Hillary Clinton
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| Full name: Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton |
She born on October 26, 1947 after World War II, in Chicago, Illinois
and raised in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Clinton graduated from
Wellesley College in 1969 and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973.
Is an American
lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. senator (2001–09) and secretary of
state (2009–13) in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. She also served as
first lady (1993–2001) during the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton,
42nd president of the United States. As the Democratic Party’s nominee for
president in 2016, she became the first woman to top the presidential ticket of
a major party in the United States.
First Lady of Arkansas
Although
Hillary met Bill Clinton at Yale, they took separate paths after graduation in
1973. He returned to his native Arkansas, and she worked with Edelman in
Massachusetts for the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1974 Hillary participated in
the Watergate inquiry into the possible impeachment of Pres. Richard M. Nixon.
When her assignment ended with Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, she made
what some people consider the crucial decision of her life—she moved to
Arkansas. She taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law, and,
following her marriage to Bill Clinton on October 11, 1975, she joined the
prominent Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she later became a
partner.
After Bill
was elected governor of Arkansas in 1978, she continued to pursue her career
and retained her maiden name (until 1982), bringing considerable criticism from
voters who felt that her failure to change her name indicated a lack of
commitment to her husband. Their only child, Chelsea Victoria, was born in
1980.
Throughout
Bill’s tenure as governor (1979–81, 1983–92), Hillary worked on programs that
aided children and the disadvantaged; she also maintained a successful law
practice. She served on the boards of several high-profile corporations and was
twice named one of the nation’s 100 most influential lawyers (1988, 1991) by
the National Law Journal. She also served as chair of the Arkansas Education
Standards Committee and founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and
Families. She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Young
Mother of the Year in 1984.
First Lady of United State
In Bill’s
1992 presidential campaign, Hillary played a crucial role by greeting voters,
giving speeches, and serving as one of her husband’s chief advisers. Her
appearance with him on the television news program 60 Minutes in January 1992
made her name a household word. Responding to questions about Bill’s alleged
12-year sexual relationship with an Arkansas woman, Gennifer Flowers, Bill and
Hillary discussed their marital problems, and Hillary told voters to judge her
husband by his record—adding that, if they did not like what they saw, then,
“heck, don’t vote for him.”
With a
professional career unequaled by any previous presidential candidate’s wife,
Hillary was heavily scrutinized. Conservatives complained that she had her own
agenda, because she had worked for some liberal causes. During one campaign
stop, she defended herself from such criticism by asserting that she could have
“stayed home and baked cookies.” This impromptu remark was picked up by the
press and used by her critics as evidence of her lack of respect for women who
are full-time homemakers.
Some of
Hillary’s financial dealings raised suspicions of impropriety and led to major
investigations after she became first lady. Her investment in Whitewater, a
real estate development in Arkansas, and her commodities trading in
1978–79—through which she reportedly turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000
in a few months—came under close scrutiny.
During the
1992 campaign, Bill Clinton sometimes spoke of a “twofer” (“two for the price
of one”) presidency, implying that Hillary would play an important role in his
administration. Early indications from the Clinton White House supported this
interpretation. She appointed an experienced staff and set up her own office in
the West Wing, an unprecedented move. Her husband appointed her to head the
Task Force on National Health Care, a centrepiece of his legislative agenda.
She encountered sharp criticism when she closed the sessions of the task force
to the public, and doctors and other health care professionals objected that
she was not a “government official” and had no right to bar them from the
proceedings. An appeals court later supported her stand, ruling that
presidents’ wives have a long-standing “tradition of public service” acting “as
advisers and personal representatives of their husbands.” To promote the
findings of the task force, she appeared before five congressional committees
and received considerable and mostly favourable press coverage for her
expertise on the subject. But Congress ultimately rejected the task force’s
recommendations, and her role in the health care debate galvanized
conservatives and helped Republicans recapture Congress in the 1994 elections.
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| "1992" |
Presidential Run
In 2007 she announced that would seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination for 2008. She began the primary season as the front-runner for the nomination but placed a disappointing third in the first contest, the Iowa caucus, on January 3, 2008. Her campaign quickly rebounded, and she won the New Hampshire primary five days later. On Super Tuesday, February 5, Clinton won important states such as California, Massachusetts, and New York, but she failed to gain a significant lead over Barack Obama in the number of pledged convention delegates. Obama won 11 consecutive states following Super Tuesday to take over the delegate lead and become the new favourite for the nomination, but Clinton rebounded in early March with key victories in Ohio and Texas, and in April she added to her momentum by winning the Pennsylvania primary. However, Clinton’s narrow victory in Indiana and substantial loss in North Carolina in early May severely limited the possibility of her garnering enough delegates to over take Obama before the final primaries in June. On June 3, following the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota, Obama passed the delegate threshold and became the presumptive Democratic nominee. He officially secured the party’s nomination on August 27 at the Democratic National Convention in Denver and went on to win the general election on November 4.2016 Presidential Candidate
In December
2008 Obama selected Clinton to serve as secretary of state, and she was easily
confirmed by the Senate in January 2009. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state
was widely praised for improving U.S. foreign relationships. She resigned from
her post in 2013 and was replaced by former Massachusetts senator John Kerry.
Hard Choices, a memoir of her experiences as secretary of state, was published
in 2014. The following year it was revealed that she had used a private e-mail
address and server while secretary of state, which raised concerns over both
security and government transparency. The FBI eventually launched an
investigation into the matter.
In April
2015 Clinton announced that she was entering the U.S. presidential election
race of 2016, and she immediately became the favourite to win the Democratic
nomination. However, her campaign faced an unexpected challenge from Bernie
Sanders, a senator who was a self-described “democratic socialist.” Clinton,
seen as a political insider, initially struggled to counter Sanders’s populist
policies, which she criticized as unrealistic. Instead, she advocated a
“sensible agenda,” which was based on traditional Democratic goals, notably tax
increases on the wealthy, an increase to the minimum wage, and immigration
reform. In addition, she supported stricter Wall Street regulations, though her
past connections to the banking and investment industry—notably in the form of
corporate speeches and campaign donations—drew scrutiny. As a former secretary
of state, Clinton highlighted her foreign-policy experience, and she backed a
strong U.S. presence overseas.
Although
Clinton entered the primary election season in February 2016 with a number of
questions surrounding her campaign—including the ongoing e-mail scandal—by the
following month she had emerged as the clear front-runner. On June 7 Clinton
claimed the Democratic nomination following wins in several states, notably
California. The following month the FBI concluded its e-mail probe, with
Director James Comey recommending that no charges be brought against Clinton,
though he stated that she had been “extremely careless” in her handling of
classified material. The decision drew criticism from her opponents as Clinton
looked to move past the scandal.
On July 12 she was officially endorsed
by Sanders.
Later that
month Clinton selected Sen. Tim Kaine as her vice presidential running mate. On
July 26, 2016, at the Democratic National Convention, she was named the party’s
nominee. Clinton’s Republican opponent was Donald Trump, a businessman whose
outsider status and political incorrectness had helped him appeal to previously
underappreciated voters and secure his party’s nomination. As the two faced
off, the campaign became increasingly negative and highly acrimonious. Trump
accused Clinton of being “crooked” and stated that she should be jailed over the
e-mail scandal. In addition, she faced quid pro quo allegations in connection
with her husband’s charitable organization, the Clinton Foundation. Notably,
she was accused of granting special treatment to donors while serving as
secretary of state. She denied the various charges, but many polls indicated
that the majority of Americans found her untrustworthy.
Clinton countered
by raising doubts about Trump’s temperament and political inexperience,
portraying her lengthy career in public service as an asset. She also
questioned his business dealings and tax returns—which he refused to release,
in contrast to the standard practice for major-party presidential candidates
since the 1970s. However, she struck a particular chord when she repeatedly
challenged his treatment of women, notably highlighting a series of negative
comments he had made. Then in October 2016 a hot-mic video from 2005 surfaced
in which Trump stated that “when you’re a star…you can do anything,” including
grabbing a woman’s genitals. He dismissed it as “locker room talk,” but a
series of women subsequently accused him of past sexual assaults. Although he denied
the allegations, support for Clinton increased in the following weeks,
particularly among women voters, a demographic with which Trump struggled. As
election day neared, many polls showed Clinton with a sizable lead, and she
appeared to be making inroads into traditionally Republican states. Those polls
apparently had failed to capture the support enjoyed by Trump in several key
Midwestern states, however, and on November 8, 2016, Clinton was defeated in
her bid for the presidency. In What Happened (2017), she wrote candidly about
the election and offered reasons why she lost.
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| "One of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history." |
