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In his recently released Renegade, Richard Wolffe reports that, though Barack Obama had long planned on asking Hillary Clinton to serve as his secretary of State, he also didn't feel that he should have to convince Hillary to accept such a gracious offer. "I'm not begging her to take this job," Obama is said to have told his senior aides. But then something unexpected happened — Hillary played hard to get. "I was looking forward to going back to the Senate and, frankly, going back to my life and representing New York, which I love," Hillary lied to George Stephanopoulus on This Week yesterday. So she turned Obama down and "gave him a bunch of other names of people who I thought would be great secretaries of State." But much like his dogged pursuit of a date with Michelle all those years ago, Obama refused to take no for an answer — despite his previous haughtiness, Hillary says he "was quite persistent and very persuasive." Eventually, Hillary decided to accept the job out of a sense of duty to her president and her country, and possibly because Obama bought her some ice cream.

Hillary Clinton: I said no, at first, to secretary of state job [CNN]