Hillary Clinton on 2016 Presidential Run: 'I'll Make That Decision Sometime Next Year'

Dec. 18, 2013— -- Hillary Clinton is Barbara Walters' Most Fascinating Person of 2013.

Although speculation and rumors have been swirling for months over whether Clinton will make another run for the White House in 2016, she said she hasn't decided yet.

"I haven't made up my mind," Clinton told Walters in the ABC News special "Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2013."

"Obviously, I will look carefully at what I think I can do and make that decision sometime next year."

After losing her 2008 bid for the White House to President Barack Obama, only to be picked to serve in his cabinet as secretary of state, Clinton has been dogged by questions over whether she will make another presidential run in the upcoming 2016 election. Just last week, more than 450 Hillary Clinton supporters gathered at the pro-Clinton super PAC Ready for Hillary for a D.C. kickoff event. But she said it's too soon to tell.

"It's such a difficult decision, and it's one that I'm not going to rush into ... and I don't think we should be looking at the next election," Clinton said. "I think we should be looking at the work that we have today. Our unemployment rate is too high. We have people getting kicked off food stamps who are in terrible economic straits. Small business is not getting credit, I could go on and on, so I think we ought to pay attention to what's happening right now."

Walters' choice of Hillary Clinton as the Most Fascinating Person of 2013 for Walters' last installment of "The 10 Most Fascinating People of the Year" is a poignant one. When the ABC News annual special debuted 20 years ago in 1993, then-first lady Hillary Clinton was the first person to top Walters' list.

Today, for the first time in decades, neither Hillary Clinton nor her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who also appeared on the top of Walters' list twice, are in public office, which the former secretary of state called a "relief."

"I knew that I wanted to get off this high wire that I had been on for so long," she said. "To spend time just doing things that give us a lot of joy, playing with our dogs, going to movies, just hanging out."

As for what Bill Clinton thinks about his wife making another presidential run, Clinton said, "He wants me to do what I think is right."

And if she ran and became president, what would that make her husband? "I have no idea," Clinton said, laughing. "First mate, I don't know."

While she remained coy about her own thoughts of heading to the White House, Clinton acknowledged that she thought it was "important" that the United States have a female president, noting that Michelle Bachelet, whom Clinton called "my friend," was just re-elected president of Chile, and that Brazil also has a female head of state, President Dilma Rousseff, whom Clinton said she "admired greatly."

"It matters. It matters because we have half the population that has given so much to building this country, to making it work, raising children and, of course, I want to see women eventually in the White House," Clinton said. "If you look at my friends and former colleagues, who are now in the Senate, it was the women senators, on both sides of the aisle, who finally broke the fever over the government shutdown and the debt limit. ... They have been working across party lines, and we need more of that."

Looking back on her political career and life in public service, Clinton said the worst times for her were the "personal times," such as when her parents died.

"When you're in the political public arena, you know you're going to get credit you probably don't deserve and blame you probably don't deserve," she said. "And you have to chart your own course."