For four years, Hillary Rodham Clinton flew around the world as President Barack Obama’s secretary of State, while her husband, the former president Bill Clinton, lived a parallel life of speeches and conferences in other hemispheres. They communicated almost entirely by phone. They were seldom on the same continent, let alone in the same house. 
 
 But this year, all that has changed: For the first time in decades, neither one is in elected office, or running for one. Both are working in the family business, in the newly renamed nonprofit that once bore only Bill’s name but is now called the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, which will hold its annual conference in New York next week. 
 
 “We get to be at home together a lot more now than we used to in the last few years,” says Hillary Clinton. “We have a great time; we laugh at our dogs; we watch stupid movies; we take long walks; we go for a swim. 
 
 “You know,” she says, “just ordinary, everyday pleasures.” 
 
 In the world of the Clintons, of course, what constitutes ordinary and everyday has never been either. So the question was inevitable: Given who he is, and who she is, does Bill, among their guffaws over the dogs and stupid movies, harangue her daily about running for president? 
 
 To this, Hillary Rodham Clinton lets loose one of her loud, head-tilted-back laughs. “I don’t think even he is, you know, focused on that right now,” she says. “Right now, we’re trying to just have the best time we can have doin’ what we’re doin’. ” 
 
 There’s a weightlessness about Hillary Clinton these days. She’s in midair, launched from the State Department toward … what? For the first time since 1992, unencumbered by the demands of a national political campaign or public office, she is saddled only with expectations about what she’s going to do next. And she is clearly enjoying it. 
 
 “It feels great,” she says, “because I have been on this high wire for twenty years, and I was really yearning to just have more control over my time and my life, spend a lot of that time with my family and my friends, do things that I find relaxing and enjoyable, and return to the work that I had done for most of my life.” 
 
 Relaxing, for a Clinton, especially one who, should she decide to run, is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in 2016, does not seem exactly restful. The day before we speak, she was awarded the Liberty Medal by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia—presented by Jeb Bush, another politician weighted with dynastic expectations and family intrigue, who took the opportunity to jest that both he and Clinton cared deeply about Americans—especially those in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. 
 
 Afterward, Clinton stepped backstage, a red-white-and-blue ribbon around her neck pulled taut by a saucer-size gold medal. “It is really heavy,” she said, with that plain-home midwestern tone she deploys when she wants to not appear the heavy herself. In the room with her were some of her close advisers—Nick Merrill, a communications staffer and acolyte of Hillary’s suffering top aide, Huma Abedin; and Dan Schwerin, the 31-year-old speechwriter who wrote all the words she had spoken moments ago. Local policemen with whom Clinton had posed for photos milled about behind her. 
 
 Outside was the usual chorus accompanying a Clinton appearance, befitting her status as the most popular Democrat in America: news helicopters buzzing overhead and protesters amassed across the street who raised signs that read benghazi in bloodred paint and chanted antiwar slogans directly at her as she spoke at the outdoor lectern. 
 
 Though she was officially out of the government, it was not as if she could leave it, even if she wanted to. That week Clinton had met with Obama in the White House to discuss the ongoing Syria crisis, and now Obama was on TV that very evening announcing a diplomatic reprieve from a missile attack on Syria—a series of decisions that Clinton had lent her support to every step of the way. “I’ve been down this road with them,” she tells me the next day. “I know how challenging it is to ever get [the Russians] to a ‘yes’ that they actually execute on, but it can be done. I think we have to push hard.” 
 
 Clinton has taken a press hiatus since she left the State Department in January—“I’ve been successful at avoiding you ­people for many months now!” she says, laughing. She is tentative and careful, tiptoeing into every question, keenly aware that the lines she speaks will be read between. In our interview, she emphasizes her “personal friendship” with Obama, with whom she had developed a kind of bond of pragmatism and respect—one based on shared goals, both political and strategic. “I feel comfortable raising issues with him,” she says. “I had a very positive set of interactions, even when I disagreed, which obviously occurred, because obviously I have my own opinions, my own views.” ||||| Fareed speaks with former President Bill Clinton about his wife Hillary's time as secretary of state, her approval ratings and whether she is likely to run for president herself. Watch the full and exclusive interview on “Fareed Zakaria GPS” this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1p.m. ET on CNN. 
 
 When you look at her poll numbers, can any other Democrat even get into the race? I mean, how would you raise money when you have… I don't think I've seen numbers like this, close to 70 percent Democrats say they would vote for her. 
 
 Well, I think partly that’s because she served well as secretary of state, and because people across the political spectrum finally got to see her the way those of us who know her see her. 
 
 And, you know, when I was president and she, like me, was subject to a long line of relentless criticism, and she did in the Senate. And she made a lot of friends in the Senate among Republicans as well as Democrats. People in New York liked her across the political spectrum. But it was the first time the country had ever gotten to see her as somebody who just – what you see is what you get. She shows up for work every day, gets stuff done, and is very strong about it. 
 
 But these polls don't mean much now. We're a long way ahead. I think she would be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as a done deal, ever, by anybody. But I don't know what she's going to do.
– New York magazine just dropped a long cover story on Hillary Clinton. We read all 5,934 words and plucked out some highlights: Hillary is "not in any hurry" to decided whether she'll run in 2016. She explains: "It's like when you meet somebody at a party and they look over your shoulder to see who else is there, and you want to talk to them about something that’s really important; in fact, maybe you came to the party to talk to that particular person, and they just want to know what’s next. I feel like that’s our political process right now. I just don’t think it is good." Though one "close confidant" says: "She’s running, but she doesn’t know it yet. It’s just like a force of history. It’s inexorable, it’s gravitational. I think she actually believes she has more say in it than she actually does." The "balance of power" in the Clinton marriage shifted during her time as secretary of State. Bill was "not a presence" in her department, says an aide. "It’s kind of jarring when she says ‘Bill,'" he says. 'Well, who’s Bill? And then you realize that she’s talking about her husband. It happened so infrequently that you were kind of like, Oh, the president." The "biggest question" in Hillary's circle right now is what will happen to Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner's wife and the Hillary's top aide. After Weiner's loss, "Huma has a choice to make," says a "close associate." “Does she go with Anthony, or does she go with Hillary?" What Hillary says she and Bill do at home now they've got more time on their hands: "We have a great time; we laugh at our dogs; we watch stupid movies; we take long walks; we go for a swim." Chelsea Clinton is now Bill's "gatekeeper." After taking over her father's foundation, she "has taken a chain saw to that organization," says a source, and she is overseeing an HBO doco Martin Scorsese is making about him. The article also suggests she might be a potential "shadow campaign manager" for Hillary. Meanwhile, on CNN's Global Public Square this morning, Bill claimed that he had no idea whether Hillary would run in 2016. "I think she would be the first to tell you that there is no such thing as a done deal, ever, by anybody," he said. "But I don't know what she's going to do."