WASHINGTON — Barack Obama told a potential donor to his campaign that Hillary Rodham Clinton is on his list of possible running mates but that her husband’s status as a former president presents a “complication.”
Jill Iscol, a Democratic donor, said Obama reached out to her because he heard that she was unhappy about the way the New York senator had been treated by the Democratic Party and the media.
Iscol turned their phone conversation Thursday to the vice presidency. Obama said that Clinton is on his list, Iscol recounted. But he also confided that he was thinking through a potential “complication” — Bill Clinton.
“He said once you’re a president, even if you’re a former president, you’re always a president,” Iscol said.
Still, Iscol hung up thinking Hillary Clinton had a shot. Obama didn’t say that Bill Clinton would be a disqualifying factor, but he conveyed that he needed to grapple with what it would mean to have a former president as second spouse. Los Angeles Times
