Hillary Rodham Clinton

American senator (2001–9); secretary of state (2009–13)

• Born: October 26, 1947
• Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois

Clinton, the first former First Lady to also be a US senator and a contender for the presidency of the United States, became the first woman to win a presidential primary and the first woman to receive the presidential nomination for one of the country's major political parties in 2016. She has long been an advocate for human rights and worked for a national health-care plan.

Early Life

Hillary Rodham Clinton was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Hugh Rodham, a small-business owner, and Dorothy Howell Rodham, a homemaker. While growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Clinton was raised as a Republican and faithfully attended Sunday school at a local Methodist church. After graduating from high school in 1965, she attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in political science. Clinton graduated with honors on May 31, 1969, and was the first student of Wellesley to deliver a commencement address, for which she received a seven-minute standing ovation.

Clinton then attended Yale Law School and worked on the journal Yale Review of Law and Social Action and for the Yale Child Study Center. It was at Yale in the spring of 1971 where she met fellow law student and future US president Bill Clinton. Clinton said she was drawn to his strong intellect; in her book Living History (2003), she wrote, “To this day, he can astonish me with the connections he weaves between ideas and words and how he makes it all sound like music.” After attending the 1968 Republican National Convention, Clinton decided that she could no longer be a Republican. With the nomination of Richard M. Nixon for president, the Republican Party had become too conservative for her.

Life’s Work

After receiving her law degree in 1973, Clinton served as a staff attorney for the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1974, she joined the staff House Committee on the Judiciary and advised that body on the historical and constitutional grounds for impeachment. The committee had been investigating President Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal.

In late 1974, Clinton joined her soon-to-be husband by moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, a decision that did not come easily for her. They both began to teach at the Fayetteville School of Law at the University of Arkansas, and they married in the living room of their Fayetteville home on October 11, 1975.

In 1978, US president Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, and she became chair of the board in 1980. By the time her tenure ended in 1981, she had overseen the expansion of the corporation’s funding from $90 million to $300 million. In 1979, she was made a partner at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. That same year, her husband was elected governor of Arkansas. The couple moved into the governor’s mansion in January 1980.

Beginning a pattern that would continue through Bill's political career, even into the US presidency, Clinton began working in state and federal government. With Bill as governor, Clinton was appointed to the Rural Health Advisory Committee. She became an advocate for health care for the poor, and she secured federal funding for medical facilities in rural Arkansas. On February 27, 1980, Clinton gave birth to the couple’s only daughter, Chelsea Victoria Clinton. After some time on maternity leave, Clinton continued working full time for the Rose Law Firm until Bill became president.

Bill announced his candidacy for president in late 1991. Clinton became an active campaigner and adviser. Indeed, during the campaign, Bill had promised voters that they would get “two for the price of one” if he were elected, but the campaign started on a bad note. Allegations of past adultery by Bill had surfaced, and, during a television interview with Hillary sitting next to him, he confessed to causing “pain” in his marriage. Nevertheless, he became president in January 1993.

Hillary Clinton promised to be a different kind of First Lady, and indeed she was. She was determined to be more than simply host to official White House functions, as First Ladies were expected to do; she would play an active role in policy-making. To that end, she had an office in the West Wing of the White House, close to the Oval Office, making her the first First Lady to have her own official workspace in the West Wing as well as in the East Wing. In September 1993, President Clinton appointed her chair of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, and she was given the job of developing a plan for universal health care in the United States. The plan, which would have mandated employers to provide health care through health maintenance organizations (HMOs), was quickly dubbed “Hillarycare” by those opposed to the plan. After harsh attacks by insurance companies and congressional Republicans, the Clinton health-care plan failed.

During a major scandal of 1998, in which the president was accused of having a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Clinton staunchly defended her husband. She went on NBC’s Today Show and blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for the allegations against Bill. In late 1998, Bill confessed to having had an “inappropriate” relationship with Lewinsky and was impeached by Congress but not removed from office.

Also in 1998, Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York announced his retirement, leading Clinton to consider running for his soon-to-be-open congressional seat. She decided to run after purchasing a home in Chappaqua, New York, to establish residence in the state. She went on to win with 55 percent of the vote, making her the first First Lady to be elected to public office.

Once in the Senate, Clinton joined the Armed Services Committee and advocated the purchase of updated weaponry and personal protection for US troops. She was quick to voice her support for rescue workers in New York City after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Upon returning to Washington, DC, she became one of the first legislators to raise concerns about the health effects of the poor air quality at Ground Zero. Her work led to the awarding of compensation to first responders and their families by Congress. Clinton also worked with Republicans on such issues as veterans’ health care and other benefits. She was criticized, however, for voting in October 2002 for a resolution later used by President George W. Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Clinton’s popularity led to her reelection to the Senate with 67 percent of the vote in November 2006, and she announced her candidacy for the presidency in January 2007. Throughout 2007 and into 2008, she was a leader in national polls on the Democratic presidential primaries, and she won the New Hampshire primary, becoming the first woman to do so. By the end of January, however, it became clear that Clinton’s chief contender for the Democratic nomination was Illinois senator Barack Obama, who eventually won the Democratic primaries and the general election to become the forty-fourth president. Clinton served as Obama's secretary of state during his first presidential term, stepping down in early 2013. In 2014, she published a memoir, Hard Choices, detailing her time as secretary of state.

In April 2015, Clinton formally announced her candidacy for the 2016 presidential election. She faced off against Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primaries, in which she won the Iowa Democratic caucuses in February 2016, becoming the first woman to do so. Clinton faced a tight race against Sanders, who rallied a large number of supporters behind him. However, Clinton once again made history when, in July 2016, she accepted the Democratic nomination for president, making her the first woman to achieve the presidential nomination for a major political party in the United States. At the same time, commentators predicted that she and her running mate Tim Kaine, a US senator from Virginia, faced another difficult campaign against the Republican nominee for president, celebrity businessperson and entrepreneur Donald Trump, and his running mate Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana.

Clinton attempted to overcome widespread voter distrust caused by her past political activities and decisions, particularly her choice to use a private email address and server for governmental affairs while she held the post of secretary of state. Promising to focus on boosting the middle class, she also emphasized the need to maintain US diplomatic ties and international alliances; offered clear plans regarding health care, immigration reform, gun control, and the economy; and highlighted her decades of experience in public service as evidence of her suitability for the presidency.

However, following months of atypical debates between the two nominees and strained campaigning, and with polls consistently showing Clinton ahead in the race, she ultimately lost key swing states to Trump on Election Day, which was held on November 8, 2016. In the early hours of November 9, Clinton conceded the election to Trump in what was largely viewed as a surprise upset after he had surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, although she had beaten him in the popular vote by a wide margin. The official count, which ended in December 2016, had Clinton winning 2.86 million more votes than Trump, making it the largest popular vote loss by an electoral college winner in history by raw numbers, and the second-largest by percentage (2.1 percent of the total vote).

In September 2017, Simon & Schuster published What Happened, Clinton's memoir about the 2016 election. Eschewing political niceties, the book enumerates the factors that Clinton believes contributed to her loss, while also acknowledging her own mistakes as a candidate. David Weigel, in a review for the Washington Post, called What Happened "a raw and bracing book, a guide to our political arena"; David Remnick, writing for the New Yorker, described it as "a raw memoir, both apologetic and apoplectic."

In the fall of 2018, Hillary and Bill Clinton launched a thirteen-city speaking tour that started in Canada. The events included discussions of current issues as well as stories about the Clintons' political careers. Though some of the dates on the tour in the United States were moderated by such high-profile individuals as actor Ben Stiller and media personality Star Jones, ticket sales were reportedly poor overall. The tour came to an end in May 2019. In October of that year, Clinton published The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience, which she coauthored with her daughter Chelsea.

In addition to continuing to publish her writing, this time in the form of a political thriller coauthored with Louise Penny, 2021's State of Terror, Clinton returned to academia in the 2020s. After being appointed as the new and first female chancellor of Northern Ireland's Queen's University Belfast in 2020, she joined Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and helped launch the university's new Institute of Global Politics in 2023.

Significance

Hillary Clinton made US history in 2016 as the first woman to be the official presidential nominee of a major political party. Despite losing to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, she received the second-highest number of individual votes of any candidate in US presidential history—65,853,516—second only to Obama, who won almost 69.5 million votes in 2008 and 65.9 million in 2012. Before that, as First Lady, she exerted an unprecedented degree of influence in the political process, becoming a close adviser to her husband and being named head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform in 1993, in addition to executing the traditional First Lady duties. She was the first presidential spouse to have earned a postgraduate degree and the first to have an office in the West Wing, and in 2000 she became the first former First Lady to be elected to public office. As noted by the History channel website, she "helped define the role of the modern political spouse and was one of the most accomplished first ladies in American history."

Bibliography

Allen, Jonathan, and Amie Parnes. HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton. Crown Publishers, 2014.

Chafe, William H. Hillary and Bill: The Clintons and the Politics of the Personal. Rev. and expanded ed., Duke UP, 2016.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham. Hard Choices. Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham. An Invitation to the White House: At Home with History. Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham. It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. 1996. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham. Living History. Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham. What Happened. Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Estrich, Susan. The Case for Hillary Clinton. Regan Books, 2005.

Ghattas, Kim. The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. Times Books, 2013.

Healy, Patrick, and Jonathan Martin. "Democrats Make Hillary Clinton a Historic Nominee." The New York Times, 26 July 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/dnc-speakers-sanders-clinton.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

"Hillary Clinton Fast Facts." CNN, 11 Oct. 2023, www.cnn.com/2012/12/20/us/hillary-clinton---fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

"Hillary Clinton Inaugurated as New Queen's University Chancellor." BBC, 24 Sept. 2021, www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-58669865. Accessed 30 Aug. 2024.

Kilgore, Ed. "The Final, Final, Final Results for the Presidential Popular Vote Are In." New York, 20 Dec. 2016, nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/the-final-final-final-results-for-the-popular-vote-are-in.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Luhby, Tami. "How Hillary Clinton Lost." CNNPolitics, CNN, 9 Nov. 2016, www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/clinton-votes-african-americans-latinos-women-white-voters/. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Merica, Dan. "The Clintons Launch Paid Speaking Tour with Plenty of Ire for Trump." CNN, 28 Nov. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/11/27/politics/bill-and-hillary-clinton-speaking-tour/index.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Remnick, David. "Hillary Clinton Looks Back in Anger." The New Yorker, 25 Sept. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/25/hillary-clinton-looks-back-in-anger. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Rosman, Katherine. "Professor Hillary Clinton Goes Back to School." The New York Times, 7 Sept. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/nyregion/hillary-clinton-columbia-university.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Weigel, David. "Clinton's Account of How She Was 'Shivved' in the 2016 Presidential Election." Review of What Happened, by Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Washington Post, 12 Sept. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/clintons-account-of-how-she-was-shivved-in-the-2016-presidential-election/2017/09/11/f6740438-957f-11e7-89fa-bb822a46da5b‗story.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.