Hillary Clinton's prickly reaction to email row could be fatal to 2016 hopes

After two decades of life at America’s top-table, Hillary Clinton can no longer stand to be treated like any other candidate, writes Peter Foster in Washington

For Hillary Clinton, it must all seem like a distant dream: for four years as her country’s top diplomat she was officially exempted from the gravitational forces of America’s divided politics.

While at the State Department she was allowed to float free, briefly enjoying the political equivalent of weightlessness, released from the bitter back-and-forth and her own troubled political history.

For a time she even made jokes, playing along with the ‘Texts from Hillary’ internet craze – acerbic and self-deprecating in her Jackie O dark glasses, Blackberry always in hand. When she left the State Department her personal public approval hovered at a near-celestial 69 per cent.

Well, it didn’t last long. If Mrs Clinton had harboured any lingering hopes that she might waft her way into the White House in 2016 on a cloud of good works and a record of achievement, she was disabused of them on Tuesday at the United Nations.

Inside the auditorium she was still playing the international ambassador - promoting women's empowerment before a friendly audience of diplomats and activists – but out in the hallway reporters were queueing up to ask the question that had been splashed across every newspaper and TV news bulletin for over a week: “What happened to all those emails?”

More