Hillary Clinton was asked on Thursday to define what the most important quality was for the President of the United States to have. According to Clinton, the most important thing for a president to do is to keep it real and avoid losing touch with “what’s authentic, who you were before you were sworn into office.”
Clinton was yet again asked to elicit news about her potential 2016 run for president when she was queried what quality she thought was most important in a “first gentleman.”
She responded by focusing on what a president deals with in office and spoke at length about stresses, friendships the unforgiving nature of the job and the importance of support systems. Clinton was unusually frank answer for a woman known for drawing a zone of privacy as she considers her future.
“I spent an hour with the president yesterday, going over a lot of different issues,” the former secretary of state said during an appearance in Boston at the 2014 Massachusetts Conference for Women. “And I was thinking, sitting there in the Oval Office talking, that I’ve known a lot of presidents over the course of the last many decades … And it is such a hard job … It is such a challenging job. And you need people, starting in your family — but going to your friends, beyond a larger circle — who will really be there for you and continue to treat you like a human being.”
“Because you can easily lose touch with what’s real, what’s authentic, who you were before you were sworn in to office … Whether it’s a man or a woman, the support system is absolutely critical.”
Clinton’s remarks come at a moment of transition for the former senator and first lady; she is no longer campaigning for fellow Democrats in the midterms, yet has not firmly decided on whether to campaign for herself.
She spoke a day after meeting with President Barack Obama acknowledged that she has begun political work behind the scenes. While she is expected to run, people close to her still insist that, even with the entire infrastructure that she has allowed to grow around her in the last two years, she is not certain about a decision.
