During the interview, Clinton noted that she was running for president because she wanted to continue the progress that had been made during President Obama’s time in office. She compared the economy and budget surpluses at the end of her husband’s presidency to the end of President George W. Bush’s second term and the recession that came with it.
“I love it when you have Republicans on here, and they act like we have amnesia,” she told Colbert. “We had the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
Clinton said that GOP policies ran contrary to putting the middle class “at the center” of politics:
What has been tried by the Republicans every time they get a chance, cutting taxes on the super wealthy, getting out of the way of corporations, doesn’t create broad-based prosperity. It creates more inequality. And I believe, and I think the evidence supports this, that the economy does better when you have Democrats in the White House.Still, she quipped, “I am not running for my husband’s third term. I am not running for President Obama’s third term. I am running for my first term.”
Clinton made that clear when she said she would allow big banks to fail if they were in trouble, boosting her own plan for Wall Street reform.
“First of all, under Dodd-Frank, that is what will happen because we now have stress tests and I’m going to impose a risk fee on the big bank if they engage in risky behavior, but they have to know, their shareholders have to know that yes, they will fail,” she said.
She also refused to name whether she would rather run against Ben Carson or Donald Trump, the two Republican candidates leading the polls. When Colbert asked whether she could picture either of them in office, she said she could picture them in “a office.”
Much of the interview was lighthearted, from how she spent her birthday (she slept in, made some phone calls, watched “bad TV” with Bill) and her childhood to her past as president of the Young Republicans in college and refusing to say whether New York style or Chicago style pizza was the best.
She and Colbert both poked fun at last week’s 11-hour Benghazi hearing, and they examined how her fashion through the years could be turned into Halloween costumes.
One thought on what comes post-2016: she might try to make an appearance on Madam Secretary a la Madeleine Albright.
“Are you jealous?” Colbert asked
“A little,” she replied.
“Want me to call somebody? I know some people over there.”
“Yeah, but I think I’d have to wait to do it until a little later.”
