Hillary Clinton should be in absolutely no rush to declare she's running for president in 2016, Webb Hubbell, a longtime friend of the Clinton family, tells
Newsmax TV.
"There's no reason to hurry. Nobody else is on the Democratic side has really come forward and I don't know what the rush is," Hubbell said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
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"Her husband, when he ran for president, didn't even announce until the fall.... I think she should wait. We don't need to get into the campaign mode two years ahead of time.
"I don't think the American people care about who's running right now. They're more worried about the paychecks and how to get food on the table."
Hubbell — who served as mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas, and was an associate attorney general under Bill Clinton — is author of the new thriller
"Ginger Snaps," published by Beaufort Books.
He said the former secretary of state's recent press conference to discuss her controversial use of a personal email account to conduct government business may not have been a good idea.
"Good job or bad job, she was in the wrong place to be announcing, discussing that. We all get caught sometimes in places where we don't want to be and answering questions we're not ready to answer," Hubbell said.
"The real truth is she needs to back off and quit having everybody push her into announcing her candidacy before it's time to do it.
"Everybody knew … for the last six years she's been using the same email. Nobody can say they didn't know."
Hubbell said the 2016 presidential race should be about issues that really matter to the country.
"Hopefully next year people are going to talk about what's important to the American people, which is a deteriorating infrastructure and 25 percent of our children are on food stamps. Now let's talk about those issues, [instead of] talking about email," he said.
In 1994, Hubbell pleaded guilty to federal charges in the "Whitewater scandal" involving fraud and overbilling at the Rose Law Firm, whose partners included Hillary Clinton. He was sentenced to 21 months behind bars.
Asked by Malzberg whether there was an "aura" about the Clintons, Hubbell responded: "They spent $70 million trying to prove that Hillary broke the law and they didn't find a thing. So yeah, there's this aura, but who's creating the aura?"
Hubbell said he wants the 2016 presidential race to be about issues that really matter to the country.
"Hopefully next year people are going to talk about what's important to the American people, which is a deteriorating infrastructure and 25 percent of our children are on food stamps. Now let's talk about those issues, [instead of] talking about email," he said.
Hubbell's new book is his second Jack Patterson thriller, this one revolving around a lawyer who gets involved in the case of a world-renowned chemist, who is arrested for marijuana cultivation, possession, and distribution.