CLINTON, HILLARY RODHAM

born October 26, 1947, Chicago, Illinois, U.S. ne Hillary Diane Rodham U.S. senator (2001 ), American first lady (19932001), the wife of Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the United States, and an accomplished lawyer and children's rights advocate. The first president's wife born after World War II, Hillary was the eldest child of Hugh and Dorothy Rodham. She grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, where her father's textile business provided the family with a comfortable income and her parents' emphasis on hard work and academic excellence set high standards. A student leader in public schools, she was active in youth programs at the First United Methodist Church. Although she later became associated with liberal causes, during this time she adhered to the Republican Party of her parents. She campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 and chaired the local chapter of the Young Republicans. A year later, after she enrolled at Wellesley College, her political views began to change. Influenced by the assassinations of Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., she joined the Democratic Party and volunteered in the presidential campaign of antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy. Hillary entered Yale Law School (as one of 30 women in a class of 160) after her graduation from Wellesely in 1969 and came under the influence of Yale alumna Marian Wright Edelman, a lawyer and children's rights advocate. Through her work with Edelman, she developed a strong interest in family law and issues affecting children. 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 regarding a possible impeachment of President 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 lifeshe 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 she was not appropriately committed to her husband. Their only child, Chelsea Victoria, was born in 1980. Throughout Bill's 10 years as governor (197880, 198290), Hillary worked on programs that aided to children and the disadvantaged and 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. Hillary played a crucial role in Bill's 1992 presidential campaign. She greeted voters, gave speeches, and was one of his 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 she told voters to look at her husband's recordadding 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, since she had worked for some liberal causes. During one campaign stop she defended herself from such criticism by remarking that she could have stayed home and baked cookies. This impromptu comment was picked up by the press and repeated many times as evidence that she had little respect for women who were full-time homemakers. Throughout her marriage Hillary assumed major responsibility for her family's financial situation. Some of her 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 197879through which she reportedly turned a $1,000 investment into $100,000 in a few monthscame under close scrutiny. During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton sometimes spoke of a twofer 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. However, an appeals court later supported her stand, ruling that presidents' wives had a longstanding tradition of public serviceact as advisers and personal representatives of their husbands. To promote the findings of the task force, she appeared before five congressional committees and won considerable press coverage and mostly favourable comments 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. Hillary was criticized on other matters as well, including her role in the firing of seven staff members from the White House travel office (Travelgate) and her involvement in legal maneuvering by the White House during the Whitewater investigation. As the 1996 election approached, she was less visible and played a more traditional role as first lady. Her book, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (1996), described her views on child rearing and prompted accolades from supporters and stark criticism from her opponents. Revelations about President Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky brought the first lady back into the spotlight in a complex way. She stood faithfully by her husband during the scandalin which her husband first denied and then admitted to having had a sexual relationship with Lewinskyand throughout his ensuing impeachment and trial in the Senate. In 1999 Hillary Rodham Clinton made history of a different sort when she launched her candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat from New York being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. To meet the state's residency requirement, she moved out of Washington, D.C., on January 5, 2000, to a house that she and the president purchased in Chappaqua, New York. After a bitter election contest first against New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and then (after Giuliani withdrew from the race) Republican Rick Lazio, she won a decisive election victory, thus becoming the first first lady to win elective office. Although often a subject of controversy, Hillary showed that the ceremonial parts of the first lady's job could be merged with a strong role in public policy and that the clout of the first lady could be converted into a personal political power base. Betty Boyd Caroli Additional reading A concise summary of Hillary Rodham Clinton's early years and first term is Lewis L. Gould, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Lewis L. Gould (ed.), American First Ladies (1996), pp. 630650. Betty Boyd Caroli, First Ladies, expanded ed. (1995), pp. 288308, discusses how her career reflected that of others of her generation. Numerous full-length biographies, many of them negative, have been written about Hillary Clinton, including Gail Sheehy, Hillary's Choice (1999); Joyce Milton, The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999); Christopher Andersen, Bill and Hillary: The Marriage (1999); Donnie Radcliffe, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A First Lady for Our Time (1993, reissued with updates as Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Evolution of a First Lady , 1999); Jerry Oppenheimer, State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton (2000); and David Brock, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham (1996). Betty Boyd Caroli