I’ve never interviewed Hillary Clinton, and I probably never will. If I did, however, it would go something like this:
I enter her office, where she is waiting.
C: Thank you for seeing me today.
H: My pleasure. I understand you were one of my supporters during the campaign.
C: Yes, but not an uncritical one. In particular, I had concerns about your position on the TPP.
H: Well, I never demanded uncritical support. Unlike some other people we know.
C: I would like to ask you some questions about your two campaigns, your tenure as Secretary of State, and the current state of America and world affairs.
H: That sounds ambitious. Shoot.
C: Let’s start with the 2008 campaign.
H: That seems like a long time ago.
C: I have opined that you will go down in history for being unlucky more than anything else. Part of that was the timing of the Great Recession. If it had happened six months earlier, you would have been elected in 2008. Do you agree?
H: I’ve never considered that, but yes, I think the economy would have been a much bigger issue, and that would have helped me.
C: I have also opined that one of your biggest problems in 2008 was that you couldn’t decide whether you were running as a man or a woman. You seemed to resolve that in 2016. Do you agree?
H: In 2008, the idea of a woman president was more of a novelty, and I assumed I would be running against a Republican who would attack me for being soft on national security. So yes, that was an issue. It was less of a problem after I had been Secretary of State.
C: Your Iraq War vote was also a problem. I have always assumed that it was motivated, in part, by your concerns about being attacked from the right in a presidential campaign. Am I right?
H: Unfortunately, I was persuaded by bogus information from the Bush camp, just like everyone else. But yes, it did enter my mind. I can’t lie about that.
C: If you had been elected instead of Obama, how different would the country be today?
H: Not very. I would have been a bit more willing to use force abroad. I would have been tougher on the GOP in Congress earlier. The broad policy outlines would have been the same. We didn’t really disagree on policy, even during the campaign; it was all about personalities.
C: You seem to be very proud of your work as Secretary of State even though you had to be persuaded to take the job. Am I right about that?
H: Yes. I didn’t really want the job initially, and it was hard work. Way too much travelling. But I think we did a lot of good in the world. Some of that will even survive the current administration.
C: Obama has been criticized for being overly rational in his foreign policy, and ignoring the overriding importance of emotion and nationalism. Do you think that is fair criticism?
H: I don’t apologize for being rational, but yes, there is probably something to the idea that we underestimated the power of irrationality.
C: The reset with Russia didn’t really work. What do you think happened?
H: Well, part of that was just excessive expectations. A big part of it was our support for democratic revolutions in Ukraine and the Middle East. That made Putin very uncomfortable.
C: Do you have any regrets about that? About Libya, to use just one example?
H: What we were supposed to do, ignore our allies and let Qaddafi murder his people because it would upset Putin? Libya hasn’t exactly turned out the way we planned, but that’s more due to the follow-up than the original decision to get involved.
C: Let’s move forward to 2016. Some of your supporters blame Bernie Sanders for damaging you during the primaries. Do you agree?
H: Bernie didn’t help, but I don’t harbor any grudges against him or his supporters. He had a particular point of view that deserved to be heard. He campaigned for me without any reservations after he lost. I don’t blame him for Trump.
C: Do you regret not spending more time in the Rust Belt at the end of the campaign?
H: Not really. I just wasn’t very popular there. Going there didn’t help.
C: What was it like being on stage with Trump looming behind you?
H: It was weird and creepy. I’ll leave it at that.
C: I have the impression that you felt you let women down in 2016. That appeared to bother you more than your personal loss. True or false?
H: Definitely true. All the little girls out there who were being inspired by me, and then I was beaten by a patently unqualified man–that really hurt.
C: Do you think we’ll see a woman president in your lifetime?
H: Yes, but it will take some time. My suspicion is that the first woman president will come from the GOP, and will be a sort of steel magnolia type. We’ll see.
C: You said during the campaign that you were the only thing standing between us and the end of the world. Have you changed your opinion on that?
H: Have you seen what’s going on out there?
C: We’re running out of time, so I will just ask you for a brief critique of Trump.
H: We’re now living in a world in which we have better relationships with strong men than with democratic states, and we appear to be headed in the same direction at home. We take money from the poor and give it to rich people to buy government bonds to fund the deficit. That’s appalling. The road back to sanity starts in November.
C: Thank you for your time.