A year and a half after the end of her historic presidential campaign, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday for the first time that she will not run for the job again, firmly setting aside a question that has followed her for most of the past decade.
She has dismissed the notion of a future presidential bid before, and even her most hopeful supporters have long conceded that a 2016 Clinton campaign would be unlikely.
But until this week, there always seemed to be a way to interpret her response as a “maybe.” That was not the case in her interview with NBC’s Ann Curry.
“Will you ever run for president again? Yes or no?” Curry asked.
“No,” Clinton said. “I mean, this is a great job. It is a 2 4/7 job. And I’m looking forward to retirement at some point.”
Clinton will turn 65 in October 2012, putting her at the older end of the range of typical White House seekers. It remains to be seen whether Clinton’s flat denial is enough to permanently put to rest questions about her future. Other political figures have ruled out a campaign only to reverse themselves, as Obama did after declaring in 2006 that he would not run for president in 2008.
On Monday, Clinton was in Belfast, making an emotional appeal to Northern Ireland’s lawmakers to overcome the final hurdles in the peace process there.
Clinton was bringing her star power to an issue she has been deeply involved with since her days as first lady, when then-President Bill Clinton helped broker the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.
That pact is credited with ending the religious violence that had caused more than 3,600 deaths in Northern Ireland since 1969. But the U.S. secretary of state expressed concern Monday that peace could still be undermined by the economic crisis, the assassinations that still occasionally occur and bickering among politicians about the last steps in the peace agreement.
“There are still those looking to seize any opportunity to undermine the process and destabilize this government. Now they are watching this assembly for signs of uncertainty or internal disagreement,” Clinton told the Northern Ireland legislature.
While only a small number of dissident paramilitary groups remain, she said, their actions “threaten the security of every family in Ireland. Moving forward with the process will leave them stranded on the wrong side of history.”
From Ireland, Clinton headed to Russia, where she will press leaders today for “specific forms of pressure” against Iran if the regime fails to comply with international demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.
