Former Clinton Press Secretary: 'Willing to Take Some Bet' Hillary Clinton May Not Run

Bill Clinton’s former press secretary, Mike McCurry, said Hillary Clinton may not run for president because she may not want to go through the grind of another campaign that will force her to court and glad-hand locals in the early primary states. 

In a Changing Lanes video interview with Real Clear Politics editors Tom Bevan and Carl Cannon, McCurry said he may be the “only person on the left” and the “last person in Washington who’d be willing to take some bet that she might not run.”

“We all know what running for president is like–hanging around in Manchester, New Hampshire, [and] Ottumwa, Iowa, at the local Denny’s shaking hands with a lot of sometimes less-than-interesting local political people,” McCurry said. “She’s gonna do that for the next two and a half years at age 65 when she could be doing all this great stuff on a global stage? I don’t know. I think that’s why she hasn’t said, ‘I’m doing it.'”

Unlike President Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton does not love the “poetry” of campaigning. During the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, for instance, a frustrated Hillary Clinton slammed the liberal base and activists at a fundraiser, which was all captured on an audio recording. 

McCurry, who is regarded as one of the best White House press secretaries from either party, said Clinton would be “formidable” in a general election if she won the nomination because she would “do the job well.” But he stopped short of saying that she would be “unbeatable.”