Did Hillary Clinton tip her hand on 2016 presidential run?
Hillary Clinton may have tipped her hand on Tuesday about her plans for a 2016 presidential run.
Speaking in Atlanta at a convention that was closed to the media, Clinton spent 25 minutes talking about the 2011 raid on the Osama bin Laden compound, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The crux of that discussion: that she was for the 2011 raid in which al Qaida leader bin Laden was killed ― and Vice President Joe Biden did not support the military action.
State Representative Tom Taylor, a Republican, told the AJC that Clinton went to great lengths to paint herself and former CIA director Leon Panetta as the raid's fiercest advocates, while at the same time highlighting Biden's opposition.
"Without turning the knife too deeply, she put it to Biden," Taylor told the AJC.
Why take a shot at Biden?
Because if Clinton chooses to run for president in 2016, Vice President Biden would likely be her No. 1 opponent in the race for the Democratic nomination, and contrasting her position with Biden's on the bin Laden raid presumably casts her in a more presidential light.
Biden's opposition to the raid isn't necessarily a revelation. The vice president has acknowledged he thought the raid was a risk. And according to "The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden," author Mark Bowden reports that Biden was the only one of President Obama's senior council to oppose the raid.
"It was widely reported in the weeks and months after the raid that most, or at least many, of the president's top advisers opposed the raid," Bowden wrote in a Vanity Fair article. "That is not true. Nearly everyone present favored it. The only major dissenters were Biden and [then Defense Secretary Robert] Gates, and before the raid Gates would change his mind."
This isn't the first time Clinton has contrasted her position on the raid with Biden's. According to Politico, Clinton said the same thing during a recent speech on Long Island.
While there is much speculation about Clinton's future, the former secretary of state has not publicly revealed her plans.
