KOLKATA — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday she wanted to see a female US president during her lifetime — but insisted she was ready to “get off the high wire” of top-level politics.
“I hope so. I really want to see that in my lifetime,” Clinton said during a town hall meeting at a girls school in India’s Kolkata, when asked about the prospects of a woman taking America’s top job for the first time.
Clinton praised India’s “great display of women empowerment” due to the prominent role played by female politicians over the years but said that in the US “we still have a pretty hard glass ceiling that has not been broken at the presidential level.”
The former First Lady and New York senator, who was beaten by President Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic nomination, reiterated that she was not interested in another shot in 2016.
“I have been active in high-level politics for last 20 years. I feel it’s time for me to get off the high wire,” she said. “I would like to come to India and wander without streets being closed and a lot of security.”
Clinton said the path to the US presidency was extremely tough, especially for women.
“I was very excited to run for president. I was very honored and pleased with the votes I got. But our system is very difficult to navigate, for men and women, but particularly for women. There are two races — money race and vote race,” she said. “[A] Candidate has to raise millions of dollars during the election, and I myself raised tens and millions of dollars used in my campaign. I think we have to keep trying till [the] final glass ceiling be broken.”
Despite Clinton’s repeated insistence that she is ready to retire, rumors of a 2016 run are never far from the surface.
Last month, her husband, former president Bill Clinton, said he would be “happy” if she decided to run but added that it was unlikely.
“I believe that she’s being absolutely honest with you when she says she doesn’t think she’ll go back into politics,” he said. “But if she comes home, and we do this [William J. Clinton] Foundation stuff for the rest of our lives, I’ll be happy; if she changes her mind and decides to run, I’ll be happy.”
Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday joked that he may team up with Hillary Clinton in 2016, before adding, “I don’t know whether I’m gonna run, and Hillary doesn’t know whether she’s gonna run.”