and to mislead the American people about who she was as the leader of the State Department,” she added.
“The nice thing about Hillary Clinton is that this is not her first rodeo. I think she is ready for the kind of attacks that will come and I think she’ll weather them very well and be a very, very strong nominee, if she decides to run which we’re hoping she does.”
McCaskill’s comments come after a period when Clinton’s stewardship at State has come under the microscope. She first came under fire during congressional hearings concerning State’s handling of the deadly attack at the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi.
Then last week, the Post reported on a whistleblower from State’s office of inspector general, who charged there was a cover-up of numerous incidents of mismanagement and bad conduct.
In her own 2006 Senate campaign, McCaskill said of Bill Clinton: “”I think he’s been a great leader, but I don’t want my daughter near him.”