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Bill Clinton: 'I'm in the Support Business'
Former President Bill Clinton said during a visit with his wife to the State Fair on Friday that he isn't pressing her to run for president. "I don't have a view on this," he said to reporters after he and his wife spoke to more than 500 people at a luncheon she hosted at the fair. "I'm in the support business. Whatever she does will make me happy," the former president said. "If she decided to spend her six years in the Senate and then go help me in my work around the world and we could travel together that would make me happy too." Sen. Clinton, standing next to her husband, seemed to have had enough of the speculation about her possible presidential ambitions.
"Let's talk about the fair. Let's talk about New York state issues," the former first lady said.
Story Continues Below Clinton made her annual pilgrimage to the fair at the end of a three-day swing through New York farm country. The trip has served to boost Clinton's visibility in the state's Finger Lakes wine region and other rural parts of central New York, a predominantly Republican region where she would need to do well if she runs for president in 2008. This week's exposure can only help, the former president said as he joined his wife at a farm near Cazenovia on Thursday evening and noted her popularity in New York, where polls show her well ahead in her bid for re-election this year, and in Arkansas, where he was governor. "Here and there people know her as a three-dimensional person and not a two-dimensional cartoon that's been painted for many years by people for their own purposes," Clinton said.
"If they see you as a three-dimensional person, then you've always got a shot," he added. But both Clintons maintained on the eve of her fair visit that she remains focused on this year's re-election bid and not a possible run for the White House. Nonetheless, the senator did say on Thursday that she hopes the country is ready for a woman president. For the Clintons, the visit to the fair has become an annual tradition. The former president recalled Friday that when his wife was first elected six years ago, he asked her what his duties would be as a Senate spouse. "She said there is only one job you have to do, to go to the State Fair with me so they'll see I married a redneck," he told the luncheon audience. While the senator has a perfect attendance record during her six-year tenure, her husband has missed the event in Syracuse several times, including two years ago when chest pains that led to heart bypass surgery scrapped his visit. That year, she stopped by briefly and then flew back home to Westchester County to be with him. "I'm so pleased he is so healthy and he's back at the fair," she said on Friday. Clinton faces a Sept. 12 primary against anti-Iraq war activist Jonathan Tasini, who was also planning a visit to the fair on Friday. While Tasini and Clinton did not encounter each other at the fair, she was shadowed by a Tasini supporter dressed in a chicken suit and carrying a sign that read: "Hillary, don't be a chicken! Debate Tasini." On Thursday, the Tasini campaign unveiled a radio ad in which anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan called on Clinton to debate Tasini. Clinton has, thus far, refused to do that. "Sen. Clinton has shown complete disregard towards the voters of New York by dodging the debate," Tasini said Friday before heading to the fair. Former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer and Reagan-era Pentagon official Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland are vying for the Republican Senate nomination. Polls show Clinton far ahead in the Senate race.
© 2006 Associated Press.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
2006 Elections Inside Cover Stories
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