Hillary Clinton’s Soft Launch in Upstate New York

by David Freedlander Oct 26, 2013 5:45 AM EDT

In a speech at Colgate, the battle-tested maybe-a-candidate honed a message: Work together. The world is watching. By David Freedlander.

Hamilton, New York

In 2008, Barack Obama promised to be a president who brought people together, inaugurating a new era for Washington, D.C. He pointed to his biography—his mixed-race ancestry, his limited experience in the partisan battles of the past—as a chance for a break from the rancor and gridlock of the Bush years.

If Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, she’ll have her own story to tell—about brushing off the battles of the Obama years. She’d be able to tap some key details of her biography, too, not just her time as first lady, or even as a U.S. senator.

Instead, Clinton will be able to say that she knows how to work with the other side: She reached across a stark divide when she decided to work with her former political opponent in government.

Speaking about the partisan divide that has engulfed D.C. over the last several years, Clinton told a crowd of 5,000 students and their parents at Colgate University, “Probably the most common question I was asked [by foreign leaders] was: How can you possibly work with President Obama after the two of you fought so hard in your campaign against each other?”

She did so, she said, in remarks that seemed as much directed at lawmakers in Washington as the audience here, “Because we both love our country. That was the subtext. People were struggling when elections were held and there was mayhem and conflict and violence and they look at us and they think, ‘You run against each other. You say terrible things about each other—and then you work together. How can that happen?’ So I wish we would get back to problem-solving—which we are better at than anybody in the world.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/26/hillary-clinton-s-soft-launch-in-upstate-new-york.html