Sumber : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
Hillary Clinton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Hillary Clinton | |
|---|---|
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| 67th United States Secretary of State | |
| In office January 21, 2009 – February 1, 2013 |
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| President | Barack Obama |
| Deputy | Jim Steinberg Bill Burns |
| Preceded by | Condoleezza Rice |
| Succeeded by | John Kerry |
| United States Senator from New York |
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| In office January 3, 2001 – January 21, 2009 |
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| Preceded by | Pat Moynihan |
| Succeeded by | Kirsten Gillibrand |
| First Lady of the United States | |
| In role January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001 |
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| President | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Barbara Bush |
| Succeeded by | Laura Bush |
| First Lady of Arkansas | |
| In role January 11, 1983 – December 12, 1992 |
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| Governor | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Gay Daniels White |
| Succeeded by | Betty Tucker |
| In role January 9, 1979 – January 19, 1981 |
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| Governor | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Barbara Pryor |
| Succeeded by | Gay Daniels White |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Hillary Diane Rodham October 26, 1947 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic (Since 1968) |
| Other political affiliations |
Republican (Before 1968) |
| Spouse(s) | Bill Clinton (m. 1975) |
| Children | Chelsea |
| Education | Wellesley College (BA) Yale University (JD) |
| Signature |  |
| Website | Official website |
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U.S. Secretary of State U.S. Senator from New York First Lady of the United States  |
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| Part of a series on |
| New Democrats |
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Born in Chicago and raised in the suburban town of Park Ridge, Illinois, Clinton attended Wellesley College, graduating in 1969, and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973. After serving as a congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton in 1975. In 1977, she co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. She was appointed the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978 and became the first woman partner at Rose Law Firm the following year. As First Lady of Arkansas, she led a task force whose recommendations helped reform Arkansas's public schools, and served on several corporate boards.
As First Lady of the United States, Clinton led the unsuccessful effort to enact the Clinton health care plan of 1993. In 1997 and 1999, she helped create the State Children's Health Insurance Program. She also tackled the problems of adoption and family safety and foster care. At the 1995 UN conference on women (held in Beijing), Clinton stated in a then controversial and influential speech, that "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights". Her marriage survived the Lewinsky scandal of 1998, and her role as first lady drew a polarized response from the public. Clinton was elected in 2000 as the first female senator from New York, the only first lady ever to seek elective office. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, she voted to approve the war in Afghanistan. She also voted for the Iraq Resolution (a vote she later said she regretted). She took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders. She further voted against the Bush tax cuts, and against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She was re-elected to the Senate in 2006. Running for president in 2008, she won far more delegates than any previous female candidate, but lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama.
As Secretary of State in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2013, Clinton responded to the Arab Spring, during which she advocated the U.S. military intervention in Libya. She helped organize a diplomatic isolation and international sanctions regime against Iran, in an effort to force curtailment of that country's nuclear program; this would eventually lead to the multinational Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement in 2015. Leaving office after Obama's first term, she wrote her fifth book and undertook speaking engagements before announcing her second presidential run in the 2016 election.
Clinton received the most votes and primary delegates in the 2016 Democratic primaries, formally accepting her party's nomination for President of the United States on July 28, 2016, with vice presidential running mate Senator Tim Kaine. She became the first female candidate to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party. As part of her 2016 platform, she emphasized raising incomes, improvements to the Affordable Care Act and reform of campaign finance and Wall Street. She favored allowing pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, combating climate change, expanding and protecting LGBT and women's rights, and instituting family support through paid parental leave and universal preschool. However, a controversy relating to a privately-hosted email server during her tenure as Secretary of State became a significant issue, including in the closing days of the campaign. On November 8, 2016, Clinton lost the election to Republican rival Donald Trump, failing to obtain the necessary 270 votes in the electoral college, despite receiving a plurality of the national popular vote.
Contents
- 1 Early life and education
- 2 Marriage, family, law career, and First Lady of Arkansas
- 3 First Lady of the United States
- 4 United States Senate
- 5 2008 presidential campaign
- 6 U.S. Secretary of State
- 7 Clinton Foundation and speeches
- 8 2016 presidential campaign
- 9 Political positions
- 10 Religious views
- 11 Writings and recordings
- 12 Cultural and political image
- 13 Electoral history
- 14 See also
- 15 Notes
- 16 References
- 17 Bibliography
- 18 External links
Early life and education
Early life
Hillary[a] Diane Rodham was born on October 26, 1947, at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.[2][3] She was raised in a United Methodist family, living first in Chicago; when she was three, her family moved to Park Ridge, Illinois.[4] Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham (1911–1993), was of Welsh and English descent;[5] he managed a successful small business in the textile industry.[6] Her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell (1919–2011), was a homemaker of English, Scottish, French Canadian, Welsh and Dutch descent.[5][7][8] Hillary has two younger brothers, Hugh and Tony.[9]
Mementos of Hillary Rodham's early life are shown at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center
She attended Maine East High School, where she participated in the student council, the school newspaper, and was selected for the National Honor Society.[2][15] She won election as class vice president for her junior year, but then lost an election for class president for her senior year against two boys, one of whom told her, "you are really stupid if you think a girl can be elected president."[16] For her senior year, she and other students were transferred to the then new Maine South High School, where she was a National Merit Finalist and was voted "most likely to succeed". She graduated in the top five percent of her class of 1965.[17] Rodham's mother wanted her to have an independent, professional career,[8] and her father, otherwise a traditionalist, felt that his daughter's abilities and opportunities should not be limited by gender.[18]
Raised in a politically conservative household,[8] Rodham helped canvass Chicago's South Side at age thirteen following the very close 1960 U.S. presidential election, where she saw evidence of electoral fraud (such as voting list entries showing addresses that were empty lots) against Republican candidate Richard Nixon.[19] She then volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964.[20] Rodham's early political development was shaped most by her high school history teacher (like her father, a fervent anti-communist), who introduced her to Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, and by her Methodist youth minister (like her mother, concerned with issues of social justice), with whom she saw, and afterwards briefly met, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1962 speech in Chicago's Orchestra Hall.[21]
Wellesley College years
In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College, where she majored in political science.[22][23] During her freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans;[24][25] with this Rockefeller Republican-oriented group,[26] she supported the elections of John Lindsay to Mayor of New York City and Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke to the United States Senate.[27] She later stepped down from this position. Clinton would later write in 2003 that her views at this time changed regarding the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.[24] In a letter to her youth minister at this time, she described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal".[28] In contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it.[29][30]In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.[31] In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969.[29][32] Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty.[31] In her student government role, she played a role in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges.[29][33] A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first female President of the United States.[29]
To help her better understand her changing political views, Professor Alan Schechter assigned Rodham to intern at the House Republican Conference, and she attended the "Wellesley in Washington" summer program.[31] Rodham was invited by moderate New York Republican Representative Charles Goodell to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller's late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination.[31] Rodham attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami. However, she was upset by the way Richard Nixon's campaign portrayed Rockefeller and by what she perceived as the convention's "veiled" racist messages, and left the Republican Party for good.[31] Rodham wrote her senior thesis, a critique of the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, under Professor Schechter.[34] (Years later, while she was first lady, access to her thesis was restricted at the request of the White House and it became the subject of some speculation. The thesis was later released.[34])
In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts,[35] with departmental honors in political science.[34] After some fellow seniors requested that the college administration allow a student speaker at commencement, she became the first student in Wellesley College history to speak at the event, following commencement speaker Senator Brooke.[32][36] Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.[29][37][38] She was featured in an article published in Life magazine,[39][40] due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Brooke.[36] She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers.[41] That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthful conditions).[42]
Hillary during university
Yale Law School and postgraduate studies
Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.[43] During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center,[44] learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973).[45][46] She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale–New Haven Hospital[45] and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor.[44] In the summer of 1970 she was awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. There she researched migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.[47] Edelman later became a significant mentor.[48] Rodham was recruited by political advisor Anne Wexler to work on the 1970 campaign of Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Duffey, with Rodham later crediting Wexler with providing her first job in politics.[49]In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. During the summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.[50] The firm was well known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members);[50] Rodham worked on child custody and other cases.[b] Clinton canceled his original summer plans in order to live with her in California;[54] the couple continued living together in New Haven when they returned to law school.[51] The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.[55] She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973,[35] having stayed on an extra year to be with Clinton.[56] He first proposed marriage to her following graduation but she declined, uncertain if she wanted to tie her future to his.[56]
Rodham began a year of postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.[57] Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973.[58] Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals"[59] and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but instead that courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.[60] The article became frequently cited in the field.[61]
Marriage, family, law career, and First Lady of Arkansas
From the East Coast to Arkansas
During her postgraduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[62] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[63] In 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.[64] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard W. Nussbaum,[45] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment.[64] The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.[64]By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future. Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide Rodham's career.[65] Wright thought she had the potential to become a future senator or president.[66] Meanwhile, boyfriend Bill Clinton had repeatedly asked Rodham to marry him and she continued to demur.[67] After failing the District of Columbia bar exam[68] and passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head".[69] She thus followed Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington, where career prospects were brighter. He was then teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, Rodham moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.[70][71]
Early Arkansas years
At the university, Rodham gave classes in criminal law, where she was considered a rigorous teacher and tough grader.[72] She became the first director of a new legal aid clinic at the school, securing support from the local bar association and gaining federal funding.[73] Among her cases was one where she was obliged by request of the court to serve as defense counsel to a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl; she put on an effective defense that led to his pleading guilty to a much lesser charge.[74] Decades later, the victim said that the defense counsel had put her "through hell" during the legal process; Hillary Clinton has called the trial a "terrible case".[74] During her time in Fayetteville, Rodham and several other women founded the city's first rape crisis center.[73] Rodham still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and her accomplishments viewed in the light of someone else's.[75]Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and she finally agreed to marry him.[76] Their wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[77] A story about the marriage in the Arkansas Gazette indicated that she was retaining the name Hillary Rodham.[78][79] The motivation was to keep the couple's professional lives separate and avoid apparent conflicts of interest and because, as she told a friend at the time, "it showed that I was still me."[80] The decision did upset both their mothers.[81] Clinton had lost the congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Arkansas Attorney General, and so the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock.[82] There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence.[83] She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law[43] while also working pro bono in child advocacy;[84] she rarely performed litigation work in court.[85]
Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[86] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[87] The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances and that in serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted.[60] An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate."[60] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades",[88] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[89] would allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[60] and exemplified legal "crit" theory run amok.[90]
Rodham and Clinton lived in this house in Little Rock's Hillcrest neighborhood while he was Arkansas Attorney General (1977–1979).[91]
Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, a title that she held for twelve years (1979–81, 1983–92). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[97] where she secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.[98]
In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm.[99] From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband.[100] During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham engaged in the trading of cattle futures contracts;[101] an initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months.[102] The couple also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time.[101] Both of these became subjects of controversy in the 1990s.
On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea. In November 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his bid for re-election.[103]
Later Arkansas years
Governor Bill and First Lady Hillary Clinton attend the 1987 Dinner Honoring the Nation's Governors with President Ronald and First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours,[115] but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there.[116] The firm considered her a "rainmaker" because she brought in clients, partly thanks to the prestige she lent it and to her corporate board connections.[116] She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[116] Bill Clinton's Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial re-election campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons countered the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated.[117]
From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on the board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation,[118] which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.[119] From 1987 to 1991, she was the first chair of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession, created to address gender bias in the legal profession and induce the association to adopt measures to combat it.[120] She was twice named by The National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991.[121] When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary Clinton considered running, but private polls were unfavorable and, in the end, he ran and was re-elected for the final time.[122]
Hillary Clinton, 1992
Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992
Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed assertions that Bill Clinton had engaged in an extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers.[130] In response, the Clintons appeared together on 60 Minutes, where Bill denied the affair, but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage".[131] This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign.[132] During the campaign, Hillary made culturally disparaging remarks about Tammy Wynette's outlook on marriage as described in her classic song "Stand by Your Man",[e] and later in the campaign about how she could have chosen to be like women staying home and baking cookies and having teas, but wanted to pursue her career instead.[f] The remarks were widely criticized, particularly by those who were, or defended, stay-at-home mothers, and in retrospect, were ill-considered by her own admission. Bill said that in electing him, the nation would "get two for the price of one", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume.[138] Beginning with Daniel Wattenberg's August 1992 The American Spectator article "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock", Hillary's own past ideological and ethical record came under attack from conservatives.[89] At least twenty other articles in major publications also drew comparisons between her and Lady Macbeth.[139]First Lady of the United States
Role as first lady
When Bill Clinton took office as President in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady, and her press secretary reiterated that she would be using that form of her name.[d] She was the first inaugural First Lady to have earned a postgraduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House.[140] She was also the first to have an office in the West Wing of the White House in addition to the usual first lady offices in the East Wing.[57][141] She was part of the innermost circle vetting appointments to the new administration and her choices filled at least eleven top-level positions and dozens more lower-level ones.[142] After Eleanor Roosevelt, Clinton was regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history.[143][144]Some critics called it inappropriate for the first lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters pointed out that Clinton's role in policy was no different from that of other White House advisors and that voters had been well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's presidency.[145] Bill Clinton's campaign promise of "two for the price of one" led opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-presidents" or sometimes use the Arkansas label "Billary".[97][146][147] The pressures of conflicting ideas about the role of a first lady were enough to send Hillary Clinton into "imaginary discussions" with the also-politically-active Eleanor Roosevelt.[g] From the time she came to Washington, Hillary also found refuge in a prayer group of the Fellowship that featured many wives of conservative Washington figures.[151][152] Triggered in part by the death of her father in April 1993, she publicly sought to find a synthesis of Methodist teachings, liberal religious political philosophy, and Tikkun editor Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning" to overcome what she saw as America's "sleeping sickness of the soul"; that would lead to a willingness "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century, moving into a new millennium."[153][154]
Health care and other policy initiatives
See also: Clinton health care plan of 1993
In January 1993, President Clinton named Hillary to chair a Task
Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success
she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform.[155] Unconvinced regarding the merits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), she privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority.[156][157] The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. Its opponents quickly derided the plan as "Hillarycare", and it faced opposition from even some Democrats in Congress.[158]
Some protesters against the proposed plan became vitriolic, and during a
July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, Clinton wore a
bulletproof vest at times.[158]
Clinton greets U.S. troops at Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia during a visit in December 1997
Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections.[161] Republicans saw a net gain of fifty-three seats in the House election and seven in the Senate election, winning control of both; many analysts and pollsters found the plan to be a major factor in the Democrats' defeat, especially among independent voters.[162] The White House subsequently sought to downplay Clinton's role in shaping policy.[163] Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.[164]
Clinton reads to a Maryland child during Read Across America Day, 1998
Enactment of welfare reform was a major goal of Bill Clinton's presidency, but when the first two bills on the issue came from a Republican-controlled Congress that lacked protections for people coming off welfare, Hillary urged him to veto the bills, which he did.[167][168] A third version came up during his 1996 general election campaign that restored some of the protections but cut the scope of benefits in other areas; critics, including her past mentor Edelman, urged her to get the president to veto it again.[167] But she decided to support the bill, which became the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, as the best political compromise available.[167][168] This caused a rift with Edelman that Hillary later called "sad and painful".[168]
Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.[57] In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as first lady.[57][169] In 1999, she was instrumental in the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care.[169] As first lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997),[170] on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997),[171] and on Children and Adolescents (2000).[172] She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000)[173] and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).[174]
Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time,[175] breaking the mark for most-traveled first lady held by Pat Nixon.[176] She did not hold a security clearance or attend National Security Council meetings, but played a role in U.S. diplomacy attaining its objectives.[177] A March 1995 five-nation trip to South Asia, on behest of the U.S. State Department and without her husband, sought to improve relations with India and Pakistan.[178] Clinton was troubled by the plight of women she encountered, but found a warm response from the people of the countries she visited and gained a better relationship with the American press corps.[179] The trip was a transformative experience for her and presaged her eventual career in diplomacy.[180]
Clinton delivering her famous "human rights are women's rights and
women's rights are human rights" speech in Beijing in September 1995
Whitewater and other investigations
For more details on these investigations, see Whitewater controversy, Travelgate, Filegate, and Hillary Rodham cattle futures controversy.
First Lady Clinton was a subject of several investigations by the United States Office of the Independent Counsel, committees of the U.S. Congress, and the press.The Whitewater controversy was the focus of media attention from the publication of a New York Times report during the 1992 presidential campaign[188] and throughout her time as first lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation; at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operated Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm[189] and may have been improperly subsidizing Whitewater losses.[188] Madison Guaranty later failed, and Clinton's work at Rose was scrutinized for a possible conflict of interest in representing the bank before state regulators that her husband had appointed.[188] She said she had done minimal work for the bank.[190] Independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were.[191][192] The records were found in the First Lady's White House book room after a two-year search and delivered to investigators in early 1996.[192] The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation concerning how they surfaced and where they had been.[192] Clinton's staff attributed the problem to continual changes in White House storage areas since the move from the Arkansas Governor's Mansion.[193] On January 26, 1996, Clinton became the first first lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury.[191] After several Independent Counsels had investigated, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated there was insufficient evidence that either Clinton had engaged in criminal wrongdoing.[194]
The Clinton family takes an Inauguration Day walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to start Bill's second term as President, January 20, 1997
Following deputy White House counsel Vince Foster's July 1993 suicide, allegations were made that Clinton had ordered the removal of potentially damaging files (related to Whitewater or other matters) from Foster's office on the night of his death.[199] Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr investigated this, and, by 1999, Starr was reported to be holding the investigation open, despite his staff having told him there was no case to be made.[200] When Starr's successor Robert Ray issued his final Whitewater reports in 2000, no claims were made against Clinton regarding this.[194] An outgrowth of the "Travelgate" investigation was the June 1996 discovery of improper White House access to hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees, an affair that some called "Filegate".[201] Accusations were made that Clinton had requested these files and that she had recommended hiring an unqualified individual to head the White House Security Office.[202] The 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.[201]
In March 1994, newspaper reports revealed her spectacular profits from trading in 1978–79, thus leading to the cattle futures controversy.[203] Allegations were made in the press of conflict of interest and disguised bribery, and several individuals analyzed her trading records, but no formal investigation was made and she was never charged with any wrongdoing.[204]
There was a controversy that arose in early 2001 over gifts made to the White House, rather than to the Clintons personally, that were removed and shipped to the Clintons' private residence during the last year of Bill Clinton's time in office.[205] Following public pressure the couple returned $134,000 worth of such gifts.[206] Hillary Clinton faced additional criticism for having possibly solicited personal gifts shortly before being sworn in as a senator, at which time she would have been barred from accepting them.[206]
Response to Lewinsky scandal
Further information: Lewinsky scandal
In 1998, the Clintons' relationship became the subject of much
speculation when investigations revealed that the President had engaged
in an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.[207] Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandal eventually led to the impeachment
of Bill Clinton by the House of Representatives and later acquittal by
the Senate. When the allegations against her husband were first made
public, Hillary Clinton stated that the allegations were part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy,"[208][209]
characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized,
collaborative series of charges by Bill's political enemies[h]
rather than any wrongdoing by her husband. She later said that she had
been misled by her husband's initial claims that no affair had taken
place.[211]
After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky
became incontrovertible, she issued a public statement reaffirming her
commitment to their marriage, but privately was reported to be furious
at him and was unsure if she wanted to stay in the marriage.[212] The White House residence staff noticed a pronounced level of tension between the couple during this period.[213]Public reaction varied. Some women admired her strength and poise in private matters that were made public, some sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior, others criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions, while still others accused her of cynically staying in a failed marriage as a way of keeping or even fostering her own political influence.[214] Her public approval ratings in the wake of the revelations shot upward to around 70 percent, the highest they had ever been.[214] In her 2003 memoir, she would attribute her decision to stay married to "a love that has persisted for decades" and add: "No 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."[215]
Matters surrounding the Lewinsky scandal left Bill Clinton with substantial legal bills; in 2014, Hillary would state that she and Bill had left the White House "not only dead broke, but in debt." The statement may have been literally accurate but ignored the potentially enormous earnings potential of ex-presidents giving paid speeches upon leaving office as well as the couple's ability to secure loans from banks.[216]
Traditional duties
Clinton initiated and was the founding chair of the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to preserve and restore historic items and sites,[217] including the flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio.[57] She was head of the White House Millennium Council[218] and hosted Millennium Evenings,[219] a series of lectures that discussed futures studies, one of which became the first live simultaneous webcast from the White House.[57] Clinton also created the first White House Sculpture Garden, located in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which displayed large contemporary American works of art loaned from museums.[220]In the White House, Clinton placed donated handicrafts of contemporary American artisans, such as pottery and glassware, on rotating display in the state rooms.[57] She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room to be historically authentic to the period of James Monroe[221] and the Map Room to how it looked during World War II.[222] Working with Arkansas interior decorator Kaki Hockersmith over an eight-year period, she oversaw extensive, privately funded redecoration efforts around the building, often trying to make it look brighter.[223] These included changing the look of the Treaty Room, a presidential study, to along 19th century lines.[222] Overall the redecoration brought mixed notices, with Victorian furnishings for the Lincoln Sitting Room being criticized the most.[223] Clinton hosted many large-scale events at the White House, such as a Saint Patrick's Day reception, a state dinner for visiting Chinese dignitaries, a contemporary music concert that raised funds for music education in public schools, a New Year's Eve celebration at the turn of the 21st century, and a state dinner honoring the bicentennial of the White House in November 2000.[57]
United States Senate
Main article: United States Senate career of Hillary Clinton
2000 U.S. Senate election
Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2000
When New York's long-serving U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement in November 1998, several prominent Democratic figures, including Representative Charles Rangel of New York, urged Clinton to run for Moynihan's open seat in the Senate election of 2000.[224] Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999.[225] She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office.[226] Initially, Clinton expected to face Rudy Giuliani
(the mayor of New York City) as her Republican opponent in the
election. Giuliani withdrew from the race in May 2000 after he was
diagnosed with prostate cancer and matters related to his failing
marriage became public, and Clinton instead faced Rick Lazio, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing New York's 2nd congressional district. Throughout the campaign, opponents accused Clinton of carpetbagging, as she had never resided in New York nor participated in the state's politics before the 2000 Senate race.[227]Clinton began her campaign, which was managed by Bill de Blasio, by visiting all 62 counties in the State, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings.[228] She devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions.[229] Clinton vowed to improve the economic situation in those areas, promising to deliver 200,000 jobs to the state over her term. Her plan included tax credits to reward job creation and encourage business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care.[229]
The contest drew national attention. Lazio blundered during a September debate by seeming to invade Clinton's personal space trying to get her to sign a fundraising agreement.[230] The campaigns of Clinton and Lazio, along with Giuliani's initial effort, spent a record combined $90 million.[231] Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent.[230] She was sworn in as U.S. senator on January 3, 2001,[232] making her the first (and so far only) woman to have held an elected office either while,[i] or after, serving as first lady.
First term
Reenactment of Hillary Rodham Clinton being sworn in as a U.S. senator by Vice President Al Gore in the Old Senate Chamber, as Bill and Chelsea look on
Clinton's official photo as U.S. senator
Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment.[240] She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.[241] Clinton voted for the USA Patriot Act in October 2001. In 2005, when the act was up for renewal, she expressed concerns with the USA Patriot Act Reauthorization Conference Report regarding civil liberties,[242] before voting in favor of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 in March 2006 that gained large majority support.[243]
Clinton strongly supported the 2001 U.S. military action in Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who suffered under the Taliban government.[244] Clinton voted in favor of the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution, which authorized President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq.[245]
After the Iraq War began, Clinton made trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit American troops stationed there. On a visit to Iraq in February 2005, Clinton noted that the insurgency had failed to disrupt the democratic elections held earlier and that parts of the country were functioning well.[246] Observing that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she co-introduced legislation to increase the size of the regular U.S. Army by 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain.[247] In late 2005, Clinton said that while immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake, Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also misguided, as it gave Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves".[248] Her stance caused frustration among those in the Democratic Party who favored quick withdrawal.[249] Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for reservists and lobbied against the closure of several military bases, especially those in New York.[250][251] She used her position on the Armed Services Committee to forge close relationships with a number of high-ranking military officers.[251] (By 2014 and 2015 Clinton had fully reversed herself on the Iraq War Resolution, saying that she "got it wrong" and the vote in support had been a "mistake".[252])
Clinton voted against President Bush's two major tax cut packages, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.[253] Clinton voted against the 2005 confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States and the 2006 confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, filibustering the latter.[254][255]
In 2005, 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.[256] Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, she introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. In 2004 and 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.[253][257]
Looking to establish a "progressive infrastructure" to rival that of American conservatism, Clinton played a formative role in conversations that led to the 2003 founding of former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta's Center for American Progress, shared aides with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, founded in 2003, and advised the Clintons' former antagonist David Brock's Media Matters for America, created in 2004.[258] Following the 2004 Senate elections, she successfully pushed new Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid to create a Senate war room to handle daily political messaging.[259]
2006 re-election campaign
Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2006
In November 2004, Clinton announced that she would seek a second
Senate term. Clinton easily won the Democratic nomination over
opposition from antiwar activist Jonathan Tasini.[260] The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, withdrew from the contest after several months of poor campaign performance.[261] Clinton's eventual opponent in the general election was Republican candidate John Spencer, a former mayor of Yonkers. Clinton won the election on November 7, 2006, with 67 percent of the vote to Spencer's 31 percent,[262] carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties.[263]
Her campaign spent $36 million for her re-election, more than any other
candidate for Senate in the 2006 elections. Some Democrats criticized
her for spending too much in a one-sided contest, while some supporters
were concerned she did not leave more funds for a potential presidential
bid in 2008.[264] In the following months, she transferred $10 million of her Senate funds toward her presidential campaign.[265]Second term
Clinton listens as the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Mullen, responds to a question during his 2007 confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee
In March 2007, in response to the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.[270] Regarding the high-profile, hotly debated immigration reform bill known as the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, Clinton cast several votes in support of the bill, which eventually failed to gain cloture.[271]
As the financial crisis of 2007–08 reached a peak with the liquidity crisis of September 2008, Clinton supported the proposed bailout of the U.S. financial system, voting in favor of the $700 billion law that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program, saying that it represented the interests of the American people. It passed the Senate 74–25.[272]
In 2007, Clinton and Virginia Senator Jim Webb called for an investigation into whether the body armor issued to soldiers in Iraq was adequate.[273]
2008 presidential campaign
Main article: Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008
Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for U.S. President since at least early 2003.[274] On January 20, 2007, she announced via her website the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008, stating "I'm in, and I'm in to win."[275]
No woman had ever been nominated by a major party for the presidency,
and no First Lady had ever run for President. When Bill Clinton became
president in 1993, a blind trust
was established; in April 2007, the Clintons liquidated the blind trust
to avoid the possibility of ethical conflicts or political
embarrassments as Hillary undertook her presidential race.[276] Later disclosure statements revealed that the couple's worth was now upwards of $50 million,[276]
and that they had earned over $100 million since 2000, with most of it
coming from Bill's books, speaking engagements, and other activities.[277]Throughout the first half of 2007, Clinton led candidates competing for the Democratic presidential nomination in opinion polls for the election. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina were her strongest competitors.[245] The biggest threat to her campaign was her past support of the Iraq War, which Obama had opposed from the beginning.[245] Clinton and Obama both set records for early fundraising, swapping the money lead each quarter.[278]
Clinton campaigning at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, two days before Super Tuesday, 2008
In the first vote of 2008, she placed third in the January 3 Iowa Democratic caucus behind Obama and Edwards.[284] Obama gained ground in national polling in the next few days, with all polls predicting a victory for him in the New Hampshire primary.[285] Clinton gained a surprise win there on January 8, defeating Obama narrowly.[286] It was the first time a woman had won a major American party's presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection.[287] Explanations for Clinton's New Hampshire comeback varied but often centered on her being seen more sympathetically, especially by women, after her eyes welled with tears and her voice broke while responding to a voter's question the day before the election.[288]
The nature of the contest fractured in the next few days. Several remarks by Bill Clinton and other surrogates,[289] and a remark by Hillary Clinton concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson,[k] were perceived by many as, accidentally or intentionally, limiting Obama as a racially oriented candidate or otherwise denying the post-racial significance and accomplishments of his campaign.[290] Despite attempts by both Hillary and Obama to downplay the issue, Democratic voting became more polarized as a result, with Clinton losing much of her support among African Americans.[289][291] She lost by a two-to-one margin to Obama in the January 26 South Carolina primary,[291] setting up, with Edwards soon dropping out, an intense two-person contest for the twenty-two February 5 Super Tuesday states. Bill Clinton had made more statements attracting criticism for their perceived racial implications late in the South Carolina campaign, and his role was seen as damaging enough to her that a wave of supporters within and outside of the campaign said the former President "needs to stop".[292] The South Carolina campaign had done lasting damage to Hillary Clinton, eroding her support among the Democratic establishment and leading to the prized endorsement of Obama by Ted Kennedy.[293]
State-by-state popular votes in the Democratic primaries and caucuses,
shaded by percentage won: Obama in purple, Clinton in green. (Popular
vote winners and delegate winners differed in New Hampshire, Nevada,
Missouri, Texas, and Guam.)
The Clinton campaign had counted on winning the nomination by Super Tuesday and was unprepared financially and logistically for a prolonged effort; lagging in Internet fundraising, Clinton began loaning money to her campaign.[282][297] There was continuous turmoil within the campaign staff and she made several top-level personnel changes.[297][298] Obama won the next eleven February contests across the country, often by large margins, and took a significant pledged delegate lead over Clinton.[296][297] On March 4, Clinton broke the string of losses by winning in Ohio among other places,[297] where her criticism of NAFTA, a major legacy of her husband's presidency, helped in a state where the trade agreement was unpopular.[299] Throughout the campaign, Obama dominated caucuses, for which the Clinton campaign largely ignored preparation.[282][296] Obama did well in primaries where African Americans or younger, college-educated, or more affluent voters were heavily represented; Clinton did well in primaries where Hispanics or older, non-college-educated, or working-class white voters predominated.[300][301] Behind in delegates, Clinton's best hope of winning the nomination came in persuading uncommitted, party-appointed superdelegates.[302]
Clinton speaks on behalf of her former rival, Barack Obama, during the second night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver
Following the final primaries on June 3, 2008, Obama had gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee.[305] In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.[306] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763;[307] at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395,[308] with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner.[307] Clinton and Obama each received over 17 million votes during the nomination process[l] with both breaking the previous record.[309] Clinton was the first woman to run in the primary or caucus of every state, and she eclipsed, by a very wide margin, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 marks for most votes garnered and delegates won by a woman.[287] Clinton gave a passionate speech supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and campaigned frequently for him in fall 2008, which concluded with his victory over McCain in the general election on November 4.[310] Clinton's campaign ended up severely in debt; she owed millions of dollars to outside vendors and wrote off the $13 million that she lent it herself.[311] The debt was eventually paid off by the beginning of 2013.[311]
U.S. Secretary of State
Main article: Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State
See also: Foreign policy of Barack Obama
Nomination and confirmation
Clinton takes the oath of office as Secretary of State, administered by Associate Judge Kathryn Oberly, as Bill Clinton holds a Bible
The appointment required a Saxbe fix, passed and signed into law in December 2008.[318] Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration; two days later, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton.[319] By this time, her public approval rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point since the Lewinsky scandal.[320] On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2.[321] Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State, resigning from the Senate later that day.[322] She became the first former first lady to serve in the United States Cabinet.[323]
First half of tenure
Obama and Clinton confer at the 21st NATO summit, April 2009
Clinton with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the "reset button", March 2009
Clinton and Obama forged a good working relationship without power struggles; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside, and was careful that neither she nor her husband would upstage the president.[336][337] Clinton formed an alliance with Secretary of Defense Gates as they shared similar strategic outlooks.[338] Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise.[313] She met with him weekly but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents;[337] moreover, certain key areas of policymaking were kept inside the White House or Pentagon.[339][340] Nevertheless, the president had trust in her actions.[313]
Clinton greets service members at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, October 2010
Second half of tenure
The 2011 Egyptian protests posed the most challenging foreign policy crisis for the administration yet.[344] Clinton's public response quickly evolved from an early assessment that the government of Hosni Mubarak was "stable", to a stance that there needed to be an "orderly transition [to] a democratic participatory government", to a condemnation of violence against the protesters.[345][346] Obama came to rely upon Clinton's advice, organization, and personal connections in the behind-the-scenes response to developments.[344] As Arab Spring protests spread throughout the region, Clinton was at the forefront of a U.S. response that she recognized was sometimes contradictory, backing some regimes while supporting protesters against others.[347]
The London meeting to discuss NATO military intervention in Libya, March 29, 2011
During April 2011 internal deliberations of the president's innermost circle of advisors over whether to order U.S. special forces to conduct a raid into Pakistan against Osama bin Laden, Clinton was among those who argued in favor, saying the importance of getting bin Laden outweighed the risks to the U.S. relationship with Pakistan.[355][356] Following completion of the mission on May 2, which resulted in bin Laden's death, Clinton played a key role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead al-Qaeda leader.[357] During internal discussions regarding Iraq in 2011, Clinton argued for keeping a residual force of up to 10,000–20,000 U.S. troops there (all ended up being withdrawn after negotiations for a revised U.S.–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement failed).[251][358]
Clinton meeting with Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as part of her historic December 2011 visit to that country
During the Syrian Civil War, Clinton and the Obama administration initially sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to engage popular demonstrations with reform, then as government violence allegedly rose in August 2011, called for him to resign from the presidency.[364] The administration joined several countries in delivering non-lethal assistance to so-called rebels opposed to the Assad government and humanitarian groups working in Syria.[365] During mid-2012, Clinton formed a plan with CIA Director David Petraeus to further strengthen the opposition by arming and training vetted groups of Syrian rebels, but the proposal was rejected by the White House officials who were reluctant to become entangled in the conflict and who feared that extremists hidden among the rebels might turn the weapons against other targets.[360][366]
In December 2012 Clinton was hospitalized for a few days for treatment of a blood clot in her right transverse venous sinus.[367] Her doctors had discovered the clot during a follow-up examination for a concussion she had sustained when she fainted and fell nearly three weeks earlier, as a result of severe dehydration from a viral intestinal ailment acquired during a trip to Europe.[367][368] The clot, which caused no immediate neurological injury, was treated with anticoagulant medication, and her doctors have said she has made a full recovery.[368][369][n]
Overall themes
Clinton, along with members of the national security team, receive an
update on Operation Neptune Spear, in the White House Situation Room on
May 1, 2011. Several of the attendees are sitting down, while others
stand behind them. Everyone in the room is watching a live feed from
drones operating over the Usama bin Laden complex.
Clinton greatly expanded the State Department's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, both to get its message out and to help empower citizens of foreign countries vis-à-vis their governments.[348] And in the Mideast turmoil, Clinton particularly saw an opportunity to advance one of the central themes of her tenure, the empowerment and welfare of women and girls worldwide.[182] Moreover, in a formulation that became known as the "Hillary Doctrine", she viewed women's rights as critical for U.S. security interests, due to a link between the level of violence against women and gender inequality within a state and the instability and challenge to international security of that state.[336][376] In turn, there was a trend of women around the world finding more opportunities, and in some cases feeling safer, as the result of her actions and visibility.[377]
Clinton visited 112 countries during her tenure, making her the most widely traveled secretary of state[378][o] (Time magazine wrote that "Clinton's endurance is legendary").[348] The first secretary of state to visit countries such as Togo and East Timor, she believed that in-person visits were more important than ever in the virtual age.[381] As early as March 2011, she indicated she was not interested in serving a second term as Secretary of State should Obama be re-elected in 2012;[349] in December 2012, following that re-election, Obama nominated Senator John Kerry to be Clinton's successor.[368] Her last day as Secretary of State was February 1, 2013.[382] Upon her departure, analysts commented that Clinton's tenure did not bring any signature diplomatic breakthroughs as some other Secretaries of State had,[339][340] and highlighted her focus on goals that she thought were less tangible but would have more lasting effect.[383]
Benghazi attack and subsequent hearings
Obama and Clinton honor the Benghazi attack victims at the Transfer of Remains Ceremony, held at Andrews Air Force Base on September 14, 2012
On December 19, a panel led by Thomas R. Pickering and Michael Mullen issued its report on the matter. It was sharply critical of State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests for more guards and safety upgrades, and for failing to adapt security procedures to a deteriorating security environment.[386] It focused its criticism on the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; four State Department officials at the assistant secretary level and below were removed from their posts as a consequence.[387] Clinton said she accepted the conclusions of the report and that changes were underway to implement its suggested recommendations.[386]
Clinton gave testimony to two congressional foreign affairs committees on January 23, 2013, regarding the Benghazi attack. She defended her actions in response to the incident and, while still accepting formal responsibility, said she had had no direct role in specific discussions beforehand regarding consulate security.[388] Congressional Republicans challenged her on several points, to which she responded. In particular, after persistent questioning about whether or not the administration had issued inaccurate "talking points" after the attack, Clinton responded with the much-quoted rejoinder, "With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."[388][389] In November 2014, the House Intelligence Committee issued a report that concluded there had been no wrongdoing in the administration's response to the attack.[390]
Clinton testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on October 22, 2015
Email controversy
Main article: Hillary Clinton email controversy
A controversy arose in March 2015, when it was revealed by the State Department's inspector general
that Clinton had exclusively used personal email accounts on a
non-government, privately maintained server—instead of email accounts
maintained on federal government servers—when conducting official
business during her tenure as secretary of state. Some experts,
officials, members of Congress, and political opponents contended that
her use of private messaging system software and a private server violated State Department protocols and procedures and federal laws and regulations governing recordkeeping requirements.
The controversy occurred against the backdrop of Clinton's 2016
presidential election campaign and hearings held by the House Select
Committee on Benghazi.[397][398]In a joint statement released on July 15, 2015, the inspector general of the State Department and the inspector general of the intelligence community said that their review of the emails found information that was classified when sent, remained so at the time of their inspection, and "never should have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system."[399] They also stated unequivocally that this classified information should never have been stored outside of secure government computer systems.[399] Clinton had said over a period of months that she kept no classified information on the private server that she set up in her house.[399] Government policy, reiterated in the nondisclosure agreement signed by Clinton as part of gaining her security clearance, is that sensitive information can be considered as classified even if not marked as such.[400] After allegations were raised that some of the emails in question fell into the so-called "born classified" category, an FBI probe was initiated regarding how classified information was handled on the Clinton server.[401] The New York Times reported in February 2016 that nearly 2,100 emails stored on Clinton's server were retroactively marked classified by the State Department.[402] Additionally, the intelligence community's inspector general wrote Congress to say that some of the emails "contained classified State Department information when originated."[403] In May 2016, the inspector general of the State Department criticized her use of a private email server while secretary of state, stating that she had not requested permission for this and would not have received it if she had asked.[404]
Clinton maintained that she did not send or receive any emails from her personal server that were confidential at the time they were sent. In a Democratic debate with Bernie Sanders on February 4, 2016, Clinton said, "I never sent or received any classified material – they are retroactively classifying it." On July 2, 2016, Clinton stated: "Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now, I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified."[405][406]
On July 5, 2016, the FBI concluded its investigation. In a statement, FBI director James Comey said:
110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were "up-classified" to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.[402][407]Three emails, out of 30,000, were found to be marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers and were only marked with a small "c" in parentheses, described as "portion markings" by Comey. He also said it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the three classified markings meant.[407] The probe found that Clinton used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, both sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. The FBI assessed that it "is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account."[402] Comey stated that although Clinton or her colleagues were "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information", the FBI would recommend to the Justice Department that "no charges are appropriate in this case."[402] On July 6, 2016, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed that the probe into Clinton's use of private email servers while secretary of state will be closed without criminal charges.[408]
On October 28, 2016, Comey notified Congress that the FBI started looking into newly discovered emails. Law enforcement officials stated the emails were found on a laptop belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin's husband. On November 6, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had not changed its conclusion reached in July.[409] The notification was later cited by Clinton as a factor in her loss in the 2016 presidential election.[410]
Clinton Foundation and speeches
Further information: Clinton Foundation
Clinton in September 2014
Clinton also led the No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to gather and study data on the progress of women and girls around the world since the Beijing conference in 1995;[414] its March 2015 report said that while "There has never been a better time in history to be born a woman ... this data shows just how far we still have to go."[415] The foundation began accepting new donations from foreign governments, which it had stopped doing while she was secretary.[p] However, even though the Clinton Foundation had stopped taking donations from foreign governments, they continued to take large donations from foreign citizens who were sometimes linked to their governments.[418]
She began work on another volume of memoirs, and made appearances on the paid speaking circuit.[419] There she received $200,000–225,000 per engagement, often appearing before Wall Street firms or at business conventions.[419][420] She also made some unpaid speeches on behalf of the foundation.[419] For the fifteen months ending in March 2015, Clinton earned over $11 million from her speeches.[421] For the overall period 2007–14, the Clintons earned almost $141 million, paid some $56 million in federal and state taxes, and donated about $15 million to charity.[422] As of 2015, she was estimated to be worth over $30 million on her own, or $45–53 million with her husband.[423]
Clinton resigned from the foundation's board in April 2015, when she began her presidential campaign, and the foundation said it would accept new foreign governmental donations from six Western nations only.[p]
2016 presidential campaign
Clinton campaigning for President in Manchester, New Hampshire, in October 2016, with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (seated).
Main article: Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016
Further information: United States presidential election, 2016; Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016; and Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016
On April 12, 2015, Clinton formally announced her candidacy for the presidency in the 2016 election.[424] She had a campaign-in-waiting already in place, including a large donor network, experienced operatives, and the Ready for Hillary and Priorities USA Action political action committees, and other infrastructure.[425] The campaign's headquarters were established in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.[426] Focuses of her campaign have included raising middle class incomes, establishing universal preschool and making college more affordable, and improving the Affordable Care Act.[427][428] Initially considered a prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination,[424] Clinton faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from self-professed democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders
of Vermont, whose longtime stance against the influence of corporations
and the wealthy in American politics resonated with a dissatisfied
citizenry troubled by the effects of income inequality in the U.S. and contrasted with Clinton's Wall Street ties.[420][428]In the initial contest of the primaries season, Clinton only very narrowly won the Iowa Democratic caucuses, held February 1, over an increasingly popular Sanders,[429][430] making her the first woman to win the Iowa caucuses.[429] In the first primary, held in New Hampshire on February 9, she lost to Sanders by a wide margin.[431] Sanders was an increasing threat in the next contest, the Nevada caucuses on February 20,[432] but Clinton managed a five-percentage-point win, aided by final-days campaigning among casino workers.[433] Clinton followed that with a lopsided victory in the South Carolina primary on February 27.[432] These two victories stabilized her campaign and showed an avoidance of the management turmoil that harmed her 2008 effort.[432]
On March 1 ("Super Tuesday"), Clinton won seven of eleven contests, including a string of dominating victories across the South buoyed, as in South Carolina, by African-American voters, and opened up a significant lead in pledged delegates over Sanders.[434] She maintained this delegate lead across subsequent contests during the primary season, with a consistent pattern throughout being that Sanders did better among younger, whiter, more rural, and more liberal voters and in states that held caucuses or where eligibility was open to independents, while Clinton did better among older and more diverse voter populations and in states that held primaries or where eligibility was restricted to registered Democrats.[435][436][437]
By June 5, 2016, she had earned enough pledged delegates and supportive superdelegates for the media to consider her the presumptive nominee.[438] On June 7, after winning most of the states in the final major round of primaries, Clinton held a victory rally in Brooklyn in which she became the first woman to claim the status of presumptive nominee for a major American political party.[439] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 2,219 pledged delegates to Sanders' 1,832; with an estimated 594 superdelegates compared to Sanders' 47.[440] She received almost 17 million votes during the nominating process, as opposed to Sanders' 13 million.[441]
Bernie Sanders endorsing Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, July 2016
Clinton held a significant lead in national polls over Trump throughout most of 2016. In early July, Trump and Clinton became tied in major polls following the FBI's conclusion of its investigation into her emails.[444] FBI Director James Comey concluded Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified government material.[445] In late July, Trump gained his first lead over Clinton in major polls following a 3 to 4 percentage point convention bounce at the Republican National Convention, in line with the average bounce in conventions since 2004, although it is toward the small side by historical standards.[446][447] Following Clinton's 7 percentage point convention bounce at the Democratic National Convention, she regained a significant lead in national polls at the start of August.[448][449]
If elected, Clinton would have become the first female President of the United States. However, she was defeated by Donald Trump in the November 8, 2016 presidential election.[450] By the early morning hours of November 9, Trump had received 279 electoral college votes, with 270 needed to win, and media sources proclaimed him the winner.[451] Clinton then phoned Trump to concede and to congratulate him on his victory, whereupon Trump gave a victory speech.[452] The next morning Clinton made a public concession speech in which she acknowledged the pain of her loss, but called on her supporters to accept Trump as president, saying “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead.”[453] Clinton received more popular votes than Trump, making her the fifth presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election.[454] A week after the election, the popular vote count showed her leading by more than a million votes, with many votes yet to be counted.[455]
Clinton speaking at the Brown & Black Presidential Forum in Des Moines, Iowa, January 11, 2016
Clinton at an event in Tempe, Arizona on November 2, 2016
Political positions
Main article: Political positions of Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State Clinton meets with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Clinton is in favor of maintaining U.S. influence in the Middle East.
Organizations have also attempted to give newer assessments of Clinton once she reentered elective politics in 2015. Based on her stated positions from the 1990s to the present, On the Issues places her in their "Left Liberal" region on their two-dimensional grid of social and economic ideologies, with a social score of 80 on a scale of 0 more-restrictive to 100 less-government stances and an economic score of 10 on a scale of 0 more-restrictive to 100 less-government stances.[460] Crowdpac, which does a data aggregation of campaign contributions, votes, and speeches, gives her a 6.5L rating on a one-dimensional left-right scale from 10L (most liberal) to 10C (most conservative).[461] Through 2008, she had an average lifetime 90 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action,[462] and a lifetime 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.[463]
In March 2016, Clinton laid out a detailed economic plan, which The New York Times called "optimistic" and "wide-ranging".[464] Basing her economic philosophy on inclusive capitalism, Clinton proposed a "clawback" that would rescind tax relief and other benefits for companies that move jobs overseas; providing incentives for companies that share profits with employees, communities and the environment, rather than focusing on short-term profits to increase stock value and rewarding shareholders; increasing collective bargaining rights; and placing an "exit tax" on companies that move their headquarters out of America in order to pay a lower tax rate overseas.[464] Clinton 'opposes' (though previously described it as "the gold standard"[465] of trade deals) the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supports the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and holds that "any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security".[466][467] As Senator (2001-2009), her record on trade was mixed, voting in favor of some trade agreements but not others.[466]
Given the climate of unlimited campaign contributions following the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Clinton called for a constitutional amendment to limit "unaccountable money" in politics.[468] In July 2016, she "committed" to introducing a U.S. constitutional amendment that would result in overturning the 2010 Citizens United decision.[469][470] On December 7, 2015, in The New York Times, Clinton presented her detailed plans for regulating Wall Street financial activities.[471]
Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign logo
She supported equal pay for equal work, to address current shortfalls in how much women are paid to do the same jobs men do.[474] Clinton has explicitly focused on family issues and supports universal preschool.[468] These programs would be funded by proposing tax increases on the wealthy, including a “fair share surcharge".[475]
Clinton supported the Affordable Care Act[476] and would have added a "public option" that would have competed against private insurers and enabled people "50 or 55 and up" to buy into Medicare.[477][478]
On LGBT rights, she supported the right to same-sex marriage.[468] Clinton first expressed support for a national right to same-sex marriage in 2013; in 2000, she had been against such unions altogether, and in 2006, she said only that she would support a state's decision to permit same-sex marriages.[479] In 2000, she was the first First Lady to march in an LGBT pride parade.[480] In 2016, she was the first major-party presidential candidate ever to write an op-ed for an LGBT newspaper (Philadelphia Gay News).[481]
Clinton held that allowing undocumented immigrants to have a path to citizenship "[i]s at its heart a family issue,"[482] and expressed support for Obama's Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, which would allow up to five million undocumented immigrants to gain deferral of deportation and authorization to legally work in the United States.[483][484] She opposed and criticized Trump's call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States.[485]
Clinton expressed support for Common Core.[486] She said, "The really unfortunate argument that's been going on around Common Core, it's very painful because the Common Core started off as a bipartisan effort. It was actually nonpartisan. It wasn't politicized.... Iowa has had a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time. And [speaking to Iowans] you see the value of it, you understand why that helps you organize your whole education system. And a lot of states unfortunately haven't had that, and so don't understand the value of a core, in this sense a Common Core."[487]
On foreign affairs, Clinton voted in October 2002 in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq,[488] a vote she later "regretted." She favored arming Syria's rebel fighters in 2012 and has called for the removal of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.[489] She supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the NATO-led military intervention in Libya to oust former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.[490][491] Clinton is in favor of maintaining American influence in the Middle East.[485] She has told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "America can't ever be neutral when it comes to Israel's security and survival."[492] Clinton expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2006 Lebanon War and 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.[493][494]
In 2000, Clinton advocated for eliminating the electoral college[495] and promised to co-sponsor legislation that would abolish it resulting in the direct election of the president.[496][497]
Religious views
Clinton has been a lifelong Methodist, attending various churches throughout her lifetime; all belonging to the United Methodist Church:- First United Methodist Church of Park Ridge, Illinois—in her early life,
- First United Methodist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas—while in Arkansas,
- Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.—as First Lady of the United States,
- Metropolitan Community United Methodist Church in New York, New York—currently a congregant.
Professor Paul Kengor, author of God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, has suggested that Clinton's political positions are rooted in her faith. Clinton often expresses a certain maxim which is often attributed to John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can."[499] In fact, Clinton repeated this saying in her acceptance speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, adding that her mother Dorothy "made sure I learned [these] words from our Methodist faith."[501]
Writings and recordings
See also: Bibliography of Hillary Clinton
Clinton in February 2011
In 1996, Clinton presented a vision for the children of America in the book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. The book made the Best Seller list of The New York Times and Clinton received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 1997 for the book's audio recording.[504] She was the first First Lady to win a Grammy Award.[505]
Other books published by Clinton when she was first lady include Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets (1998) and An Invitation to the White House: At Home with History (2000). In 2001, she wrote an afterword to the children's book Beatrice's Goat.[506]
In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, Living History, for which publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million.[507] The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work,[508] went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication,[509] and was translated into twelve foreign languages.[510] Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[511]
In 2014, Clinton published a second memoir, Hard Choices, which focused on her time as Secretary of State. As of July 2015, the book has sold about 280,000 copies.[512]
In 2016, Clinton, along with her running mate Tim Kaine, published Stronger Together, outlining her vision for the United States if she had been elected in the 2016 presidential election.[513]
Cultural and political image
Over a hundred books and scholarly works have been written about Clinton, from many perspectives. A 2006 survey by the New York Observer found "a virtual cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton literature",[514] put out by Regnery Publishing and other conservative imprints,[514] with titles such as Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House, Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House, and Can She Be Stopped?: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless ... Books praising Clinton did not sell nearly as well[514] (other than the memoirs written by her and her husband). When she ran for Senate in 2000, a number of fundraising groups such as Save Our Senate and the Emergency Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton sprang up to oppose her.[515] Van Natta found that Republican and conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters,[516] on a par with Ted Kennedy, and the equivalent of Democratic and liberal appeals mentioning Newt Gingrich.[516]Clinton has also been featured in the media and popular culture from a wide spectrum of varying perspectives. In 1995, writer Todd S. Purdum of The New York Times characterized Clinton as a Rorschach test,[517] an assessment echoed at the time by feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan, who said, "Coverage of Hillary Clinton is a massive Rorschach test of the evolution of women in our society."[518] She has been the subject of many satirical impressions on Saturday Night Live, beginning with her time as first lady, and has made guest appearances on the show herself, in 2008 and in 2015, to face-off with her doppelgängers.[519][520]
Clinton worked at Rose Law Firm for fifteen years. Her professional career and political involvement set the stage for public reaction to her as first lady.
Northern Illinois University political science professor Barbara Burrell's 2000 study found that Clinton's Gallup poll favorability numbers broke sharply along partisan lines throughout her time as first lady, with 70 to 90 percent of Democrats typically viewing her favorably while only 20 to 40 percent of Republicans did.[524] University of Wisconsin–Madison political science professor Charles Franklin analyzed her record of favorable versus unfavorable ratings in public opinion polls, and found that there was more variation in them during her first lady years than her Senate years.[525] The Senate years showed favorable ratings around 50 percent and unfavorable ratings in the mid-40 percent range; Franklin noted that, "This sharp split is, of course, one of the more widely remarked aspects of Sen. Clinton's public image."[525] McGill University professor of history Gil Troy titled his 2006 biography of her Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady, and wrote that after the 1992 campaign, Clinton "was a polarizing figure, with 42 percent [of the public] saying she came closer to their values and lifestyle than previous first ladies and 41 percent disagreeing."[526] Troy further wrote that Clinton "has been uniquely controversial and contradictory since she first appeared on the national radar screen in 1992"[527] and that she "has alternately fascinated, bedeviled, bewitched, and appalled Americans."[527]
Clinton's Gallup Poll favorable and unfavorable ratings, 1992–2016.[528]
The ratings show her as a controversial first lady whose ratings hit a
low following the Hillarycare failure and a high following the Lewinsky
scandal. Opinion about her was closely divided during her 2000 Senate
campaign, mildly positive during her time as a senator, and then closely
divided again during her 2008 presidential campaign. As secretary of
state, she enjoyed widespread approval, before dipping as her tenure
ended and then to some of her lowest ratings ever as she became viewed
as a presidential candidate again.[529]
Clinton in 2009
Hillary Clinton in mid-April 2015
Her favorability ratings dropped, however, after she left office and began to be viewed in the context of partisan politics again.[550] By September 2015, with her 2016 presidential campaign underway and beset by continued reports regarding her private email usage at the State Department, her ratings had slumped to some of her lowest levels ever.[551] During 2016 she acknowledged that: "I'm not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed."[552]
Electoral history
Main article: Electoral history of Hillary Clinton
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ± | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 3,747,310 | 55.3 | ||
| Republican | Rick Lazio | 2,915,730 | 43.0 | ||
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ± | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 3,008,428 | 67.0 | +11.7 | |
| Republican | John Spencer | 1,392,189 | 31.0 | -12.0 | |
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Barack Hussein Obama | 2,272.5 delegates (33 states) |
47.3% of popular vote | |
| Democratic | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 1,978 delegates (23 states) |
48.0% of popular vote | |
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Donald J. Trump | 306 electors (30 states+ME-02) |
47.3% of popular vote | |
| Democratic | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 232 electors (20 states+DC) |
47.8% of popular vote | |
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