Full Transcript of Interview with Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton knows who she won’t get a 60th birthday gift from – her arch-nemesis Rudy Giuliani.
Once she stopped laughing at the question, the Democrats’ presidential front-runner said she wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the leading Republican candidate’s gift list, regardless of their New York connection.
“Well, ya know, I think somehow on Rudy’s list, I would not be in the top, oh, 1,000,” Clinton joked as she talked exclusively to the Daily News about life, health, family, dreams and the milestone birthday she hits tomorrow.
Asked how she has changed as she gets older, the hard-charging Clinton sounded almost Zen-like.
“Like a lot of people, I have gotten more patient, I have a better sense of what’s really important in life. I’m not as, shall we say, workaholic, even though I work hard, it’s not all-consuming. I just feel like I have a much more balanced view of life.”
Not a workaholic? This from a woman who on Monday was in California, Tuesday in Washington State for a fund-raising breakfast and visit to the Microsoft campus, and on to Colorado for a rally, then back to Washington to cast a Senate vote Wednesday before flying to Iowa. She is due back in New York for a star-studded birthday party/fund-raiser tonight at the Beacon Theatre.
She approaches her seventh decade with what any 60-year-old wants most – good health – but Clinton recalled a potentially fatal scare in 1998.
It came while she was campaigning on behalf of Chuck Schumer’s New York Senate bid and a swollen right foot caused her terrible pain. She thought she just needed to slow down from constant flying.
A White House doctor told her to rush to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where doctors diagnosed a large blood clot behind her right knee.
“That was scary because you have to treat it immediately – you don’t want to take the risk that it will break lose and travel to your brain, or your heart or your lungs. That was the most significant health scare I’ve ever had.”
Clinton said she no longer takes blood thinners and otherwise has enjoyed good health while zig-zagging across the country for the past nine months, keeping a schedule that exhausts aides half her age.
“I’m lucky that I’ve got a good stamina,” said Clinton, who admits to getting tired sometimes. “I try to take care of myself. It’s much harder on the road [since] there’s too much junk food and temptation around. I don’t exercise as much as I did before I got into the real heat of the presidential campaign, but I try to get out and walk.”
Although she recently joked at an AARP convention that “60 is the new 50,” she also spoke about the inevitability of aging.
“I do lose friends all the time,” she told The News. “I realize that is a part of my growing older along with them.” Her dearest Arkansas friend, Diane Blair, died of lung cancer in 2000 at age 61.
“I am someone who believes that death is part of life,” Clinton went on. “I don’t have any fear of it, I don’t have any anxiety about it. I just want to live every day to the best that I can.”
Clinton said she and daughter Chelsea are in touch “all the time,” either by phone every few days or e-mail. “We try to see each other often – I’m so happy she is in New York, that makes it easier. But she’s got a very busy life, and I respect that.”
And though Chelsea is now a successful 27-year-old – she works at a Manhattan hedge fund and has her own apartment and a boyfriend – “I don’t think a mother ever stops worrying,” Clinton said.
“The real trick is not to be too obvious about the worrying when they get to be adults, because ya know, that’s a little too much of a burden to impose on them.” Does she dream about a White House wedding for Chelsea and grandkids in the Oval Office?
“I really don’t,” Clinton said. “I want to respect her choices like my mother respected my choices. I’m going to let her life unfold at her pace.”
While many women see their 60s as an opportunity to wind down their work life and perhaps take up new hobbies, Clinton’s Act 3 “project” is running the free world. “I’m so grateful that I have a project like running for President that I believe in so strongly,” she said. “It’s a good time in my life.”
Asked what she would be doing if she hadn’t entered politics on her own, the former First Lady replied, “maybe teaching, and writing, and working in philanthropic endeavors on behalf of kids here at home and around the world.”
Given all the personal and political turbulence she experienced in her marriage and the White House, Clinton sounded remarkably at peace. “I feel like I’ve had a very lucky life,” she said.
So what will the woman who wants to make history in 2008 as the first female President be wishing when she closes her eyes and blows out the candles tomorrow?
“I really have everything that I could ever hope for,” she said. “I feel very fortunate. I’m thrilled to be making this race for President.
“Obviously I hope and expect that I will win. But I know it doesn’t come from wishing, it comes from hard work. And I am going to do everything between now and then to make that happen.”
