DES MOINES — Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, but her campaign succeeded in ending any concerns about whether a woman could be commander in chief, she told The Des Moines Register on Sunday.
"Part of what I tried to do in that campaign was to begin to answer that question," she said. "Now I feel like the question's been answered."
In 2008, Clinton's campaign downplayed the fact that she'd be the first woman in the White House. But in 2016 she's making it a major selling point — that she's running as a female candidate.
"There is an eagerness that I sense coming at me from people in my audiences, in my conversations, to engage with me about that more than I felt in '08," Clinton told the Register Sunday, one of two sit-down news interviews that were the first in this presidential bid.
Clinton flew to Iowa Saturday after her 2016 campaign's official kickoff rally in New York. On Sunday, she held her first public rally in Iowa, drawing more than 700.
In the wide-ranging 15-minute interview at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, Clinton defended the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said she'll propose improvements to the Affordable Care Act, and expanded on her views about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact.
Clinton told the Register that in her last White House run, she "carried the very big question which research and polling and just common sense said was out there: Could a woman be president and could a woman be commander-in-chief? And so I felt like I did have an extra burden."
Clinton noted that there have been a raft of TV programs that have featured women in power, such as "Veep," the HBO series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as vice president, then president, and "Madam Secretary," the CBS show in which Téa Leoni stars as U.S. secretary of state. Other shows, such as "Gilmore Girls," which ran from 2000 to 2007, featured characters who repeatedly voiced the wish that Clinton would become president.
"A lot of different cultural references, which I find both fascinating and kind of reinforcing, because it does take a leap of faith of imagination for people to envision a woman in the Oval Office, and oftentimes culture, entertainment is ahead of the political system in lots of ways," she said.
Clinton said her gender is not the only reason to vote for her, but it is a factor. "I expect to be judged on my merits," she said, "and the historic nature of my candidacy is one of the merits that I hope people take into account."
She rejected the notions that her presidency would represent a third term of either her husband or of Obama.
"I'm running for my first term. I will have my own proposals," she said.
But it would be a mistake to not look at what worked during the four terms Obama and Bill Clinton served, she said. Both inherited problems of GOP predecessors, she said.
Even as she defended the two prior Democratic presidents, Clinton said she'll have her own ideas for how to make college more affordable, how to make child care and preschool available for every child, how the country can become a clean energy super power, how to fund infrastructure and "so much more."
Clinton said she will strongly defend the law, often referred to as Obamacare. But over the course of her campaign, she'll propose some fixes, such as "how to deal with the high cost of deductibles that put such a burden on so many working families, and how to deal with the exploding cost of drugs, particularly the so-called specialty drugs."
On trade she seemed to land on the side of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi over Obama in wanting to ensure stronger protections for American workers – but it was not clear how she would suggest Democrats handle a stalled trade vote on Capitol Hill.