Hillary Rodham Clinton

   

Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947), was First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, as the wife of President Bill Clinton. She currently serves as the junior United States Senator from New York.

Early life, education, and career

Hillary Rodham was raised in Park Ridge, Illinois. She graduated from Wellesley College, where she initially served as President of the College Republicans. She switched parties after attending the Wellesley in Washington program at the urging of Professor Alan Schechter, and wrote her thesis on leftist organizer Saul Alinsky. She then attended Yale University Law School, where she met her future husband. Following law school she joined the legal staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, serving the committee during the Watergate scandal and while the committee adopted the articles of impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. It was at this time that she made the acquaintance of Bernard Nussbaum, future White House Counsel for President Clinton.

Following her service to the Judiciary Committee, she departed for Arkansas, where in 1975 she joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School, and married Bill Clinton.

In 1976 Bill Clinton was elected Arkansas State Attorney General and Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm as an attorney. Partners at the firm included Webster Hubbell, who eventually served in the U.S. Justice Department as Associate Attorney General during the Clinton Administration, and Vincent Foster, Jr..

In 1978 Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas and Hillary Clinton became First Lady.

First Lady of Arkansas

Hillary served as Arkansas's First Lady for 12 years. She chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital, Legal Services, and the Children's Defense Fund.

Work that Hillary Clinton performed at the Rose Law Firm during this period would later become a central part of the Whitewater Scandal during Bill Clinton's presidency. In brief, the Clintons' partners in the Whitewater real estate venture, Jim and Susan McDougal, also operated a savings and loan bank that retained Mrs. Clinton's legal services. The subsequent failure of the bank triggered Federal investigations, and Hillary Clinton's billing records were subpoenaed in 1994; they were not produced until 1996, when they were found in a private area of the White House. While both of the McDougals were jailed as a result of the federal investigations, and Webster Hubbell pled guilty to felony charges of lying to federal investigators about Hillary Clinton's role in the land deal and bank failure, Bill and Hillary Clinton were never charged with any crimes and reportedly even lost the money they had invested in the business projects.

Hillary wrote a weekly newspaper column entitled "Talking It Over," which focused on her experiences as First Lady and her observations of women, children, and families she has met around the world.

First Lady of the United States

Portrait of the President and First Lady at the South Portico of the White House, February 2000.
Portrait of the President and First Lady at the South Portico of the White House, February 2000.

When her husband was elected to the presidency in 1992, she was the most overtly political First Lady ever. Just as her husband was the first President from the Baby Boom generation, she was its first First Lady. President Clinton appointed her to a task force to devise reforms to America's health system. The controversial commission produced a complicated plan which never came to the floor of either house. It was abandoned in September, 1994. Numerous critics felt that she had too much influence on policy, especially during the health care task force.

Clinton won many admirers for her staunch support for women around the world and her commitment to children's issues. She continued to be a leading advocate for expanding health insurance coverage, ensuring children are properly immunized, and raising public awareness of health issues. She worked on lesser but noteworthy projects like the CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) and breast cancer research funding.

Like her husband, she was investigated for numerous alleged scandals; in every case, the investigations led to no criminal charges. She was criticized as allegedly interfering with the initial investigation of the death of Vince Foster. On January 26, 1996, she testified before a grand jury concerning the Whitewater scandal. During the Lewinsky scandal, Mrs. Clinton publicly stuck by the President, initially claiming that the allegations were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", and remaining by his side after the affair was confirmed.

Clinton also was subject to controversy when her brother, Hugh Rodham, was accused of a pay-for-pardon deal with the President for herbal medicine man Almon Glenn.

U.S. Senator

Hillary Clinton is sworn in as a U.S. Senator by Vice President Gore as Bill and Chelsea Clinton observe.
Enlarge
Hillary Clinton is sworn in as a U.S. Senator by Vice President Gore as Bill and Chelsea Clinton observe.

In a blaze of international media publicity, Mrs. Clinton ran for a New York senate seat in 2000, becoming the first sitting First Lady to be a candidate for elected office and for the Senate. She was initially expected to face New York City's Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but he withdrew after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Instead Clinton faced Rick Lazio, a four-term Congressman representing Suffolk County. The race was notable for the fact that Clinton had previously neither resided in the State of New York nor participated in local politics there, leading opponents of her candidacy to charge her with carpetbagging; this political move is not unprecedented in New York State, which had elected Robert F. Kennedy to the Senate in 1964 under similar circumstances.

Clinton comfortably won the traditionally Democratic seat on November 7, becoming the first woman elected statewide in New York. Her victory was attributed in part to her extensive campaigning and strong showing in traditionally Republican areas of Upstate New York. Over two-thirds of voters dismissed the "carpetbagging" issue as unimportant. Overall, Clinton won 55% of the state vote compared with Lazio's 43%; Clinton won 54% of the Jewish vote and over 89% of the African-American vote. In the concurrent Presidential race, Al Gore won New York by 26 percentage points.

Two months after the election, President Clinton pardoned four residents of the New Square Hasidic enclave who had been convicted of defrauding the Federal government. This raised concerns among critics because Sen. Clinton won 1400 of the 1412 votes cast in New Square. New Square has a history of bloc voting, and a Federal investigation cleared the Clintons of any wrongdoing in the matter.

Future presidential bid?

There are many rumors that Senator Clinton may one day run for President. She has very high levels of name and image recognition, as well as previous White House experience. At the same time, she remains a controversial figure, which might reduce her attractiveness as a candidate. Sen. Clinton has stated she has no intention of running, and declined to run for the Democratic Party nomination in the U.S. presidential election, 2004, though she was urged to do so by many. Some speculate that Clinton will run in the 2008 election. She is up for a possible second term in the Senate in 2006. Some have suggested she might be interested instead in a run for NY governor also in 2006 to gain executive credientials. The newspaper columnist Gloria Berger recently speculated that she might not run for re-election and instead move to another state and run for President from there rather than be labelled another northeast liberal. Perhaps she might return to her Chicago area roots and try to run as a midwesterner after a brief respite at a think-tank, business or university. Arkansas is another possibility.

Writings

Hillary Clinton's signature
Hillary Clinton's signature

Clinton wrote her undergraduate thesis at Wellesley College on radical tactician Saul Alinsky.

During her time in the White House, Clinton was a prolific author. As First Lady, she wrote a weekly newspaper column entitled "Talking It Over," which focused on her experiences as First Lady and her observations of women, children, and families she has met around the world. Her 1996 book It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us was a best seller, and she received a Grammy Award for her recording of it. Other titles released by Clinton during time as First Lady include: An Invitation to the White House, and Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets.

Clinton's memoirs Living History (ISBN 0743222245) was released in 2003. The book was an immediate best seller, selling more than one million copies in the first month following publication. In anticipation of these sales, the publisher Simon & Schuster had payed her a then-record $8 million advance.

Further reading

 Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

References

External links

Senate Race



Preceded by:
Barbara Bush		 First Ladies of the United States Succeeded by:
Laura Bush


Preceded by:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan		 United States Senator New York State Succeeded by:
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