Interview with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - cont.

A: You know it's one of the most common questions I'm asked in Asia. And think about it, I mean, we really worked hard against each other, to defeat each other. And we said some things about each other that were not the nicest things. But in our country when the election is over, we try to work together for the good of the country and in our system, when the president asks you to serve, you feel that you really should because you want to help the president succeed. So the president has asked Republicans to serve, not just Democrats like me who competed against him. The VP Joe Biden also ran against him for a while so the President has tried to have a very unified approach to his administration.

And when I was in Indonesia, it was such a common question because in many countries, the hard fought political competition continues. They don't talk to each other, it's very personal, lines are drawn. So the Indonesians kept saying, how do you work with somebody you ran against? I said, that's what we have learned through all these years of democracy, that the country must come first, that politicians come and go. People win and lose elections. But once the election is over, you can still have policy disagreements and we do, as is obvious, but we should try to get along and try to pull along in the same direction for the good of the country. I have no problem with that at all.

Q: How many days did it take you to make that decision?

A: It took a while because I love being a senator from New York and once my campaign ended a year ago in June, I was very happy with the idea of going back to representing New York. So right after the elections when the President won, he called me and I said there are other people who would be so much better, go and talk to the other people. I gave him names and as you have seen, watching him on TV, he's very persuasive.

First of all, despite our hard-fought campaign we agreed on most things. We magnified our differences because you have to have to. Then we talked about how we would proceed, he gave me an enormous amount of authority as secretary of state, really everything I asked for so I can do the job he wanted me to do and I was running out of excuses.

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TRANSCRIBED BY ASIA NEWS NETWORK BANGKOK-OFFICE

22 JULY 2009

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