Clinton rules out 2012 run

Published Wednesday October 15th, 2008
A11

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton was back in the spotlight Tuesday doing a series of television interviews in which she ruled out running for president in 2012 and said she wasn't interested in any high-level positions if Barack Obama becomes president.

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MOVING ON: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton waits to be introduced during a campaign rally in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama outside the capitol in Little Rock, Ark., recently.

In an interview on the Fox News Channel, Clinton, who fought a bitter battle with Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, was asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 her chances of making another bid for the White House.

"Probably close to zero," she said.

She said she had no interest in being nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, or of becoming the Senate majority leader.

"I'm not seeking any other position than to be the best senator from New York that I can be ... there's an old saying: 'Bloom where you're planted,'" she said, adding she simply looked forward to working in the Senate with an Obama administration.

"I ran for president because I thought we had to make drastic changes, given what I viewed as the damage that the Bush administration had done here at home and abroad. Now I'm going to work very hard with President Obama to repair that damage."

Clinton's rounds on the all-news networks represented a return to the spotlight since her gracious and conciliatory speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.

Since then, she's kept a relatively low profile, although she's made more than 50 campaign stops for Obama, including in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania with her husband Bill, along with Joe Biden, Obama's vice-presidential running mate.

Bill Clinton has said repeatedly that his wife has done more work for Obama than any other runner-up in U.S. history.

But when the Illinois senator was neck and neck with McCain in the two weeks following his pick of Palin, some worried Democrats wanted Clinton to reiterate her convention instructions to her embittered supporters: vote for Obama if you truly care about the issues.

Those concerns came amid the McCain campaign's claim that they had lured one in five disgruntled Clinton backers in the two weeks after Palin was named to the ticket. Since then, women have moved almost en masse back to Obama.

There were also suggestions that Clinton, as the Democrats' biggest female star, should have been the party's attack dog against Palin, pointing out the Alaska governor's lack of experience and her anti-choice stances.

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