Hillary Rodham Clinton seems more eager to talk about her soon-to-arrive grandchild than her plans for a potential presidential run, but her husband seemed more than happy to allude to both prospects Monday.

Bloomberg’s Charlie Rose interviewed the former president during the 10th Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Monday, the international gathering sponsored by his family’s foundation. Rose danced around the specific question of whether Hillary Clinton will run in 2016, presumably because Bill Clinton has repeatedly insisted that he does not know. But he pressed Clinton for clues about what another Clinton presidency might look like, while encouraging him to expound about the changes in the U.S. political climate since he first ran in 1992.

“Let’s assume you are advising a presidential candidate,” Rose said, to laughter.

“That’s a heavy assumption,” Clinton quipped back. “My advice has sometimes been welcome, sometimes not. Sometimes right and sometimes not.”


Regarding the next president’s first hundred days, Clinton said they should focus on helping people climb out of poverty into the middle class. He said he would favor a revived effort in building energy infrastructure and directing investments toward programs to create jobs that would also simultaneously change the job mix to create higher-paying positions. He also called for altering student loan programs to help students with debt, working on initiatives to make higher education more affordable and reforming the U.S. corporate tax system.

Clinton described the presidential campaign as a very difficult job interview. He did not explicitly discuss his wife’s ambitions.

Rose questioned Clinton about why people consider him to be “the best political animal that’s ever been in American politics.”

“I don’t know if that’s true or not. But to be really good at this, you’ve got to like people; you’ve got to like policy; and you’ve got to like politics,” Clinton said. “You’ve got to have a pain threshold.”


The former president said the nation’s political and media climate was bad in the mid-1990s, but had gotten even more difficult because party politics “are even more polarized.” While Americans are “less racist and homophobic” than they used to be, he said, they tend to be far less willing to spend time listening to those who don’t agree with them, he said, calling that a dangerous trend.

Of course, one of the most buzzed-about topics at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative has been the coming arrival of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s first grandchild. A very pregnant Chelsea Clinton, who plays a leading role in running her family’s foundation, appeared onstage during the Sunday night gala that launched the conference.

The younger Clinton, who announced in April that she was expecting a child with her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, playfully thanked Clinton Global Initiative attendees for their well wishes on their “impending, though hopefully not immediate, arrival.”

On Monday, she took the stage to talk about a new service project championed by the Clinton Foundation that is designed to boost the work of AmeriCorps. Her father, who had been leading the previous panel with President of Chile Michelle Bachelet and King Abdullah of Jordan, apologized to his daughter for allowing his discussion to run over the allotted time.


“You don’t need my forgiveness,” Chelsea responded, teasing her father. “I’m always happy to listen to President Bachelet and his majesty. I think all of us are.”

Chelsea’s due date has been a closely guarded secret within the family, but Bill Clinton said during a CNN interview that he hoped to be a grandfather by Oct. 1.

The former president told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in the interview airing Sunday that his daughter and her husband decided not to find out whether the child is a boy or a girl, and said he didn’t have a preference. “I can’t wait,” the former president said.

Hillary Clinton rarely delivers a speech these days without noting her excitement about what she calls “grandbaby watch.” She has said the experience of becoming a grandmother could affect her thinking about running for president, and during her recent visit to Iowa she admitted that she was calling her daughter every few minutes to check in.


“When the big moment comes, you can bet that I will drop everything to be there in a flash,” Clinton told the crowd at Sen. Tom Harkin’s steak fry in Iowa. “So I’m telling you now, if you see us sprinting offstage, that’s why.”

Here in New York, the Clintons have been able to keep a watchful eye on Chelsea, who attended most of the conference’s large events.

No one has sprinted offstage just yet. But both soon-to-grandparents seem to be enjoying this moment of anticipation.

Charlie Rose began his interview with the former president by noting that within a few weeks a child might arrive who would be calling him “Grandpa.”


“If my grandchild can talk in one or two weeks, the future of my family is secure,” Bill Clinton replied.

Rose quickly rejoined that he hadn’t meant to say he was expecting the baby to be talking quite that quickly. But considering it’s the loquacious Bill Clinton’s grandchild, anything is possible.

Twitter: @MaeveReston