White House dismisses speculation about Obama-Clinton ticket

The White House shot down speculation Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the vice presidential nominee in 2012.

“It’s just absolutely untrue,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday. “It’s not a conversation that’s happened.”

{mosads}Gibbs said President Obama thinks Vice President Biden is “doing an
extraordinary job,” and Obama is “quite pleased” with the work Clinton
has done at the State Department.

He said the speculation “is a little bit of a head-scratcher.”

The Obama-Clinton ticket talk began after veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said in an interview Tuesday that the arrangement is “on the table.” 

“It’s on the table,” Woodward said in an interview Tuesday on CNN. “Some of Hillary Clinton’s advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012.”

Clinton dismissed any aspirations of being vice president at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summitt in Washington.

“I don’t believe what I read,” Clinton said, according to CNN. “I have absolutely no interest and no reason for doing anything other than just dismissing these stories and moving on.”

There had been previous speculation that Vice President Biden could vacate his post in 2012, but the White House has dismissed that possibility too.

An Obama-Clinton ticket would unite the two former rivals, who ran a down-to-the-wire race in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

A recent Gallup poll also sparked talk that Clinton could re-enter presidential politics in the next reelection cycle. Fifty-two percent of Democrats said they would vote for Obama in a hypothetical Democratic primary rematch against Clinton, opposed to 37 percent who say they would vote for Clinton.

Meanwhile, Gibbs used the occasion
to joke about his own tepid denials concerning reports he’d move from the
White House podium to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

“I think [Clinton’s] going to the DNC,” Gibbs said. “That was a joke. I wanted to make sure everybody was paying attention.”

— This post was updated at 10:03 a.m., 11:37 a.m., and 11:51 a.m.