Southwest Grad - Class of 1994 - Presidential Potential

Hillary Clinton jokes about ‘future president’

By Emily Heil

Jake Sullivan, Southwest Class of 1994
Director of Policy Planning

(Jim Watson - AFP/Getty Images) Hillary Clinton is not running for president. Nope, she’s said. Not happening.
Wait, was that a wink?
The secretary of state, who has repeatedly said she’d like to spend the next chapter of her life out of the political limelight, maybe as a professional grandmother, on Thursday joked about her status as the most speculated-about potential 2016 candidate.
Clinton regaled the audience of a conference sponsored by the Foreign Policy Group and the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning with a story about Jake Sullivan, director of policy planning. She indicated that he had presidential potential himself: “I told my husband about this incredibly bright rising star – Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School – and my husband said, ‘Well, if he ever learns to play the saxophone, watch out.’ ”
That got some yuks.
Then she delivered the killer line. “Now we travel all over the world together and people say how excited they are to meet a potential future president of the United States, and of course they mean Jake,” she deadpanned to the crowd’s laughter.
Can we take that as a “maybe”?