Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she was “stunned” when then President-elect Barack Obama asked her earlier this year to be the nation’s top diplomat and had to be persuaded to take the job.

“I was stunned after the election when President Obama asked me to consider this. I really was very unconvinced. I did not think it was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to do it,” Clinton told Vogue magazine’s Jonathan Van Meter.

In a lengthy profile of Clinton, which appears in the magazine’s December issue, Van Meter shows how Clinton wrestled with the decision for days, kept suggesting other candidates and had to be persuaded by friends, staff and Obama himself to accept.

“I just really had a lot of doubts, and I kept suggesting other people: Well how about this person! How about that person! This one would be really good! But then a friend of mine called me and basically said, ‘How would you have felt if you’d been elected and you’d called him and asked him to do this?’ And that really made a big impression on me,” Clinton is quoted as saying.

Clinton fought a pitched, expensive battle with Obama for the Democratic nomination for president that culminated with her withdrawal from the race in June 2008. She then campaigned for Obama.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Washington at jzacharia@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 15, 2009 00:01 EST