Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton (1947- ), United States lawyer and politician, First Lady of US president Bill Clinton (1993-2000), and Senator for New York (2001- ). During the 1992 presidential campaign, she became a powerful symbol of the changing role and status of women in American society. Her election to the Senate while First Lady was unprecedented.

Born in Chicago on October 26, 1947, Clinton was the first student ever asked to give the commencement address at Wellesley College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969. At Yale Law School, she met her future husband, Bill Clinton, and her lifelong mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, an organization lobbying for children’s welfare. She worked there as a staff attorney for a year after graduating from law school in 1973, and later chaired the organization’s board.

In 1974, after working for the special US House of Representatives panel investigating a possible impeachment of President Richard Nixon, she moved to Arkansas, where she began teaching law at the University of Arkansas. She and Bill Clinton were married a year later. The Clintons have a daughter, Chelsea. In 1977 Clinton founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and joined the Rose Law Firm, where she practised until 1992, specializing in patent infringement and intellectual property.

As the first presidential spouse with her own successful professional career, she drew criticism from those who favoured a more traditional role for the First Lady. After taking office, President Clinton chose her to head a special commission on health-care reform, the most significant public policy initiative of his first year in office, in the face of considerable resistance from US medical and insurance interests. In September 1994, a year after the special commission had presented its report, and after several other Congressional committees had proposed alternative plans, it was announced that no health-care proposal could be agreed upon, and the issue was shelved. After this major setback, Hillary Clinton decided to maintain a less high-profile public role. However, she was star speaker at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995, during which she criticized China’s human rights record.

In January 1996, Hillary Clinton testified before a grand jury investigating the Whitewater Affair (allegations concerning irregularities in Arkansas before Bill Clinton’s election as President), the first ever First Lady to be subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Following her husband’s re-election as President in November 1996, she took a less politically active role than in his first presidential term. In January 1998 Clinton went on television to denounce allegations that her husband had had a sexual affair and had then incited others to lie about it as part of a right-wing conspiracy to destroy his presidency. Her support of her husband throughout the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment trial of 1998-1999 won her considerable public esteem, and the strong Democratic performance in the November 1998 congressional elections was attributed partly to her campaigning efforts.

In November 1999 she announced her intention to run for the New York Senate seat vacated by Daniel Moynihan in the 2000 elections; she defeated Republican Congressman Rick Lazio in a bitterly fought contest, gaining 55 per cent of the vote. As a senator, Clinton supported the US military action in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban following the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11, 2001. She also backed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, setting her at odds with other members of her party. Nevertheless, Clinton was re-elected in November 2006, winning 67 per cent of the vote. In January 2007 she announced her intention to run for the Democratic nomination to contest the 2008 presidential election. The campaign was hard fought, but despite winning primaries in many key states, including California, New York, and Pennsylvania, Clinton was unable to head off the challenge from the Illinois senator Barack Obama, and she finally conceded defeat in June 2008.

Clinton’s autobiography, Living History, was published in June 2003.