What some voters think about Hillary Clinton
"Ambitious," "deceptive," "positive" and "aggressive" were among the diverse words used to describe potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a voter focus group at CBS News.
Republican strategist and CBS News contributor Frank Luntz gathered a group of 21 people to hear their opinions of Clinton. Participants were selected based on several factors, including gender, age, income, education and partisanship.
"It's time for a female president. It's been too long. We've had a black president, and now it's time for a female," one man said. "I thought in the '80s, actually, that a female president would beat a black president, but -- it's time."
"Why does it have to be a black or a woman, how about the most qualified individual?" another man asked in response.
Clinton's resume includes first lady, U.S. senator for New York and secretary of state.
"I think she is an intelligent candidate, and I think it's a lesser of evils like someone else said," a man said.
"[S]he may be the most qualified candidate because she has name recognition and she can raise money. That doesn't mean the most qualified or competent president," a man said.
"Qualified should be a leader. This is a woman who cries, she cries if she has too much stress, that's not a leader," a woman said.
"I'm stunned," another woman said in response. "I think it's good to have a human being as a president, someone who shows some emotion now and then. Yes, we can have a woman president that would be great. It should be Hillary."
Luntz said his goal was to find out what was on voters' minds and what really mattered to them.
"The idea that they would bring up that she cries -- we haven't discussed that...forever. And by the way, in the polling, it actually demonstrated that it helped her. The key for her is humanity," Luntz said Friday on "CBS This Morning." "People think she's a leader, and in fact, I still think, and I'll make a projection now, that she is elected president. Her key is whether she can show that she understands, that she empathizes, that she knows the concerns of people who live paycheck-to -paycheck. This has been a long time since she's engaged people that way."
No one in the focus group mentioned the controversy that arose this week over Clinton's use of a private email account for official government business during her days as secretary of state. Nor did they touch on Clinton's comment about how she and her husband were "dead broke" coming out of the White House, though Luntz said he had assumed they would come up.
Overall, what Luntz found remarkable was that he "heard nothing new...that we could have conducted this group three, four years ago, and the same positive comments and the same criticisms would have been spoken in the exactly same language," Luntz said.
But "nothing new" may be a problem. The prospect of another Clinton-Bush presidential match-up, albeit with a different Clinton and another Bush, did not appeal to everyone.
"Why does it have to be a Clinton or a Bush? We've had enough of them. There aren't any other people to lead this nation?" one man asked.
Luntz said even those who support Clinton want to see alternative candidates.
"There is real hostility toward the idea that we've become the royal family of American politics. That based on your blood line and your last name, you suddenly become a frontrunner," Luntz said.
"I think we need somebody who really has a fire in their belly, who is a true leader, who's willing to step up to the plate, and I think there are some viable candidates that have that," a woman said.
Watch the video above to see more of what voters had to say.