NEW YORK: Former US president Bill Clinton has said he was so impressed with his wife Hillary's intellect when they first started dating that he once suggested she "dump" him and focus on a political career of her own.
While campaigning for Hillary, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, in Iowa, Bill said he thought his then girlfriend was the "most gifted person I'd ever met" and that "it would be wrong for me to rob her of the chance to what I though she should be".
"She laughed at me, and said, 'First I love you and, second, I'm not going to run for anything, I'm too hardheaded," he said.
She is running for president now, and Bill is a major asset on the campaign trail. A Mason-Dixon poll released Sunday found that he garners equal or higher favorably ratings from Democratic primary voters than any other candidate, including his wife, CNN channel noted.
"I thought she was the most gifted person of our generation," said Clinton.
"You know, you really should dump me and go back home to Chicago or go to New York and take one of those offers you've got and run for office," he had told her when they first started "going together".
Addressing a large group of supporters at a theatre on the campus of Iowa State University, Clinton ticked through his wife's battle-scars and accomplishments ranging from education reform to her failed healthcare reform bill in the
1990s.
"I asked her to do the hardest thing of all, healthcare, and we got whipped," he said of the current New York senator.
"When she got beat, she did what she's always done -- she didn't fold her tent," he said.
