Hillary could wait until 2015 to announce bid, mum on Benghazi testimony

May 6, 2014: This file photo shows Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking in National Harbor, Md. (AP)

Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she could wait until early next year to decide whether to run for president in 2016.

Whether the former first lady will make a second White House bid continues to be the most talked-about aspect of the upcoming race.

"I just want to get through this year, travel around the country, sign books, help in the midterm elections in the fall and then take a deep breath and kind of go through my pluses and minuses," Clinton, who is starting a tour this week to promote her new book, "Hard Choices," told ABC’s “This Week.”

Clinton, a Democrat, also said she’s making no commitments about testifying before a select congressional committee investigating the 2012 deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, which occurred when she was secretary of state.

Clinton talked the same day as the release of an ABC News-Washington Post poll that shows 69 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents supporting her for the party's nomination.

In the interview, an excerpt from a longer interview with ABC News, Clinton dismissed the argument that her failing to declare her candidacy while having such a commanding front-runner status has essentially frozen other potential 2016 Democratic candidates.

“People can do whatever they choose to do on whatever timetable they decide," said Clinton, who also said she could decide on a candidacy by late 2014. And she pointed out that husband and former President Bill Clinton started his presidential bid in the fall of 1991, just months before the New Hampshire primary.

Some Democrats privately worry that if Clinton holds off on making a decision and then opts against running, potential candidates like Vice President Joe Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and several Democratic senators would be at a disadvantage against Republicans who have been actively pursuing the White House.

Republicans have questioned Clinton's handling of the deadly 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya. Asked whether she will testify before a new congressional committee investigating the attacks, Clinton said that will be up to the people running the hearing.

"I'm not going to say one way or another," Clinton said. "We'll see what they decide to do, how they conduct themselves: Whether this is one more travesty about the loss of four Americans or whether this is in the best tradition of the Congress, an effort to try and figure out what we can do better."

Clinton also said she has no lingering health effects from her falling and hitting her head in 2012 and that like other political candidates she would be willing to release her medical records.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.