Martin O’Malley: Hillary Clinton capable of defending herself

For the second straight day, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley largely steered clear of criticizing former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over her use of a private e-mail system while serving as the nation’s top diplomat, saying Mrs. Clinton is capable of defending herself and that there are other more pressing issues facing the country.

Asked if he, as president, would require his secretary of state to use the official server of the state department and whether it would be important to him as commander-in-chief, Mr. O’Malley said, “Sure — it would be important to me.”

“But more important than e-mail policies would be making our economy work, getting our wages to go up, indexing the minimum wage, raising the threshold for overtime pay, making the investments that actually create jobs and give people a shot at giving their kids a better life,” Mr. O’Malley said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Mr. O’Malley demurred when asked if he thinks Mrs. Clinton has done anything wrong.

“I don’t feel compelled to answer that. Secretary Clinton is perfectly capable of defending her own service in office,” Mr. O’Malley said. “I think I’d rely on my people to tell me what the rules were.”

“Look, if we had a uniform email policy across all 50 states, and every county, and every city, and every department of the federal government — if we had that uniform email policy today, none of that would make a hill of difference to people that are trying to send their kids to college, or that are workin’ harder, not makin’ overtime and slippin’ further behind,” he said. “And those are the big issues in this race.”

Mr. O’Malley, who along with Mrs. Clinton is weighing a presidential run in 2016, deflected reporters’ questions over the email flap on Wednesday, as have other possible candidates on the Democratic side.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged she kept a private e-mail system out of “convenience.” She has turned over more than 30,000 emails deemed official and deleted about 32,000 emails she considered to be private.

“Look, there are big structural changes afoot in our economy — this is the time when we actually need people who govern us to have a framework for the future of the better choices that we can make, and [where] to make our economy function — people don’t care so much about email policies,” Mr. O’Malley said.

Openness and transparency are important, he said, “but it’s not the issue that’s going to restore our economy.”

He said he plans to make a decision on a presidential run sometime in the spring.

“Most years, there’s the inevitable front-runner, and that inevitable front-runner is inevitable right up until he or she is no longer inevitable,” he said. “So I think you’re going to see a robust conversation in the Democratic party about how we restore our middle class and middle class opportunity.”

Mr. O’Malley also joked about a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that said 86 percent of Democratic voters could see themselves supporting Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and 11 percent said the same for him.

“Am I really up to 11 percent?” he asked. “Who did this poll? Was this my mom?”

“People inside the Beltway are usually the last people to know when something is happening in Iowa or in New Hampshire, and people in those early states take their vote very, very seriously — they consider themselves to be the talent scouts, if you will, [in] making that first decision about what our choices are,” he said later. “And so, we don’t have any announced candidates in this race yet. But anybody who’s watched my history, not only in governing and getting things done, but in campaigning, will see that I’ve never run a bad race, and I’ve never gone all out when I’ve gone all in.”