Hillary Rodham Clinton

CLINTON, HILLARY RODHAM

Attorney, professor, First Lady, and now senator Hillary Rodham Clinton created a new and dramatic role in national politics. With a distinguished career that ranged from working for the House Judiciary Committee to teaching CRIMINAL LAW and workin as a lawyer, she assumed a key policy role in the administration of her husband, President BILL CLINTON. From 1993 to 1994 she ran that administration’s top legislative priority, the failed effort at HEALTH CARE reform. Not surprisingly, her role in the administration was quite controversial. She was also exposed to criticism in the WHITEWATER scandal. However, supporters praised her for her
skills as a manager and negotiator.

Clinton was born on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, the eldest of three children, to Hugh E. Rodham, a drapery businessman, and Dorothy Howell Rodham, a homemaker. She became head of the local Young Republicans chapter as a first-year student at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, but she eventually changed her party affiliation. Clinton’s shift in political opinion is visible from her ongoing volunteer work for presidential candidates: In 1964, the high-school senior backed the conservative BARRY GOLDWATER; in 1968, the political science major supported the liberal EUGENE MCCARTHY.

At Yale Law School, Clinton did research
work for the Yale Child Study Center and for
Senator Walter F. Mondale and also volunteered
for the child advocacy group that later became
the CHILDREN’S DEFENSE FUND.
While working as an editor on the Yale
Review of Law and Social Action, she wrote the
first of several articles on CHILDREN’S RIGHTS.
She was troubled by the law’s refusal to consider
children competent to make their own decisions
until the age of 18. She concluded that the law
should presume competence in children from
the age of 12. Her 1979 article “Children’s
Rights: A Legal Perspective” argued in favor of
children having the right to make a broad range
of decisions, from tailoring their education to
leaving an abusive home.
Yale also introduced Clinton to Bill Clinton,
a fellow law student. They briefly went separate
ways after graduating in 1973—he to teach law
in Arkansas, she to work at the Children’s
Defense Fund in Massachusetts. Then, in January
1974, the 26-year-old Clinton was asked to
Washington, D.C., to help impeach President
RICHARD M. NIXON, whose presidency was
undercut by the WATERGATE scandal. The special
counsel to the House Judiciary Committee hired
her to be in charge of legal procedures for its
inquiry. When Nixon resigned in August rather
than face almost certain IMPEACHMENT, Clinton’s
career was on the rise.
The Clintons were married in October 1975.
They taught law at the University of Arkansas
School of Law, in Fayetteville. In addition to
conducting her criminal law courses, Clinton
ran the school’s legal aid clinic, founded the
nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and
Families, and worked on Jimmy Carter’s 1976
presidential campaign. Afterward, President
Carter named her to the board of directors of
the LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION, which distributes
federal funds to legal aid clinics nationwide.
Over the next decade, she served on the
boards of directors for national corporations
and for the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1980,
she became a partner at the Rose Law Firm in
Arkansas. Her husband, meanwhile, won election
to five terms as governor of Arkansas and
appointed her to head several committees, thus
beginning the working partnership that would
carry them to Washington, D.C. She chaired the
Rural Health Advisory Committee and headed
the Arkansas Education Standards Committee
as well as holding other official posts.
In 1992, Clinton campaigned for her husband
for president. Her speeches on domestic
issues made clear to voters nationwide what voters
in Arkansas already knew: She was her husband’s
political and intellectual equal and not
merely the a spouse along for the ride.
After he took office in 1993, Clinton’s husband
named her to head his task force on health
care reform. The reform was a key campaign
promise, and the stakes were high. Most critics
thought it inappropriate to appoint her. A common
complaint was nepotism: the president
could not be expected to fire his own wife if
problems arose. This resistance largely subsided
once Clinton began managing the 500-employee
task force, and it was silenced after the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
held in June 1993 that she was a de facto government
official. Voters responded with mixed
reactions in opinion polls, although a slim
majority approved of her role. But lawmakers,
despite bipartisan praise for her work with
them, proved less receptive. Even a Democratic
majority in Congress lacked sufficient votes to
enact the plan developed by her task force.
The Whitewater scandal created more controversy
around Clinton. The issue began with a
failed land deal that she and her husband had
made in the 1980s while he was governor and she an attorney at the Rose Law Firm. It surfaced
during the 1992 presidential campaign. By 1994,
it became a flood of legal, political, and personal
concerns: shady deals, improper influence, TAX
EVASION, BRIBERY, cover-ups, congressional
hearings, INDEPENDENT COUNSEL, and even the
suicide of deputy White House counsel Vincent
Foster. Clinton’s work at the Rose Law Firm
placed her squarely in the middle of the controversy.
In the spring of 1994, she admitted to having
made some mistakes but claimed that
neither she nor her husband had done anything
criminal. She asserted that political enemies
were trying to smear the administration.
Despite spending millions of dollars and
obtaining convictions of several Clinton associates,
special prosecutor Ken Starr was unable to
prove that the Clintons had broken the law. As
the case began to wind down, new controversy
reignited the investigation. In the course of
being deposed by Starr on SEXUAL HARASSMENT
charges by a woman named Paula Jones, President
Clinton denied having had a sexual relationship
with White House intern Monica
Lewinsky. Starr issued a report, called a “referral”
in which he accused the president of having
perjured himself. As a result of the report, the
Republican-led House passed ARTICLES OF
IMPEACHMENT in December 1998. Hillary Clinton
voiced her strong support of her husband,
and in 1999 President Clinton was acquitted of
the charges.
In 1999, Clinton announced that she would
run for the Senate seat that had been held by
Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had
announced his retirement.When New York City
mayor Rudy Giuliani decided not to run, the
Republican nomination went to U.S. Representative
Rick Lazio. After a long and costly campaign,
Clinton was elected senator from New
York on November 7, 2000, becoming the first
former First Lady to be elected to the United
States Senate as well as the first woman elected
statewide in New York. Clinton serves on the
Senate Committees for Environmental and Public
Works; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
In 2003, she was appointed to the Senate
Armed Services Committee becoming the first
New Yorker to serve on that committee.
As a freshman senator, Clinton’s greatest
challenges arose in the aftermath of the SEPTEMBER
11TH ATTACKS in 2001. She worked with
members of the New York delegation and Congress
to secure funds for clean-up and recovery
of Ground Zero (as the former World Trade
Center site is now known) as well as health
tracking for persons who worked in the area and
grants to small enterprises who lost business as a
result of the terrorist attacks.
In October, 2002, Clinton spoke in support
of the resolution authorizing the United States
to use force against Iraq, while voicing opposition
to a unilateral attack. In early 2003 she proposed
a funding formula for homeland security
and also proposed a $7 billion Domestic
Defense Fund that included $1 billion in funding
for “high-threat” areas such as New York
City and Washington, D.C.
Clinton has been the recipient of numerous
honorary degrees and awards, including the
National Association for Home Health Care’s
Claude Pepper Award, the Public Spirit Award of
the AMERICAN LEGION Auxiliary, and the New
York City Legal Aid Society’s Servant of Justice
Award. Clinton has written numerous op-ed
pieces as well as articles for magazines and journals. She has published several books, including
1997’s It Takes a Village, and Other Lessons Children
Teach Us and the An Invitation to the White
House (2000), both of which were best-sellers.
Over the last two decades, Clinton has been
the subject of more than a dozen books and
hundreds of articles.Many have recognized her
for her advocacy of democracy and HUMAN
RIGHTS, including WOMEN’S RIGHTS and children’s
rights, as well as religious tolerance and
health care. Many have vilified her for her
promotion of the same. As long as she remains
on the political stage, Hillary Rodham Clinton
will be the focus of heated debates and discussions.
FURTHER READINGS
“About Hillary Rodham Clinton.” 2003. Senator Hillary
Rodham Clinton webpage. Available online at ; website homepage:
(accessed November 11, 2003).
Clinton, Hillary Rodham. 2003. Living History. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
—. 1996. It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children
Teach Us. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Halley, Patrick S. 2002. On the Road with Hillary: A Behind
the Scenes Look at the Journey from Arkansas to the U.S.
Senate. New York: Viking.