Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show on Tuesday night by joking that Hillary Clinton was there “to publicly and definitively declare” that she’s running in 2016, and he was creative and relentless in his effort to get an answer out of her. After informing her that “no one cares” about Hard Choices, “They just want to know if you’re running for president,” Stewart gave Clinton a career-aptitude test, asking about how she envisions her future office. Of course, Clinton didn’t declare anything, but at this point in the book tour, she’s not putting much energy into pretending she’s still undecided. When Stewart asked if she would like her future office to have corners, she quipped, “I think the world is so complicated, the fewer corners that you can have, the better.”
The second half of the interview focused on income inequality (with more apologies about her “inartful” comments), and America’s place in the world. Interestingly, Clinton echoed President Obama’s criticism of his failure to “tell a story to the American people” in his first term. “We have not been telling our story very well,” she said. “We are not perfect by any means, but we have a great story about human freedom, human rights, human opportunity, and lets get back to telling it to ourselves, first and foremost, and believing it about ourselves and then taking that around the world.”
Obama’s comment didn’t go over that well, but if that highly scientific aptitude test is right, Clinton’s going to have come up with some way to differentiate herself from the president.
