Obama lauds Clinton as she prepares to leave
LAVISHES PRAISE ON SECRETARY OF STATE FOR HER DISCIPLINE, STAMINA AND TALENT
They sat side by side, trading laughs and finishing each other’s thoughts. Five years ago, the very prospect of such a moment would have been “improbable”, as one of them put it.
But now as the improbable partnership between President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton winds down with her pending departure from the Cabinet, the two rivals- turned- allies sent a public signal of solidarity on Sunday — at a time when one has run his last election and the other is contemplating one more. The unusual joint interview with Obama and Clinton on the CBS News programme
60 Minutes was noteworthy mainly because it happened.
Neither broke much ground in describing the journey that took them from bitter opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 to collaborators in dealing with terrorism, war, diplomacy and global economics. But the picture of comity was presumably what the White House wanted when it proposed the interview to CBS in the first place.
“I consider Hillary a strong friend,” Obama said. “Very warm, close,” Clinton said.
The two laughed off the meaning of the interview for the 2016 election, when many Democrats expect Clinton to run again. Obama could hardly endorse her when his vicepresident, Joe Biden, appears to be angling for the party’s nomination as well. “You guys in the press are incorrigible,” Obama told Steve Kroft when he asked about the 2016 race during the interview, which was taped last week.
Clinton suggested it might even be illegal for her to answer. She said she was still recovering from the concussion she suffered last month. The president lavished praise on Clinton for her discipline, stamina and talent. And they put a glossy shine on history by brushing off the tough primary attacks five years ago as the product of trying to find differences where, they now say, there actually were not that many.