Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton (born Hillary Diane Rodham on October 26, 1947) is the junior United States Senator from New York. She is married to Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, and was First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Before that, she was a lawyer and the First Lady of Arkansas. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Departing from the traditional role of the First Lady, Clinton was directly involved in policy-making during her husband's presidency. She headed the task force that proposed the Clinton health care plan, which was not enacted by Congress, and initiated the Children's Health Insurance Program and the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Her prominent role has been at times controversial, and generated debate on the changing status of women in America.
In 2000, Clinton was elected to succeed Pat Moynihan in United States Senate, becoming the only First Lady ever to run for public office and the first female senator representing New York. She was re-elected in 2006. As senator, she sits on the Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the Special Committee on Aging. Although she has not stated her intentions, Clinton is widely seen as a potential candidate for president in the 2008 presidential election.
Hillary Rodham was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in a Methodist family in Park Ridge, Illinois. Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, a conservative, was an executive in the textile industry, and her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, was a homemaker. She has two brothers, Hugh and Tony.
As a child, Hillary was involved in many activities at church and at a public school in Park Ridge. Rodham was fond of sports, including tennis, ice skating, ballet, swimming, volleyball, and softball. She earned many awards as a Brownie and Girl Scout. Prior to graduating from Maine South High School, she attended Maine East High School, where she served as class president, a member of the student council, a member of the debating team, and as a member of the National Honor Society. During her last year of high school (Maine South High School), she received the school's first social science award. In 1964 (at age 16) Hillary Rodham campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Her parents encouraged her to pursue the career of her choice.
In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College in Massachusetts where she became active in politics, serving as president of the Wellesley College Chapter of the College Republicans. During her junior year in 1968, Rodham was affected by the death of civil rights leader Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom she had met in person in 1962. After attending the "Wellesley in Washington" program at the urging of Professor Alan Schechter, her political views became more in tune with American liberalism and she joined the Democratic Party. Named valedictorian of her graduating class at Wellesley, Rodham graduated in 1969 with departmental honors in Political Science. She became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver a commencement address. The Associated Press reported at the time that her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes. She was featured in an article published in Life magazine because of the response to her speech, which was controversial in that it criticized Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke, who had given his remarks before her.
In 1969, Rodham entered Yale Law School, where she served on the Board of Editors of Yale Review of Law and Social Action and worked with underprivileged children at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. During the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the summer of 1971, she traveled to Washington to work on Senator Walter Mondale's subcommittee on migrant workers, researching migrant problems in housing, sanitation, health and education. For the summer of 1972, Rodham worked in the western states for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's campaign. During her second year in law school, she volunteered at the Yale Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development. She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital and worked at the city Legal Services, providing free legal service to the poor. She received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale in 1973, having written a thesis on the rights of children, and began a year of post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.
Marriage and family, lawyer and First Lady of Arkansas
During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund, and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children. She joined the presidential impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal. Rodham became a faculty member (one of only two women in the faculty) at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville School of Law, where her Yale Law School classmate and boyfriend Bill Clinton was teaching as well. In 1975, Rodham and Clinton were married and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1976, Hillary Rodham joined the venerable and influential Rose Law Firm, specializing in intellectual property cases while doing child advocacy cases pro bono. In 1979, she became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm. President Jimmy Carter appointed Rodham to the board of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978.
In 1978, with the election of her husband as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas, her title for a total of 12 years. On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to Chelsea, their only child.
In 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his re-election bid for governor and the couple left the statehouse. In February 1982, Bill Clinton announced his bid to regain the office, which would be successful; at the same time, Rodham began using the name Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As First Lady, Clinton chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, where she successfully fought (against some opposition) for improved testing standards of new teachers. She also chaired the Rural Health Advisory Committee and introduced a pioneering program called "Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth," which trains parents to work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy. Hillary Rodham Clinton was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.
Throughout her time as First Lady, Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm. In 1988 and 1991 National Law Journal named Clinton one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. Clinton 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.
After Bill Clinton was elected to the White House in 1992, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States in 1993. She was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree and the first to have her own successful professional career. She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history other than Eleanor Roosevelt.
In 1993 the President appointed his wife to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. The recommendation of this task force, commonly called the Clinton health care plan and nicknamed "Hillarycare" by its opponents, failed to gain enough support to come to a floor vote in either house of Congress, although both had Democratic majorities, and was abandoned in September, 1994. In her Living History memoirs, Clinton acknowledged that her political inexperience contributed to the defeat, but also said that many other factors were responsible as well. A decade later, "Hillarycare" would still be used as a label, sometimes pejoratively, for plans perceived as implementing universal health care. At the time, Republicans used its unpopularity as a campaign issue in the 1994 midterm elections which saw a net Republican gain of 53 seats in the House election and 7 in the Senate election.
Some critics called it inappropriate for a First Lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters, by contrast, argued that Clinton was no different than other White House advisors and that voters were well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's Presidency. Indeed, during the campaign, Bill Clinton had stated that voting for him would get "two for the price of one." This remark led some opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-Presidents", sometimes nicknamed "Billary."
Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences that related to children's health, including early childhood development and school violence. She fought for nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and supported an annual drive to encourage older women to seek a mammogram to prevent breast cancer, coverage of the cost being provided by Medicare. With Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped to create the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women office. She was one of the few international figures at the time who spoke out against the treatment of Afghani women by Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan. One of the programs she helped create was Vital Voices, a U.S.-sponsored initiative to promote the participation of international women in their nation's political process.
Clinton performed many less-political activities in her role as First Lady. With a lifelong interest in regional American history, she initiated the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to rescue from deterioration and neglect, or completely restore, many iconic historic items and sites, including the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio. Clinton initiated the Millennium Project with monthly lectures that both considered America's past and forecasted its future. One of these lectures became the first live simultaneous webcast from the White House. Clinton also created the first Sculpture Garden, which displayed large contemporary American works of art loaned from museums in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden on a rotating basis.
In the White House, Clinton placed the donated handicrafts (pottery, glassware, etc.) of contemporary American artisans on rotating display in the state rooms. She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room on the state floor, and the redecoration of the Treaty Room into the presidential study on the second floor. In a unique venue of large white tents on the South Lawn that could accommodate several thousand guests, Clinton hosted many large events such as a St. Patrick's Day reception, a state dinner for visiting Chinese dignitaries, and a contemporary music concert that raised funds for music education in public schools. For all the foods served in the White House, Clinton hired a chef whose expertise was in American regional cooking. She hosted a massive New Year's Eve party on the turning of the twentieth century into the twenty-first century, as well as a state dinner honoring the November 2000 bicentennial of the White House, which gathered more former Presidents and First Ladies together in the mansion than had ever been present at any other time in its history.
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton met at Yale Law School where both were students. On October 11, 1975, when Hillary was 27 years old and Bill was 28 years old, the Clintons married in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Before he proposed marriage to Hillary Rodham, Bill Clinton secretly purchased a small house in Fayetteville that she had noticed and remarked that she had liked. When he proposed marriage to her and she accepted, he revealed that they owned the house. They married and lived there, briefly, before relocating to the state capital of Little Rock, from which Bill conducted his first campaign, for U.S. Congress.
In 1998, the Clintons' relationship became the subject of much speculation and gossip after the Lewinsky scandal, when the President admitted to a sexual affair (short of sexual intercourse) with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. During the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton initially claimed that the allegations against her husband were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy". After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky became incontrovertible, she remained resolute that their marriage was solid. Both Clintons' memoirs later revealed that the revelation of the affair was in reality a very painful time in their marriage.
For much of his political career, President Clinton was dogged by rumors of extramarital affairs. These rumors gained credibility following the Lewinsky scandal. In his memoirs, President Clinton confirmed a "relationship that I should not have had" with Gennifer Flowers, an Arkansas lounge singer. These revelations and rumors resulted in a mix of sympathy and scorn for the First Lady. While many women sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior, others criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions by showing no interest in obtaining a divorce. In her book Living History, Clinton explains that love is the reason she stays with her husband. "o one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met. Bill and I started a conversation in the spring of 1971, and more than thirty years later we're still talking."
When President Clinton required immediate heart surgery in October 2004, Clinton, the junior senator of New York, canceled her public schedule to be at his side at the Columbia University Medical Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital.
The 2000 Senate race
When long-time New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement, prominent Democratic politicians and advisors, including Charlie Rangel, urged Clinton to run for the New York Senate seat in the U.S. Senate, 2000, elections. When she chose to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City. She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. She was initially expected to face New York City's Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but Giuliani withdrew after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Instead, Clinton faced a lesser-known candidate, Rick Lazio, who was a Congressman representing Suffolk County on Long Island. The contest drew considerable national attention and both candidates were well-funded. By the end of the race, Democrat Clinton and Republicans Lazio and Giuliani had spent a combined $78 million.
While Clinton had a solid base of support in New York City, candidates and observers expected the race to be decided in upstate New York where 45 percent of the state's voters live. During the campaign, Clinton vowed to improve the economic picture in upstate New York, promising that her plan would deliver 200,000 New York jobs over six years. Her plan included specific tax credits with the purpose of rewarding job creation and encouraging business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for targeted personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care. Clinton began her campaign by visiting every county in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings. During the race, she spent considerable time in traditionally Republican upstate regions.
Clinton faced charges of carpetbagging since she had never resided in the State of New York nor directly participated in state politics prior to her Senate race. Opponents made the carpetbagging issue a focal point throughout the race and during debates. Exit polls revealed that more than two-thirds of the voters dismissed the carpetbagging issue as unimportant.
Clinton won the election on November 7 with 55% of the vote to Lazio's 43%. Clinton won the traditionally Democratic base of New York City by large margins, carried suburban Westchester County, lost Lazio's home base of Long Island, and showed surprising strength in upstate regions including Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.
When Clinton joined the Senate, she was widely reported to have kept a low public profile and learned the ways of the institution while building relationships with senators from both sides of the aisle, thus countering her polarizing celebrity.
Indeed when Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) joined the Senate in 2003 in somewhat similar circumstances, she modeled her initial approach after Clinton's, as did the nationally visible Barack Obama (D-Illinois) in 2005.
Senator Clinton sits on five Senate Committees with a total of nine subcommittee assignments: the Senate Committee on Armed Services with three subcommittee assignments, on Airland, on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, and on Readiness and Management Support; the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with three subcommittee assignments on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property, and Nuclear Safety, on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water and on Superfund, Waste Control, and Risk Assessment; the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, with two subcommittee assignments, on Aging and on Children and Families; and the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Senator Clinton has made homeland security one of her top issues following the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in downtown New York City, especially regarding obtaining funding for recovery from the attacks and for improving security capabilities in the New York City area. She was audibly cheered and booed in an audience of New York firefighters and police officers during her on-stage appearance at The Concert for New York City on October 20, 2001. Senator Clinton worked with Senator Charles Schumer to secure $21.4 billion in funding to assist clean up and recovery, to provide health tracking for first responders and volunteers at Ground Zero, and to create grants for redevelopment. In 2005, Clinton issued two studies that examined the disbursement of federal homeland security funds to local communities and first responders.
Clinton has used her membership on the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services to take a strong position in favor of U.S. military action in Afghanistan – with the additional benefit that it greatly improved the lives of women in that country, who had suffered terribly under the rule of the Taliban – and a somewhat weaker position regarding action in Iraq (her vote in support of the Iraq War Resolution was criticized for being equivocal). Senator Clinton has visited U.S. forces (such as the Fort Drum, New York-based 10th Mountain Division) in both countries. In February 2005 she stated that much of Iraq was functioning well, elections in Iraq had succeeded, and that the insurgency there was failing. In July 2005 she co-introduced legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers. By late 2005, with domestic debate intensifying over whether and when the U.S. should remove its forces from Iraq, Clinton stated that immediate withdrawal would be "a big mistake", leading to Iraq becoming "a failed state", but that the Bush administration's open-ended commitment to stay in Iraq was also misguided, as it gives Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves." This centrist and somewhat vague stance caused frustration among the Democratic party's anti-war activists, who have even occasionally protested outside Clinton fundraisers. On June 13, 2006, Clinton was heckled as she restated her long-standing position against setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S forces from Iraq, while speaking in front of activists at the Take Back America conference in Washington. Though she was applauded while speaking on domestic issues and criticizing President Bush's handling of the war, boos, hisses and chants were heard when she spoke against a timetable.
Senator Clinton also became a national advocate for retaining and improving health and other benefits for veterans. By the end of 2005, her standing among the military community was much higher than it had been during her days as First Lady.
Clinton has pressed for education, labor, and technology infrastructure programs to assist economic development in upstate New York and similar regions, with mixed results. Though she had promised to bring 200,000 jobs to the area during her 2000 campaign, the entire state has lost over 170,000 manufacturing jobs since then. (The state's overall jobless rate has risen .7%.) In 2003, Clinton touted her success in soliciting offshoring firm Tata Consultancy Services to set up shop in economically beleaguered Buffalo, New York. She was criticized when it was discovered that much of Tata's business involves outsourcing American jobs overseas In 2004, Clinton co-founded and became the co-chair of the U.S. Senate India Caucus with the encouragement and aid of the USINPAC Political Action Committee. In 2005, Clinton co-sponsored with Senator Lindsey Graham the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition proposal regarding incentives and rewards for completely domestic American manufacturing companies. As an advocate for her state, Senator Clinton led a bipartisan effort to bring broadband access to rural communities; co-sponsored the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act; included language in the Energy Bill to provide tax exempt bonding authority for environmentally conscious construction projects; and introduced an amendment calling for funding of new job creation to repair, renovate and modernize public schools.
In May 2005, Senator Clinton joined forces with her former adversary, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, on a proposal for incremental universal health care. In June, 2005, Senator Clinton united with Senator Bill Frist to push for the modernization of medical records, claiming that thousands of deaths caused by medical mistakes, such as misreading prescriptions, can be prevented by greater reliance on computer technology.
In July 2005, Senator Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
In 2005, during the intense debate over the filibustering of some of President George W. Bush's federal judicial nominations, Senator Clinton generally kept a low profile. She was not part of the "Gang of 14" that resolved the dispute short of the "nuclear option", but she did vote to endorse that resolution and end debate on the nominations, thereby allowing the nominations to come to a vote. She subsequently voted against three of the nominees, but all were confirmed.
Regarding the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts, in September 2005 Clinton voted against his confirmation, saying "I do not believe that the Judge has presented his views with enough clarity and specificity for me to in good conscience cast a vote on his behalf," but that she hoped her concerns would be unfounded. Roberts was confirmed by a solid majority, with half the Senate's Democrats voting for him and half against.
Regarding the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito, in January and February 2006 Clinton not only joined almost all Senate Democrats in voting against his confirmation, but also joined about half the Democrats in supporting a filibuster against bringing his nomination to a vote, saying he would "roll back decades of progress and roll over when confronted with an administration too willing to flaunt the rules and looking for a rubber stamp." That effort failed and Alito was confirmed on a largely party-line vote.
Clinton sought to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina. She failed to win over a two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate rules.
On November 29, 2005, Clinton, together with Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act. The act is intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. Similar bills have been filed in some U.S. states such as Michigan and Illinois, but were ruled to be unconstitutional.
In July 2004 and June 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage; the Amendment fell well short of passage both times.
On June 27, 2006, Clinton voted against the Flag Desecration Amendment, after her attempt to find middle ground by introducing legislation instead against flag burning (but that would pass Constitutional muster) was voted down. The Amendment failed by one vote.
The 2006 Senate race
Clinton announced in November 2004 that she would seek a second term in the Senate. No major Republican entered the race; the presumptive nominee, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, dropped out in December 2005 after her campaign failed to gain traction. Clinton easily won a September 2006 primary against labor activist and anti-war candidate Jonathan Tasini, gaining 83 percent of the vote. Clinton's eventual Republican opponent was former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer; several third-party candidates were also running. Polls during the campaign generally showed Clinton with a 20-point lead or better over Spencer.
Clinton won the election on 7 November with 67% of the vote to Spencer's 31%.
Despite the lack of serious opposition, Clinton spent $36 million towards her re-election, well more than any other candidate for Senate in the 2006 election cycle; she received criticism from other Democrats after the election for lack of spending discipline and from potential supporters for not leaving more funds in the bank for a potential 2008 presidential bid. Clinton's organization's may have disbursed funds to aid other Democratic candidates during the 2006 campaign. However, as of 5 December 2006, campaign finance reports from government agencies have not yet been released to verify this theory. While Clinton's opponent, John Spencer, may have been deeply outspent, his campaign was still able to raise and expend a considerable sum of nearly $5 million. A typical major party candidate for the Senate will raise between $2 to $10 million; had Spencer faced another candidate, he likely would have been considered a serious contender for the seat.
Speculation about possible 2008 presidential bid
Clinton has expressed interest in the 2008 United States presidential race. No woman has ever been nominated for President by a major party. Clinton's 2008 campaign has been the subject of media speculation for years.
Although not announced as a candidate, it is widely expected that she will be running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008. Nationwide polls place her well ahead of other potential Democratic presidential candidates and most pundits, as of November 2006, consider her the presumptive frontrunner for the nomination. Speculation of a presidential bid and her senate profile helped place Clinton in the rankings for the world's most powerful people by Forbes magazine and Time magazine's Time 100.
Political views
In a Gallup poll conducted during May, 2005, 54% of respondents considered Senator Clinton a liberal, 30% considered her a moderate, and 9% considered her a conservative.
In 2004, the National Journal's study of roll-call votes assigned Clinton a rating of 30 in the political spectrum, relative to the current Senate, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and a rating of 100 being most conservative. The 2006 Almanac of American Politics rated her, with most Liberal = 100, most conservative = 0, according to a three-dimensional spectrum: Economic = 63, Social = 82, Foreign = 58. Average = 68. Another analysis by three political scientists found her as likely being the sixth-to-eighth-most liberal Senator.
Hillary Clinton received an "A" on the Drum Major Institute's 2005 Congressional Scorecard on middle-class issues.
As First Lady, Clinton published a weekly newspaper column entitled "Talking It Over", focusing on her experiences and her observations of women, children, and families she encountered during her travels around the world.
The 1996 book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us, largely written by ghostwriter Barbara Feinman, became a best-seller, and Clinton received the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for her recording of it. The book's title refers to the African proverb that "it takes a village to raise a child."
Other books released by Clinton as First Lady include An Invitation to the White House: At Home with History (2000) and Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets (1998). In 2001, she wrote the foreword to the children’s book, Beatrice’s Goat.
Clinton's 562-page memoir Living History was published in 2003, and relied upon ghostwriting contributions by Maryanne Vollers and Alison Muscatine and research by Ruby Shamir. The book sold more than one million copies in the first month following publication. In anticipation of these sales, the publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton an advance of $8 million—a record figure at that time. Clinton's recording in that year of Living History earned her a second Grammy nomination in the Best Spoken Word Album category. Living History was translated into several foreign languages.
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