Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday.
Panetta told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that the next president must be able to “break the gridlock in this town” and bring both parties together, calling the “dysfunction in government” one of the “greatest threats to national security.”
“Secondly, they have to be a world leader,” Panetta added. He said that Clinton was the candidate who had both “the ability to govern” and “the ability to provide world leadership.”
Panetta, a former nine-term Democratic member of Congress from California, served as White House budget director and chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. He more recently was CIA director and then secretary of defense under President Obama, retiring from the latter position in 2013.
