Hillary Clinton praised President Obama’s handling of the economic crisis he “inherited” and touted his overall leadership during a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., Tuesday.
“I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves,” she said.
Clinton pointed to the international climate agreement the U.S. struck in Paris last month as an example.
“I give a lot of credit to President Obama’s leadership on the climate deal,” Clinton said.
The former secretary of state recalled the difficulty she and Obama faced gaining an audience with foreign leaders at previous summits when it came to climate change discussions.
“Literally, we could not even get a meeting with the Chinese, the Brazilians, the Indians and the South Africans,” she said. “We had to chase them around this big convention center in Copenhagen.”
As a former member of Obama’s cabinet, Clinton has walked a fine line between embracing the administration’s policies and distancing herself from those that are unpopular with the Democratic base.
Siding with the president has caused Clinton problems on the campaign trail. She took fire after the most recent Democratic debate for claiming the U.S. is “where we need to be” in the fight against the Islamic State, a view shared by few outside the president’s most ardent supporters.
Clinton vowed Tuesday to “fix all the problems that we see with the Affordable Care Act,” a rare acknowledgement of the growing discontent with Obamacare among even left-leaning voters.
The Democratic front-runner has faced challenges by making economic problems like income inequality the central focus of her campaign while simultaneously arguing that her party should be given a third term in the White House.
