Former president Bill Clinton says he plans to be a “backstage adviser” in his wife Hillary Clinton’s imminent presidential campaign, in addition to his continued work for the family’s philanthropic and sometimes controversial foundation.
“My role should primarily be as a backstage adviser to her until we get much, much closer to the election,” the former president told Town and Country magazine in an interview in Haiti, where the foundation has deep roots.
Clinton said his wife, who ran for president in 2008 and has served as a New York senator and secretary of state, should run “as if she’s never run for anything before and establish her connection with the voters”. He resisted the suggestion he actively stump for her though.
“I’ve told Hillary that I don’t think I’m good [at campaigning] any more because I’m not mad at anybody,” he said. “I’m a grandfather, and I get to see my granddaughter last night, and I can’t be mad.”
During the 2008 primary race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Bill Clinton angrily mocked Obama as his wife watched her chance of winning the nomination slip away.
Should the former secretary of state win the 2016 race and return the family to the White House, Bill Clinton said he “would have to assess what she wants me to do”.
The former president also addressed criticisms of the Clinton Foundation, which has received large donations from foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Qatar, as well as substantial pledges from controversial companies such as China’s Rilin Enterprises.
The donations have raised concerns that countries and corporations actively lobby for influence with the Clintons through the organization.
Clinton said the foundation is the “the most transparent of all the presidential foundations and more transparent than a lot of other major foundations in the country. It should be, both because I believe in it and because Hillary is in public life, and we’ll get criticized, as some people are criticizing me, for taking money from a foreign government. We did a review of the whole foundation last year.”
At a hearing in 2008, then-senator John Kerry called concerns of a conflict of interest involving the foundation a “legitimate question”. The foundation stopped accepting money from foreign governments during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, but resumed in 2013 and accepted money from private individuals throughout.
The foundation acknowledged earlier this year that a 2010 donation from Algeria – “immediately following the devastating earthquake in Haiti” as the organization put it – violated an ethics agreement with the Obama administration.
Clinton said the foundation may change its rules yet again, depending on what happens in the coming years. And he raised the prospect of the Democrats losing the 2016 election. “It’s hard for any party to hang onto the White House for 12 years, and it’s a long road,” he said. “A thousand things could happen.”
Earlier this year he predicted a “tough road” on the campaign trail his wife.
Hillary Clinton is expected to officially launch her campaign in the next two weeks after months of dress-rehearsal stump speeches.
She has spent several weeks assembling a campaign team that includes first lady Michelle Obama’s former “image adviser”, former Obama adviser John Podesta, and several other veteran strategists.
