Clinton denies presidential interest

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hopes to be “cheering” for the country’s first female president, but said it absolutely will not be her.

She said, as she has on numerous occasions, that she has no desire to remain in politics following her retirement this January in an interview with Marie Claire magazine that was published Thursday.

“I hope to be around when we finally elect a woman president,” she said. “That would be a great experience for me, to be up there cheering.”

{mosads}Clinton, the former first lady and a contender for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, has said she will not run again and is retiring from politics when she steps down as secretary of State at the end of the year.

“I have been on this high wire of national and international politics and leadership for 20 years,” she told the magazine. “It has been an absolutely extraordinary personal honor and experience. But I really want to just have my own time back. I want to just be my own person. I’m looking forward to that.”

No one seems to believe Clinton, who has become a wildly popular political figure in the last several years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in June called Clinton “our shot” at the White House in 2016.

“Why wouldn’t she run?” she asked the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), 2008’s Republican presidential nominee, expressed his own conviction last August that Clinton plans to run in 2016.

“I think her ambitions, very frankly, are for 2016,” he told Fox News.

Even former President Clinton seems to be on board. He told The New York Times in September, “I think we need to let her rest, and I’d be for whatever she wants to do.”

Secretary Clinton has consistently ruled out another bid for the White House since 2010, but she continues to face questions due to the suspicion that she is following a long political tradition of saying no until eventually saying yes.

One thing Clinton was very clear about in the interview is that she has little patience with regret. In the interview, Clinton also told writer Ayelet Waldman that she “can’t stand whining,” in the context of a conversation about women in government careers.

“I can’t stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they’re not happy with the choices they’ve made. You live in a time when there are endless choices,” she said. “Money certainly helps, and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don’t even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself … Do something!”