Hillary Clinton looks beyond Lewinsky scandal

By Gabriel Debenedetti WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a likely Democratic presidential contender, said she has "moved on" from the scandal surrounding her husband President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. "I think everybody needs to look to the future," Clinton said in an interview with People magazine released on Wednesday. The interview came ahead of the June 10 publication of Clinton's memoir "Hard Choices," about her time at the State Department. Lewinsky, the former White House intern, returned to the public eye last month by writing an essay published in Vanity Fair about the scandal that marred Bill Clinton's second term as president and led to his historic impeachment. Mrs. Clinton said she had not read the essay, but some of her Republican detractors have recently raised the Lewinsky affair as a way to criticize her possible bid for the presidency. The country's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013, Clinton has also faced persistent criticism from Republicans over the 2012 attack on the American outpost in Benghazi, Libya, which left four dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Clinton is expected to address her foreign policy record directly while touring the country promoting her book. She is scheduled to appear in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major North American cities in the coming weeks. Clinton has said she will decide whether to run for the White House after November's midterm elections, but she is widely considered the Democratic front-runner. Preliminary national polls show her with a considerable lead over other possible contenders from her party, including Vice President Joe Biden. "I'm certainly in the camp that says we need to break down that highest, hardest glass ceiling in American politics," Clinton said of the possibility of having a woman in the White House. She spoke about this theme while running unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2008. "To have a woman president is something I would love to see happen, but I'll just have to make my own decision about what I think is right for me." (Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; Editing by Tom Brown)