--- title: Hillary Clinton Answers Beyonce Question at Iowa Town Hall description: The candidate was asked if she'd rather be president or Beyoncé canonical: https://time.com/4153621/hillary-clinton-beyonce-iowa-town-hall/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-12-17T20:09:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:44:42.936Z og:title: Clinton: 'I Want to Be as Good a President as Beyoncé Is a Performer' og:description: She fielded a question about Beyoncé at an Iowa town hall og:url: https://time.com/4153621/hillary-clinton-beyonce-iowa-town-hall/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf24316dc7939eb1/698875e7cd1bbaf4bd6fe969/clinton-beyonce.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: clinton-beyonce og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Clinton: 'I Want to Be as Good a President as Beyoncé Is a Performer' twitter:description: She fielded a question about Beyoncé at an Iowa town hall twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf24316dc7939eb1/698875e7cd1bbaf4bd6fe969/clinton-beyonce.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Hillary Clinton: 'I Want to Be as Good a President as Beyoncé Is a Performer' by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Dec 17, 2015 8:09 PM UTC  Hillary Clinton and Beyoncé. Hillary Clinton and Beyoncé.Randy Holmes; Monica Schipper—Getty Images by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Dec 17, 2015 8:09 PM UTC At a town hall in Iowa on Wednesday afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton fielded a question that had nothing to do with the usual issues like healthcare or immigration or taxes or terrorism. Instead, the question was about music. “If you could choose, would you rather be the president or Beyoncé?” the voter asked earnestly. “I’d rather be president because I can’t sing,” Clinton replied. “Nobody would pay to see me sing or dance. Even when I was a way lot younger, that just wasn’t in the cards for me.” Clinton continued with some high praise for the pop star: “You see her on TV, it’s impressive; you see her in person, you’re just stunned. Thinking like, how does she _do_ that? Really. I mean, she singing, she’s up and she’s down. She’s just amazing.” Then she looped back to the topic at hand, concluding, “I want to be as good a president as Beyoncé is a performer.” Beyoncé apparently has similarly positive feelings about Clinton. She [attended a fundraiser](http://time.com/3859519/beyonce-hillary-clinton-fundraiser/) in May for Clinton’s presidential campaign. Watch Clinton’s full answer here: ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4153621/hillary-clinton-beyonce-iowa-town-hall/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4153621/hillary-clinton-beyonce-iowa-town-hall/"},"headline":"Hillary Clinton: 'I Want to Be as Good a President as Beyoncé Is a Performer'","datePublished":"2015-12-17T20:09:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T07:44:42.936Z","description":"The candidate was asked if she'd rather be president or Beyoncé","url":"https://time.com/4153621/hillary-clinton-beyonce-iowa-town-hall/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Hillary Clinton","2016 Election","Beyonce"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf24316dc7939eb1/698875e7cd1bbaf4bd6fe969/clinton-beyonce.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbf24316dc7939eb1/698875e7cd1bbaf4bd6fe969/clinton-beyonce.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"clinton-beyonce","caption":"Hillary Clinton and Beyoncé.","creditText":"Randy Holmes; Monica Schipper—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4153621/hillary-clinton-beyonce-iowa-town-hall/","name":"Hillary Clinton: 'I Want to Be as Good a President as Beyoncé Is a Performer'"}}]}] ```