How Hillary Clinton went from First Lady to America’s first lady President
Hillary Clinton. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve been hearing it for the better part of the last 20 years. In America’s efforts to quell political dynasties, she’s found herself in rare company as a member of family who has at least one member that has held the highest office in the country; her husband Bill Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States. Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, father and son, presidents 41 and 43 respectively, are the only family members who have both held the office of the presidency, and Hillary will make the Clintons the second.
Through her advocacy efforts as First Lady of both Arkansas and the United States, and positions in Congress and the Cabinet, as a New York Senator and President Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary has amassed a political repertoire that could rival anyone’s in American history, all while being a woman. It would be no small feat to be elected president just a few years shy of it being only 100 years since women earned the right to vote, and judging her solely on experience, she has earned it. She’s played a man’s game, bested her rivals, and been a symbol of American political expertise for decades, all of which will land her in the Oval Office, as the first Madam President.
Hillary’s story starts long before she was born. Her mother, Dorothy, took up housekeeping and babysitting as a means to support herself early on in her high school years as a teenager. Hillary has said that her mother’s experience was a large source of inspiration for her fight to defend the rights and needs of children. She grew up in the comfortable life that her parents had built for her as working-class citizens in Chicago. In her youth, Hillary got to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver a speech that invigorated her passion for social justice.
Hillary attended Wellesley College, a small liberal arts private school west of Boston, Massachusetts. There she became an increasingly vocal student leader and her activism came into central focus. Based on a peer vote, she became the first-ever student speaker for the college’s commencement ceremony. An excerpt from her speech made her future intentions clear:
“We arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn’t a discouraging gap, and it didn’t turn into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap.”
Hillary would enroll in Yale Law School, one of only 27 women to so, and there she met her eventual husband – and president – Bill Clinton. After school, Hillary choose to pursue her passions, so she joined the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization focused on child advocacy and research. She went door-to-door gathering stories about children with disabilities, and this work would contribute heavily to the passage of historic legislation that required the state to provide high quality education to those children living and struggling with disability.
This commitment to fighting for children and families has stayed with her her whole life.
As a lawyer, she served on the congressional committee that investigated Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal, she continued her work through law and education, and co-founded the group Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. As First Lady of Arkansas after marrying Bill Clinton, she continued to champion education standards and access to health care. As First Lady of the United States, following the election of Bill Clinton, she achieved a huge victory in creating the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which now provides over 8 million children with health care.
As a senator from the state of New York, she was applauded for working across the aisle with other senate leaders to fight for job creation and healthcare. And as Secretary of State, only the third women to hold the Cabinet’s highest office, she laid the ground work for the Iran Nuclear Deal, and opened up America’s diplomatic agenda to include the issues of poverty, women’s rights, and the environment.
She has also been plagued by her time as Secretary in which an attack on a U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya resulted in the deaths of 4 Americans.
On the issues, Hillary calls herself a progressive that “gets things done”. She is a proponent of stricter gun control measures, she advocates for the closure of the pay gap that women in America face, and she has said she would like to expand the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, to be able to cover all Americans as a form of universal health care. She ran for the presidency in 2008 in a field that included would-be-winner, Barack Obama. Her campaign failed to maintain momentum as Obama surprised everyone by winning both the Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary. In 2015, she began the primary season as the clear-cut frontrunner for the Democratic Nomination, but has faced a formidable challenger in Senator Bernie Sanders, who has pushed her further to the left, and pushed the Democratic nomination process well into May, which is longer than most expected.
Through it all, Hillary has maintained that she is a fighter for the defenseless. She’s made space to create conversations and initiatives that focus on the disenfranchised and perennially underrepresented, mostly the poor, women, and children. She has drawn criticism for being an assertive female leader, mostly from men attempting to undermine her competence. She is a mother, now a grandmother, she has been by her husband’s side through intense scrutiny and turmoil, and she has done so while being a visible and vocal woman in a man’s space.
Even now, as women make up over 50% of the population of the U.S., women’s representation in elected office is around 20%. Hillary Clinton has proved that she can play the game, better than most, and unapologetically made a path for herself through activism and a politically savvy that can be counted among the best in American history. Hillary Clinton has been polarizing, galvanizing, and effective in a way that will position her to be in a place that women have only ever seen from the side – at the podium, in the White House.
Without the Lines 