Appearing Thursday at the New York Times’ DealBook conference, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dodged when pressed on whether she is exploring a third campaign for the White House, joking: “I’ve always been a very slow runner.”
A transcript is as follows:
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: What would it take you to run?
HILLARY CLINTON: I’m sorry, to run? You know, I have always been a very, very slow runner. I am embarrassingly slow. I’ve tried to run races and I am so far behind that I start to walk, acting like that was what the plan was all the time. I don’t know that I’m going to take up competitive running right now, but I think you’re asking about something else, aren’t you?
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: There’s been some teasing and some hinting that, maybe, you’re sitting off in the wings here and waiting for some moment.
HILLARY CLINTON: Look, I think I would have been a really good president. I think I could have been a very effective leader. We have real divides in the country over all kinds of things, but I certainly, in my time in the Senate and Secretary of State, worked really hard, as you say, to actually solve problems, not exacerbate them or ignore them. I would have done everything I could to try to get us positioned for the future. That’s what a leader is supposed to do. Elections are supposed to be about the future and leadership should be about the future.
I think I could have done a really good job. I think the last election was deeply flawed and that there were so many unprecedented problems in that election that it’s almost hard to make sense of.