Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has called a tweet from her Republican rival, Donald Trump, "blatantly anti-Semitic".
Clinton's criticism came on Monday after Trump posted the tweet, which appeared to depict Clinton against a backdrop of cash and a Star of David - a symbol of Jewish identity.
"Donald Trump's use of a blatantly anti-Semitic image from racist websites to promote his campaign would be disturbing enough, but the fact that it's part of a pattern should give voters major cause for concern," Clinton's campaign said in a statement.
- Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (/ˈhɪləri daɪˈæn ˈrɒdəmˈklɪntən/; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician and the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in the 2016 election. She served as the 67th United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, the junior United States Senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, First Lady of the United States during the presidency of husband Bill Clintonfrom 1993 to 2001, and First Lady of Arkansas during the governorship of Bill Clinton from 1979 to 1981 and from 1983 to 1992.
Clinton was born in Chicago and grew up in the suburb of Park Ridge, Illinois. She 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, marrying 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, the following year, became the first woman partner at Rose Law Firm. As First Lady of Arkansas (1979–81, 1983–92), she led a task force whose recommendations helped reform Arkansas's public schools, and served on the boards of corporations including Walmart.
As First Lady of the United States, Clinton led the unsuccessful effort to enact the Clinton health plan of 1993. In 1997 and 1999, she helped create programs for children's health insurance,adoption, and foster care. The only first lady to have beensubpoenaed, she faced a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding theWhitewater controversy; no charges were ever brought against her related to this or any other controversy. Her marriage endured theLewinsky scandal of 1998, and her role as first lady drew apolarized response from the public.
Clinton was elected in 2000 as the first female senator from New York, the only first lady ever to have sought elective office. Following the September 11 attacks, she voted to approve the war in Afghanistan. She also voted for the Iraq Resolution, which she later regretted. 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 toBarack 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. 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 won the Democratic primariesand the 2016 Democratic nomination ahead of Senator Bernie Sanders, becoming the first woman to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.Contents
- 1 Early life and education
- 2 Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas
- 3 First Lady of the United States
- 4 2000 U.S. Senate election
- 5 United States Senate
- 6 2008 presidential campaign
- 7 U.S. Secretary of State
- 8 Clinton Foundation and speeches
- 9 2016 presidential campaign
- 10 Political positions
- 11 Religious views
- 12 Writings and recordings
- 13 Cultural and political image
- 14 Electoral history
- 15 Notes
- 16 References
- 17 External links
Early life and education
Early life
Hillary[nb 2] Diane Rodham was born on October 26, 1947, at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.[2][3] She was raised in aUnited Methodist family, first in Chicago and then, from the age of three, in suburban 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, and Welsh descent.[5][7][8] Hillary has two younger brothers, Hugh andTony.[9] On May 28, 1994, Tony married Nicole Boxer, daughter ofSenator Barbara Boxer, in a ceremony at the White Houseattended by 250 guests.[10] Before the marriage ended in divorce, they had a child Zachary, born in 1995.[11] Zachary held a unique distinction of being both the grandson and nephew of sitting U.S. senators.
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 instudent council, the school newspaper, and was selected forNational Honor Society.[2][18] 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."[19] 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 graduated in the top five percent of her class of 1965.[18][20] 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.[21]
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 ofelectoral fraud (such as voting list entries showing addresses that were empty lots) against Republican candidate Richard Nixon.[22]She then volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964.[23] 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.[24]Wellesley College years
In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College, where she majored in political science.[25][26] During her freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans;[27][28] with thisRockefeller Republican-oriented group,[29] she supported the elections of John Lindsay to Mayor of New York City andMassachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke to the United States Senate.[30] She later stepped down from this position, as her views changed regarding the American Civil Rights Movementand the Vietnam War.[27] In a letter to her youth minister at this time, she described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal".[31] In contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it.[32][33]
In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwarpresidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.[34] In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969.[32][35] 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.[34] In her student government role, she played a role in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges.[32][36] A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first female President of the United States.[32]
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.[34] Rodham was invited by moderate New York Republican Representative Charles Goodell to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller's late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination.[34] 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.[34] Rodhamwrote her senior thesis, a critique of the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, under Professor Schechter.[37](Years later, while she was first lady, access to her thesis wasrestricted at the request of the White House and it became the subject of some speculation.[37])
In 1969, she graduated with a bachelor of arts,[38] with departmental honors in political science.[37] 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, followingcommencement speaker Senator Brooke.[35][39] Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.[32][40][41] She was featured in an article published in Life magazine,[42] due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Brooke.[39] She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers.[43] That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and slimingsalmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthful conditions).[44]Yale Law School and postgraduate studies
Rodham then entered Yale Law School. There she served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.[45]During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center,[46] 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).[47][48] She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale–New Haven Hospital[47]and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor.[46] 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'sSubcommittee on Migratory Labor. There she researched migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.[49] Edelman later became a significant mentor.[50] 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.[51]
In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. That summer she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.[52] 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);[52] Rodham worked on child custody and other cases.[nb 3] Clinton canceled his original summer plans in order to live with her in California;[56] the couple continued living together in New Haven when they returned to law school.[53] The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.[57] She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973,[38] having stayed on an extra year to be with Clinton.[58] He first proposed marriage to her following graduation but she declined, uncertain if she wanted to tie her future to his.[58]
Rodham began a year of postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.[59] Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973.[60] Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals"[61] and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but that instead courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.[62] The article became frequently cited in the field.[63]Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas
Hillary Clinton, 1992From the East Coast to Arkansas
During her postgraduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund inCambridge, Massachusetts,[64] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[65] In 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising theHouse Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.[66] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard W. Nussbaum,[47] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment.[66] The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.[66]
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.[67] Wright thought she had the potential to become a future senator or president.[68] Meanwhile, Bill Clinton had repeatedly asked Rodham to marry him and she continued to demur.[69] After failing the District of Columbia bar exam[70] 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".[71] 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.[72][73]Early Arkansas years
At the university, Rodham gave classes in criminal law, where she was considered a rigorous teacher and tough grader.[74] 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.[75] 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.[76] 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".[76] During her time in Fayetteville, Rodham and several other women founded the city's first rape crisis center.[75]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.[77]
Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and Rodham finally agreed to marry Clinton.[78]Their wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[79] A story about the marriage in the Arkansas Gazette indicated that she was retaining the name Hillary Rodham.[79][80] 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."[81] The decision did upset both their mothers.[82]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.[83] There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence.[84] She specialized inpatent infringement and intellectual property law[45] while also working pro bono in child advocacy;[85] she rarely performed litigation work in court.[86]
Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[87] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[88] 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.[62] 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."[62] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades",[89] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[90]would allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[62] and exemplified legal "crit" theory run amok.[91]
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton lived in this 980-square-foot (91 m2) house in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Little Rock from 1977 to 1979 while he was Arkansas Attorney General.[92]
Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for twelve years (1979–81, 1983–92). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[98] where she secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.[99]
In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm.[100] From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than that of her husband.[101] During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham engaged in the trading of cattle futures contracts;[102] an initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months.[103] The couple also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time.[102] Both of these became subjects of controversy in the 1990s.
On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to Clinton's daughter,Chelsea. In November 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his bid for re-election.[104]Later Arkansas years
Governor Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton attend the 1987 Dinner Honoring the Nation's Governors with PresidentRonald Reagan 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,[116] but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there.[117] 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.[117]She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[117] 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.[118]
From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on the board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation,[119] which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.[120] From 1987 to 1991, she was the first chair of the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession,[121] created to address gender bias in the legal profession and induce the association to adopt measures to combat it.[121] She was twice named by The National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991.[122] 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.[123]
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's HospitalLegal Services (1988–92)[124] and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–92).[2][125] In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–92),[126] Wal-Mart Stores (1986–92)[127]and Lafarge (1990–92).[128] TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[117][129]Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to it.[129] Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.[127][129][130]Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992
Hillary Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed assertions that Bill Clinton had engaged in an extramarital affair with Arkansas lounge singerGennifer Flowers.[131] In response, the Clintons appeared together on 60 Minutes, where Bill denied the affair, but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage".[132] This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign.[133] During it, Hillary made culturally disparaging remarks about Tammy Wynette's outlook on marriage as described in her classic song "Stand by Your Man",[nb 5] 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.[nb 6] 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.[139] 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.[90] At least twenty other articles in major publications also drew comparisons between her and Lady Macbeth.[140]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 of the United States, and her press secretary reiterated that she would be using that form of her name.[nb 1] She was the first first lady to hold a postgraduate degree and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House.[141] 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.[59][142] 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.[143] After Eleanor Roosevelt, Clinton is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history.[144][145]
The Clinton family arrives at the White House onMarine One, 1993.Health care and other policy initiatives
See also: Clinton health care plan of 1993 and Women's rights § Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks out for women's rightsIn January 1993, President Clinton named First Lady Clinton 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.[160] Unconvinced regarding the merits of theNorth American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), she privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority.[161][162] 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.[163][164] 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.[163][164]
Clinton greets U.S. troops at Tuzla Air Base in Bosniaduring a visit in December 1997.
Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections.[166] 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.[167] The White House subsequently sought to downplay Hillary Clinton's role in shaping policy.[168] Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.[169]
Clinton reads to a Maryland child during Read Across America Day, 1998.
Enactment of welfare reform was a major goal of Bill Clinton's, but when the first two bills on it came from the Republican-controlled Congress lacked protections for people going off welfare, Hillary Clinton urged him to veto them, which he did.[172][173] 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.[172] But she decided to support the bill, which became the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, as the best political compromise available.[172][173] This caused a rift with Edelman that Hillary later called "sad and painful".[173]
Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.[59] In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as first lady.[59][174] 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.[174] As first lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997),[175] on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997),[176] and on Children and Adolescents (2000).[177] She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000)[178] and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).[179]
Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time,[180] breaking the mark for most-traveled first lady held by Pat Nixon.[181] She did not hold a security clearance or attend National Security Councilmeetings, but played a role in U.S. diplomacy attaining its objectives.[182] 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.[183] 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.[183][184] The trip was a transformative experience for her and presaged her eventual career in diplomacy.[185]
Clinton delivering her famous "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights" speech in Beijing in September 1995Whitewater 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 theUnited 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[193] and throughout her time as first lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation;[194] at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operatedMadison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm[194] and may have been improperly subsidizing Whitewater losses.[193] 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.[193] She said she had done minimal work for the bank.[195] Independent counselsRobert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were.[196][197] 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.[197] The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation concerning how they surfaced and where they had been.[197] Clinton's staff attributed the problem to continual changes in White House storage areas since the move from the Arkansas Governor's Mansion.[198] On January 26, 1996, Clinton became the first first lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury.[196] 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.[199]
The Clinton family takes anInauguration Day walk down Pennsylvania Avenueto start President Bill Clinton's second term in office, 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.[204]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.[205] When Starr's successor Robert Ray issued his final Whitewater reports in 2000, no claims were made against Clinton regarding this.[199] 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".[206]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.[207] The 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.[206]
In March 1994, newspaper reports revealed her spectacular profits from trading in 1978–79, thus leading to the cattle futures controversy.[208] 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.[209]
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.[210] Following public pressure the couple returned $134,000 worth of such gifts.[211]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.[211]Response to Lewinsky scandal
Main article: Lewinsky scandalIn 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.[212] Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandaleventually 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 they were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy",[213] characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Bill's political enemies[nb 8] 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.[215] 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.[216] The White House residence staff noticed a pronounced level of tension between the couple during this period.[217]
Public reaction varied. Some women admired her strength and poise in private matters 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.[218]Her public approval ratings in the wake of the revelations shot upward to around 70 percent, the highest they had ever been.[218]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."[219]
Matters surrounding the Lewinsky scandal left Bill Clinton with substantial legal bills; in 2014, Hillary Clinton 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 presidents upon leaving office as well as the couple's ability to secure loans from banks.[220]Traditional duties
Clinton initiated and was 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,[221] including the flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio.[59] She was head of the White House Millennium Council[222] and hosted Millennium Evenings,[223] a series of lectures that discussedfutures studies, one of which became the first live simultaneouswebcast from the White House.[59] 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.[224]
In the White House, Clinton placed donated handicrafts of contemporary American artisans, such as pottery and glassware, on rotating display in the state rooms.[59] She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room to be historically authentic to the period of James Monroe[225] and the Map Room to how it looked during World War II.[226] 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.[227] These included changing the look of the Treaty Room, a presidential study, to along 19th century lines.[226] Overall the redecoration brought mixed notices, with Victorian furnishings for the Lincoln Sitting Room being criticized the most.[227] 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.[59]2000 U.S. Senate election
Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2000When 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.[228] Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999.[229] She became the first first lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office.[230]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.[231]
Clinton began her campaign, which was managed by Bill de Blasio, by visiting every county in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings.[232] She devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions.[233] 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.[233]
The contest drew national attention. Lazio blundered during a September debate by seeming to invade Clinton's personal spacetrying to get her to sign a fundraising agreement.[234] The campaigns of Clinton and Lazio, along with Giuliani's initial effort, spent a record combined $90 million.[235] Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent.[234] She was sworn in as U.S. senator on January 3, 2001,[236] making her the first (and so far only) woman to have held an elected office either while (for a brief period) or after serving as first lady.United States Senate
Main article: United States Senate career of Hillary Rodham ClintonFirst term
Reenactment of Hillary Rodham Clinton being sworn in as a U.S. senatorby Vice President Al Gore in the Old Senate Chamber, as her husband Bill, and daughter Chelsea, look on. January 3, 2001.Clinton's official photo as U.S. senator
Following the September 11 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.[238][244] She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.[245]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,[246] before voting in favor of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 in March 2006 that gained large majority support.[247]
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.[248] Clinton voted in favor of the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution, which authorized President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq.[249]
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.[250] Observing that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she co-introduced legislation to increase the size of the regular U.S. Armyby 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain.[251] 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".[252] Her stance caused frustration among those in the Democratic Party who favored quick withdrawal.[253]Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for reservists and lobbied against the closure of several military bases, especially those in New York.[254][255] She used her position on the Armed Services Committee to forge close relationships with a number of high-ranking military officers.[255] (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".[256])
Senator 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.[257] 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.[258][259]
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.[260] Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, she introduced theFamily Entertainment Protection Act, intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. In 2004 and 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendmentthat sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.[257][261] (Clinton opposed same-sex marriage until 2013.[262])
Looking to establish a "progressive infrastructure" to rival that ofAmerican 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.[263] 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.[264]2006 re-election campaign
Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2006In 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.[265] The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination,Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, withdrew from the contest after several months of poor campaign performance.[266] 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,[267] carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties.[268] 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.[269] In the following months, she transferred $10 million of her Senate funds toward her presidential campaign.[270]Second term
Senator Clinton listens as the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike 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 Gonzalesto resign.[275] Regarding the high-profile, hotly debated comprehensive immigration reform bill known as the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, Clinton cast several votes in support of the bill, which eventually failed to gain cloture.[276]
As the financial crisis of 2007–08 reached a peak with theliquidity crisis of September 2008, Clinton supported theproposed 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.[277]
In 2007, Clinton and Virginia Senator Jim Webb called for an investigation into whether the body armor issued to soldiers in Iraq was adequate.[278]2008 presidential campaign
Main article: Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for U.S. President since at least early 2003.[279] On January 20, 2007, she announced via her website the formation of a presidentialexploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008, stating "I'm in, and I'm in to win."[280] No woman had ever been nominated by a major party for the presidency. 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 Clinton undertook her presidential race.[281] Later disclosure statements revealed that the couple's worth was now upwards of $50 million,[281] and that they had earned over $100 million since 2000, with most of it coming from Bill's books, speaking engagements, and other activities.[282]
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.[249] The biggest threat to her campaign was her past support of the Iraq War, which Obama had opposed from the beginning.[249] Clinton and Obama both set records for early fundraising, swapping the money lead each quarter.[283]
Clinton campaigning atAugsburg College inMinneapolis, 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.[289] Obama gained ground in national polling in the next few days, with all polls predicting a victory for him in the New Hampshire primary.[290] Clinton gained a surprise win there on January 8, defeating Obama narrowly.[291] It was the first time a woman had won a major American party's presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection.[292] 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.[293]
The nature of the contest fractured in the next few days. Several remarks by Bill Clinton and other surrogates,[294] and a remark by Hillary Clinton concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson,[nb 10] 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.[295] 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.[294][296] She lost by a two-to-one margin to Obama in the January 26 South Carolina primary,[296] setting up, with Edwards soon dropping out, an intense two-person contest for the twenty-two February 5 Super Tuesdaystates. 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".[297] The South Carolina campaign had done lasting damage to Clinton, eroding her support among the Democratic establishment and leading to the prized endorsement of Obama by Ted Kennedy.[298]
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.[287][302] There was continuous turmoil within the campaign staff and she made several top-level personnel changes.[302][303] Obama won the next eleven February contests across the country, often by large margins, and took a significant pledged delegate lead over Clinton.[301][302] On March 4, Clinton broke the string of losses by winning in Ohio among other places,[302] where her criticism of NAFTA, a major legacy of her husband's presidency, helped in a state where the trade agreement was unpopular.[304] Throughout the campaign, Obama dominated caucuses, for which the Clinton campaign largely ignored preparation.[287][301] 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.[305][306] Behind in delegates, Clinton's best hope of winning the nomination came in persuading uncommitted, party-appointed superdelegates.[307]
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.[310] In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.[311] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763;[312] at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395,[313] with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner.[312] Clinton and Obama each received over 17 million votes during the nomination process[nb 11] with both breaking the previous record.[314] 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.[292] 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.[315] 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.[316] The debt was eventually paid off by the beginning of 2013.[316]U.S. Secretary of State
Main article: Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of StateSee also: Foreign policy of Barack ObamaNomination and confirmation
Clinton takes the oath of office as Secretary of State, administered by Associate Judge Kathryn Oberly, asBill Clinton holds a Bible.
The appointment required a Saxbe fix, passed and signed into law in December 2008.[323] 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.[324] By this time, her public approval rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point since the Lewinsky scandal.[325] On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2.[326] Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day.[327] She became the first former first lady to serve in the United States Cabinet.[328]First half of tenure
Obama and Clinton speaking with one another 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.[341][342] Clinton formed an alliance with Secretary of Defense Gates as they shared similar strategic outlooks.[343] Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise.[318] She met with him weekly but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents;[342] moreover, certain key areas of policymaking were kept inside the White House or Pentagon.[344][345] Nevertheless, the president had trust in her actions.[318]
Clinton greets service members at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, October 2010.This section requires expansion with: impact of the leak on Clinton (and her Department). (July 2016) Second half of tenure
The 2011 Egyptian protests posed the most challenging foreign policy crisis for the administration yet.[352] 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.[353][354] Obama came to rely upon Clinton's advice, organization, and personal connections in the behind-the-scenes response to developments.[352] 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.[355]
The London meeting to discuss NATO military intervention in Libya, 29 March 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.[363][364] 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.[365] 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).[255][366]
Secretary 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 PresidentBashar al-Assad to engage popular demonstrations with reform, then as government violence rose in August 2011, called for him to relinquish power.[372] The administration joined a number of allied countries in delivering non-lethal assistance to rebels opposed to the Assad government, as well as to humanitarian groups working in Syria.[373] 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, 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.[368][374]
In December 2012, Clinton was hospitalized for a few days for treatment of a blood clot in her right transverse venous sinus.[375]Her doctors had discovered the clot during a follow-up examination for a concussion she had sustained when she had fainted and fallen nearly three weeks earlier, after developing severe dehydration from a viral intestinal ailment acquired during a trip to Europe.[375][376] The clot, which caused no immediate neurological injury, was treated with anticoagulant medication, and her doctors subsequently said she made a full recovery.[376][377][nb 13]Overall themes
Throughout her time in office, and in her final speech concluding it, Clinton viewed "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values—in a world of varied threats, weakened central governments, and increasingly important nongovernmental entities—by combining military hard power with diplomacy and U.S. soft power capacities in global economics, development aid, technology, creativity, and human rights advocacy.[356][381] As such, she became the first secretary of state to methodically implement the smart power approach.[382] In debates over use of military force, she was generally one of the more hawkish voices in the administration.[255][343][366] In August 2011 she hailed the ongoing multinational military intervention in Libya and the initial U.S. response towards the Syrian Civil War as examples of smart power in action.[383]
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.[356] 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.[187] 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.[341][384] 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.[385]
Clinton visited 112 countries during her tenure, making her the most widely traveled secretary of state[386][nb 14] (Time magazinewrote that "Clinton's endurance is legendary").[356] The first secretary of state to visit countries such as Togo and Timor-Leste, she believed that in-person visits were more important than ever in the virtual age.[389] 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;[357] in December 2012, following that re-election, Obama nominated Senator John Kerryto be Clinton's successor.[376] Her last day as Secretary of State was February 1, 2013.[390] Upon her departure, analysts commented that Clinton's tenure did not bring any signature diplomatic breakthroughs as some other Secretaries of State had,[344][345] and highlighted her focus on goals that she thought were less tangible but would have more lasting effect.[391]Benghazi attack and subsequent hearings
President Obama and Secretary Clinton honor theBenghazi 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.[394] It focused its criticism on the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Securityand Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; four State Department officials at the assistant secretary level and below were removed from their posts as a consequence.[395] Clinton said she accepted the conclusions of the report and that changes were underway to implement its suggested recommendations.[394]
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.[396] Congressional Republicans challenged her on several points, to which she responded. In particular, after persistent questioning about whether 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."[396][397]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.[398]
Clinton testifying before theHouse Select Committee on Benghazi on October 22, 2015Email controversy
Main article: Hillary Clinton email controversyA 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—in lieu 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.[405][406]
The New York Times reported in February 2016 that nearly 2,100 emails contained in Clinton's server were retroactively marked classified by the State Department. A later FBI investigation found that Clinton both sent and received 110 emails that contained classified information, including a "small number" that contained markings indicating classified status.[407]
Additionally, the intelligence community's inspector general wrote Congress to say that some of the emails "contained classified State Department information when originated."[408] 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 through their review of the emails, they found information that was classified when sent, remained so as of their inspection, and "never should have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system."[409] They also stated unequivocally that those secrets never should have been stored outside of secure government computer systems.[409] 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.[409]
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.[410] 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.[411] In May 2016, the inspector general of the State Department criticized her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State stating that she had not requested permission to use it and even if she had, she would not have been given permission.[412]
Clinton maintained that she did not send or receive any confidential emails from her personal server. 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." In a Meet the Press interview, Clinton said, "Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now, I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified." 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."[413][414]
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.[407][415]
Three emails 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.[415] They 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."[407] Comey stated that although Clinton was "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information", the FBI was expressing to the Justice Department that "no charges are appropriate in this case."[407] On July 6, 2016, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed that the investigation into Clinton's use of private email servers while secretary of state will be closed without criminal charges.[416]Clinton Foundation and speeches
Further information: Clinton FoundationClinton 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;[420] 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."[421] The foundation began accepting new donations from foreign governments, which it had stopped doing while she was secretary.[nb 15]
She began work on another volume of memoirs, and made appearances on the paid speaking circuit.[424] There she received $200,000–225,000 per engagement, often appearing before Wall Street firms or at business conventions.[424][425] She also made some unpaid speeches on behalf of the foundation.[424] For the fifteen months ending in March 2015, Clinton earned over $11 million from her speeches.[426] 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.[427] As of 2015, she was estimated to be worth over $30 million on her own, or $45–53 million with her husband.[428]
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.[nb 15]2016 presidential campaign
Main article: Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016Further information: United States presidential election, 2016;Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016; and Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016Clinton speaking at theBrown & Black Presidential Forum in Des Moines, Iowa, January 11, 2016
Clinton at an event inPhiladelphia on April 20, 2016
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.[439] 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.[440][441][442]
By June 6, 2016, she had earned enough pledged delegates and supportive superdelegates for the media to consider her the presumptive nominee.[443] The next day, 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.[444] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 2,219 pledged delegates to Sanders' 1,832; with an estimated 594 superdelegates compared to Sanders' 47.[445] She received almost 17 million votes during the nominating process, as opposed to Sanders' 13 million.[446]
Clinton was formally nominated at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 26, 2016, becoming the first woman to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.[447] Her opponents in the general election are RepublicanDonald Trump, Libertarian Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein, presumptive nominee of the Green Party.Political positions
Main article: Political positions of Hillary ClintonHillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign logo
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 Issuesplaces 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.[452] 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).[453] Through 2008, she had an average lifetime 90 percent "Liberal Quotient" fromAmericans for Democratic Action,[454] and a lifetime 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.[455]
In a Gallup poll conducted during May 2005, 54 percent of respondents considered Clinton a liberal, 30 percent considered her a moderate, and 9 percent considered her a conservative.[456]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 inNew York City, New York–currently a congregant.
In early 2016, a Pew poll was released finding that over 4 in 10 Americans believed Clinton was not very religious. As of 2016, Clinton has openly discussed her Christianity on several occasions, discussing for example the importance of loving one's neighbor as oneself, of helping the poor and "creating opportunities for others to be lifted up".[459] Clinton has also expressed disappointment that "Christianity, which has such great love at its core, is sometimes used to condemn so quickly and judge so harshly."[459]
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 reportedly often repeats John Wesley's apocryphal maxim "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can."[458]Writings and recordings
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 Albumin 1997 for the book's audio recording.[463]
Other books published by Clinton when she was first lady includeDear 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 bookBeatrice's Goat.[464]
In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, Living History, for which publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million.[465] The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work,[466] went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication,[467]and was translated into twelve foreign languages.[468] Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[469]
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.[470]Cultural and political image
Over a hundred books and scholarly works have been written about Hillary Rodham Clinton, from many perspectives. A 2006 survey by the New York Observer found "a virtual cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton literature",[471] put out by Regnery Publishing and other conservative imprints,[471] with titles such asMadame 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[471] (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.[472] Van Natta found that Republican and conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters,[473] on a par with Ted Kennedy, and the equivalent of Democratic and liberal appeals mentioningNewt Gingrich.[473]
Clinton has also been featured in the media and popular culture from a wide spectrum of varying perspectives. In 1995, writerTodd S. Purdum of The New York Times characterized Clinton as a Rorschach test,[474] 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."[475] She has been the subject of manysatirical 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.[476][477]
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.[481]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.[482] 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."[482] 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."[483] Troy further wrote that Clinton "has been uniquely controversial and contradictory since she first appeared on the national radar screen in 1992"[484] and that she "has alternately fascinated, bedeviled, bewitched, and appalled Americans."[484]
Hillary Rodham Clinton's Gallup Pollfavorable and unfavorable ratings, 1992–2016.[485] 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.[486]
Clinton in 2009
Clinton in 2015
Her favorability ratings dropped, however, after she left office and began to be viewed in the context of partisan politics again.[507]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 the some of her lowest levels ever.[508] During 2016 she acknowledged that: "I'm not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed."[509][510] Journalist Indira A. R. Lakshmanan, who has covered Clinton extensively both as a presidential candidate and as secretary of state, believes that Clinton's persona is almost completely different in the two roles and that while Clinton definitely has the political skills that an officeholder needs, "Clearly, however, something seems to happen to Clinton when the task is asking people to vote for her."[510]Electoral history
Main article: Electoral history of Hillary ClintonNew York United States Senate election, 2000 Party Candidate Votes % ± Democratic Hillary Rodham Clinton 3,747,310 55.3 Republican Rick Lazio 2,915,730 43.0 New York United States Senate election, 2006 Party Candidate Votes % ± Democratic Hillary Rodham Clinton 3,008,428 67.0 +11.7 Republican John Spencer 1,392,189 31.0 -12.0 Notes
- As of 1993, she had not legally changed her name from Hillary Rodham.[105] Bill Clinton's advisers thought her use of her maiden name to be one of the reasons for his 1980 gubernatorial re-election loss. During the following winter, Vernon Jordan, Jr.suggested to Hillary Rodham that she start using the name Clinton, and she began to do so publicly with her husband's February 1982 campaign announcement to regain that office. She later wrote that "I learned the hard way that some voters in Arkansas were seriously offended by the fact that I kept my maiden name".[106] Once he was elected again, she made a point of using "Hillary Rodham Clinton" in work she did as first lady of the state.[80] Once she became First Lady of the United States in 1993, she publicly stated that she wanted to be known as "Hillary Rodham Clinton".[105] (This announcement was parodied by the May 1993 film spoof Hot Shots! Part Deux, in which all the female characters were given the middle name "Rodham"; see IMDB entry.) She has authored all of her books under that name. She continued to use that name on her website and elsewhere once she was a U.S. senator.[107] When she ran for president during 2007–08, she used the name "Hillary Clinton" or just "Hillary" in campaign materials.[107] She used "Hillary Rodham Clinton" again in official materials as Secretary of State.[108] As of the 2015 launch of her second presidential campaign, she again switched to using "Hillary Clinton" in campaign materials;[108] in November 2015 both the Associated Press and The New York Times noted that they would no longer use "Rodham" in referring to Clinton, with the Times stating that "the Clinton campaign confirmed ... that Mrs. Clinton prefers to be simply, 'Hillary Clinton'".[109]
- In 1995, Hillary Clinton said her mother had named her after SirEdmund Hillary, co-first mountaineer to scale Mount Everest, and that was the reason for the less-common "two L's" spelling of her name. However, the Everest climb did not take place until 1953, more than five years after she was born. In October 2006, a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the mountain climber. Instead, this account of her name's origin "was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."[1]
- Research by The New York Sun in 2007 found it unclear exactly which cases beyond child custody ones Rodham worked on at the Treuhaft firm.[53] Anti-Clinton writers such as Barbara Olsonwould later charge Hillary Clinton with never repudiating Treuhaft's ideology, and for retaining social and political ties with his wife and fellow communist Jessica Mitford.[54] Further Sunresearch revealed that Mitford and Hillary Clinton were not close, and had a falling out over a 1980 Arkansas prisoner case.[55]
- For the start date, see Brock 1996, p. 96. Secondary sources give inconsistent dates as to when her time as chair ended. Primary sources indicate that sometime between about April 1980 and September 1980, Rodham was replaced as chair by F. William McCalpin. See Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1981, "House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations", U.S. House of Representatives, 1980. Rodham is still chair after having given birth "a few weeks ago"; Chelsea Clinton was born on February 27, 1980. And see Background release, Legal Services Corporation, September 1980, "Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice, of the Committee of the Judiciary, House of Representatives", September 21, 27, 1979, pp. 388–403, exact reference p. 398, which shows McCalpin as chair in September 1980.
- Clinton said in the joint 60 Minutes interview, "I'm not sitting here as some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together." The seemingly sneering reference to country musicprovoked immediate criticism that Clinton was culturally tone-deaf, and Tammy Wynette herself did not like the remark because "Stand by Your Man" is not written in the first person.[134]Wynette added that Clinton had "offended every true country music fan and every person who has 'made it on their own' with no one to take them to a White House."[135] A few days later, onPrimetime Live, Hillary Clinton apologized to Wynette. Clinton would later write that she had been careless in her choice of words and that "the fallout from my reference to Tammy Wynette was instant – as it deserved to be – and brutal."[136] The two women later resolved their differences, with Wynette appearing at a Clinton fund raiser.
- Less than two months after the Tammy Wynette remarks, Clinton was facing questions about whether she could have avoided possible conflicts of interest between her governor husband and work given to the Rose Law Firm, when she remarked, "I've done the best I can to lead my life ... You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."[137] The "cookies and teas" part of this statement prompted even more culture-based criticism of Clinton's apparent distaste for women who had chosen to be homemakers; the remark became a recurring campaign liability.[138] Clinton subsequently offered up some cookie recipes as a way of making amends, and would later write of her chagrin: "Besides, I've done quite a lot of cookie baking in my life, and tea-pouring too!"[137]
- The Eleanor Roosevelt "discussions" were first reported in 1996 byWashington Post writer Bob Woodward; they had begun from the start of Hillary Clinton's time as first lady.[149] Following the Democrats' loss of congressional control in the 1994 elections, Clinton had engaged the services of Human Potential Movementproponent Jean Houston. Houston encouraged Clinton to pursue the Roosevelt connection, and while no psychic techniques were used with Clinton, critics and comics immediately suggested that Clinton was holding séances with Eleanor Roosevelt. The White House stated that this was merely a brainstorming exercise, and a private poll later indicated that most of the public believed these were indeed just imaginary conversations, with the remainder believing that communication with the dead was actually possible.[150] In her 2003 autobiography, Clinton titled an entire chapter "Conversations with Eleanor", and stated that holding "imaginary conversations [is] actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal."[151]
- Clinton was referring to the Arkansas Project and its funderRichard Mellon Scaife, Kenneth Starr's connections to Scaife,Regnery Publishing and its connections to Lucianne Goldberg andLinda Tripp, Jerry Falwell, and others.[214]
- General Jack Keane, one of the architects of the surge, later related that he tried to convince Clinton of its merits at the time but that she felt it would not succeed and that U.S. casualties would be too high. Keane said that sometime during 2008 she told him, "You were right, this really did work".[255] In 2014, Secretary of Defense Gates related that after Clinton had left the Senate and become Secretary of State, she told President Obama that her opposition to the 2007 Iraq surge had been political, due to her facing a strong challenge from the anti-Iraq War Obama in the upcoming Democratic presidential primary. Gates also quotes Clinton as saying, "The Iraq surge worked."[271] Clinton responded that Gates had misinterpreted her remark regarding the reason for her opposition.[255]
- When asked for her reaction to an Obama remark about the possibility that his campaign represented false hope, Clinton responded: "I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished."[295]
- "2008 Democratic Popular Vote". RealClearPolitics. RetrievedJuly 8, 2008. The popular vote count for a nomination process is unofficial, and meaningless in determining the nominee. It is difficult to come up with precise totals due to some caucus states not reporting popular vote totals and thus having to be estimated. It is further difficult to compare Clinton and Obama's totals, due to only her name having been on the ballot in the Michigan primary.[307]
- These efforts were not immediately rewarded, largely due to the unpopularity of drone attacks in Pakistan and other anti-terrorism U.S. actions. Polls in Pakistan and other Muslim countries showed approval of the U.S. declined among its citizens between 2009 and 2012 and confidence that Clinton was doing the right thing in world affairs was also low. The confidence ratings for Clinton were high in most European countries and generally mixed in the BRICcountries.[338]
- While generally experiencing good health in her life, Clinton had previously had a potentially serious blood clot in her knee while first lady in 1998, for which she had required anticoagulant treatment.[378] An elbow fracture and subsequent painful recuperation had caused Clinton to miss two foreign trips as Secretary of State in 2009.[379] The 2012 concussion and clot episode caused Clinton to postpone her congressional testimony on the Benghazi attack and also to miss any foreign trips planned for the rest of her tenure.[376] After returning to public activity, she wore special glasses (rather than her usual contact lenses) for two months to deal with lingering effects of the concussion.[377][380] She remained on anticoagulant medication as a precaution.[377]
- Clinton's 112 countries visited broke Madeleine Albright's previous mark of 96.[387] Clinton's sum of 956,733 air miles traveled, however, fell short of Condoleezza Rice's record for mileage.[386]That total, 1,059,207, was bolstered late in Rice's tenure by repeated trips to the Middle East.[388]
- During Clinton's tenure there were several cases where foreign governments continued making donations to the Clinton Foundation at the same level they had before Clinton became secretary, which was permissible under the agreement forged before she took office, and also one instance of a new donation, $500,000 from Algeria for earthquake relief in Haiti, that was outside the bounds of the continuation provision and should have received a special State Department ethics review but did not.[422]The foundation's new stance as of April 2015 and Clinton's presidential candidacy was to accept foreign governmental donations only from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.[423]
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