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Former Army Gen. David Petraeus , who has traditionally stayed away from political endorsements, appears to be eager to support a Hillary Clinton candidacy, a new book alleges.

Shed make a tremendous President, the former commander and CIA director reportedly says in the new book HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

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Like a lot of great leaders, her most impressive qualities were most visible during tough times, Petraeus adds.

The comments mark an interesting departure for Petraeus, who, when it comes to politics, has typically remained quiet.

RELATED: FRIEND MAILS FAKE GRENADE TO PETRAEUS

The book, to be released Tuesday, alleges that the unlikely pair forged a friendship while Clinton was Secretary of State.

According to excerpts of HRC, obtained by ABC News, Clinton, soon after taking office, invited Petraeus to her Washington home to drink wine and discuss Middle East issues. The night was so enjoyable that she invited him over again the next night to continue their chat.

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Ex-Gen. David Petraeus says Hillary Clinton would make ...

Hillary Clinton, once President Barack Obamas political foe, emerged as his top ally on what would become his signature policy achievement: revamping the U.S. health-care system.

She quietly advised administration officials and lawmakers uneasy after a summer of attacks by the small-government Tea Party movement, according to the book HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton. (Crown, 440 pages, $26.)

A member or two may have stopped and asked me what I thought, Clinton is quoted in the book as saying. And I thought, You need to work with the president and try to get this done.

HRC, by Bloomberg News reporter Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes of The Hill newspaper, is the first book-length account after Clintons tenure as secretary of state to explore her political comeback after losing her 2008 presidential bid to fellow Democrat Obama. The reported narrative, to be published today, gives new details about her reaction to the killings of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and her plans for a possible 2016 presidential run.

Sitting to the right of Obama at a Sept. 10, 2009, cabinet meeting, Clinton listened with alarm as other secretaries asked whether health-care legislation was worth sacrificing much of the rest of the presidents agenda, the book says. This is the time to do it, Clinton says in a pep talk the authors recount in the book. Were all in it. Everyone in this room knows how important this is.

Her own experience with pushing for a health-care revamp informed her advice to senior Obama administration officials and lawmakers, the authors write. In 1994, during President Bill Clintons first term, the first lady lost a fight to change the countrys health-insurance system.

I thought, Look, the president had more support in Congress than my husband did back in 93, 94, so he could put together a majority, Clinton says in the book. If the Republicans stonewalled, which they were beginning to show they would, despite his best efforts, he could still put a package on the floor and get it passed in both houses, which doesnt come along every first term of a president.

Obama signed the Affordable Care Act -- dubbed Obamacare -- into law March 23, 2010. Democrats are still experiencing repercussions; the issue cost them the House of Representatives in 2010 and has returned as a dominant theme of this years congressional races. Republicans are positioned to retain the House and need a net of six seats to take the Senate.

The book also traces Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lews path through Obamas administration. In a twist, the former Citigroup (C) Inc. executive began in the State Department in 2009 after Obamas then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, objected to installing him at the Treasury Department.

Emanuel was worried that it wouldnt look good to put a Citigroup executive in that job in the midst of a Wall Street bailout, the book says.

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Hillary Clinton Emerged as Top Obama Ally on Health: Book

(Corrects Bob Packwood's party affiliation to Republican in 11th paragraph.)

How responsible is a wife for the betrayal of her husband?

In the case of Hillary Clinton, the answer is, a lot, according to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Senator Rand Paul.

They got delicious material to use in their effort from exchanges between Clinton and her best friend Diane Blair. Blair died at 61 in 2000. Her husband donated her papers to the University of Arkansas, where they were reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.

The charge against Hillary is that she was an enabler, not a victim, of her husband's extramarital affairs, a long string of which culminated in the White House encounters with Monica Lewinsky.

Recalling a 1998 conversation, Blair wrote: HRC insists, no matter what people say, it was gross inappropriate behavior but it was consensual (was not a power relationship) and was not sex within real meaning.

As engrossing as it is to get inside Hillary's mind, to use Bill Clinton's behavior against Hillary requires that you think she let the philandering happen, that she somehow deserved it (she's often portrayed as cold and withholding), that she did nothing to stop it, blamed the other woman, and through it all, didn't suffer.

Her first reaction about Monica was the one many of us would have: This can't be true; surely, not in the Oval Office (or the adjoining study), surely not with an employee; surely not someone young enough to be his daughter. Then came the second thought: How do I protect Chelsea, calm the rabble hounding us on the front lawn night and day, keep our enemies from using it?

What she didn't do was leave. But since when do we punish people for NOT breaking up their marriages? Aren't Republicans the family values folks? And her instinct was to believe her husband above the women with whom he strayed. Who wouldn't?

Still these remembrances from Blair show Hillary to be ready to attack women to defend her husband, guilty to all but her. She believed too long, defended too strenuously, and lined up with women's groups who wouldn't ordinarily be siding with a public official who treated women so badly.

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The Politics of Hillary Clinton's Marriage

Hillary Clinton, a woman who's held two of the highest offices in U.S. government, may have originally wanted to become a kindergarten teacher after her eight years as first lady.

The revelation was found in the copious notes and diary of Diane Blair, a close friend and confident to the former first lady.

In a diary entry dated June 23, 1994, Blair expresses concern that going negative on Congress would backfire on the Clinton administration and, particularly, on Hillary Clinton.

"End of BC's [Bill Clinton's] success with Congress and all be blamed on her," writes Blair.

Blair goes on to note that Hillary Clinton, while appreciative of her input, said she wasn't worried about future relations with Congress.

According to Blair, Clinton told her that when the Clintons are done with "this," the first lady will "go be a kindergarten teacher and never have to hold hands on the Hill again."

Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Clinton would go on to serve eight years in the U..S. Senate, four years as secretary of state, and is now considered the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

That exchange is among thousands of pages of notes, letters, and diary entries penned by Diane Blair, a political science professor and longtime Clinton friend whose papers were donated to the University of Arkansas after her death in 2000.

Blair worked on Bill Clinton's two presidential campaigns and advised the President and first lady throughout their eight years in the White House. In particular, she was very close with Hillary Clinton, who called Blair her "closest friend" in her 2003 memoir "Living History."

CNN has confirmed the documents are authentic and has reached out to a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, who has not responded.

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Hillary Clinton as a kindergarten teacher?

The 90s are back, all but the shoulder pads and bad hair, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is right in the middle of it once more, as much cultural avatar as political potentate.

The decade that brought unending political scandals -- as well as the best economy that the nation has had in ages, by many markers -- started to resurface a couple of weeks ago when potential presidential candidate Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, took indirect aim at Clinton over her husbands relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Then, this week, came a piece on the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website that cited papers archived at the University of Arkansas after the death of Diane Blair, a close Clinton friend.

The papers -- a collection of Blair's diary-like accounts of conversations, campaign memos and the like -- are a sometimes wrenching trip via the wayback machine, as she recounts the Clintons arduous transition from Arkansas to Washington. In the most quotable comment, Hillary Clinton is said to have called Lewinsky a narcissistic loony toon whose relationship with Bill Clinton resulted from a moral lapse on his part, albeit one driven by the pressures facing the couple in the capital.

The papers also reflect, time after time, Hillary Clintons frustration with politics and her view that, while she adopted her husbands name to stave off criticism in Arkansas, she was not about to change her personality to suit the Washington establishment, the press or, for that matter, voters.

I gave up my name, got contact lenses, but Im not going to try to be somebody that Im not, Blair quotes Clinton as saying.

That tension has been a recurring theme of the Clintons political lives. In the 1992 presidential contest, campaign aides placed much emphasis on humanizing Hillary, or at least forwarding a public version of the human being her friends, including Blair, testified to. Blairs papers included a confidential campaign memo that said voters believed Hillary Clinton was smart but just couldnt fully connect with her. (Among other things, as was reported during the campaign, many voters were unaware that the Clintons had a daughter, the then-teenage Chelsea, and thus didnt see Hillary as particularly motherly.)

She got little credit for the things people liked about the Clintons, and more of the blame for the things they disliked.

What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary, the memo said.

The truth is she was a one-woman Rorschach test of the nations shifting gender roles. Was she the ardent lawyer and family breadwinner who said, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do is fulfill my profession? Or was she the woman who saved the campaign by standing by her man when womanizing charges surfaced (and, again, when they resurfaced during the presidency)? The answer, of course, was that she was both.

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'Ruthless' Hillary Clinton returns as the '90s make a comeback