Hillary Rodham Clinton has finished her run as secretary of state. She will be succeeded by John F. Kerry who was confirmed by the Senate in January 2013.
During her four years at the State Department, Clinton has traveled 956,733 miles, visited 112 countries and, most amazingly, spent the equivalent of almost 87 days on an airplane.
Clinton has reinvented herself time and again.But the road to the nation's top diplomatic post was a dramatic and winding one for the former Goldwater Girl turned first lady of Arkansas turned first lady of the United States turned senator from New York.
The question on many people’s minds now is: Will Clinton make another run for the presidency in 2016?
After launching her own political career following two challenging terms as first lady, Clinton sought the presidency herself in 2008. For months, she created the illusion that she was the de-facto Democratic nominee. But then Barack Obama entered the race and turned conventional wisdom on its head.
After he won, he reached out to his rival in a way no one expected, asking her to join his cabinet as secretary of state. In her first year, Clinton emphasized smart power, development and diplomacy. "We are determined to channel the currents of change toward a world free of violent extremism, nuclear weapons, global warming, poverty, and abuses of human rights, and above all, a world in which more people in more places can live up to their God-given potential," she said at a speech in 2009.
In early 2011, Clinton's tenure as secretary of state took a dramatic turn that may end up defining it when protestors took to the streets in much of the Middle East, toppling the 30-year reign of longtime U.S. ally and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The demonstrators were aided by social-networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, which are playing increasingly key roles on the world stage and forcing the department to start Tweeting in Arabic and Farsi.
In Her Own Words
"To maintain an internet that delivers the greatest possible benefits to the world, we need to have a serious conversation about the principles that will guide us, what rules exist and should not exist and why, what behaviors should be encouraged or discouraged and how...The goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it's Tahrir Square [in Cairo] or Times Square [in New York City]...But if people around the world are going come together every day online and have a safe and productive experience, we need a shared vision to guide us."
Predictably, Republicans are beginning to try and publicly tie the issue to the former secretary of state. At the tail end of last week, the NRCC used Clinton and Benghazi for fundraising and the American Crossroads super PAC launched a web video focusing on Clinton's role in the matter. They need to be careful, though.
Thomas Pickering - the former UN ambassador who, along with former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, prepared the Accountability Review Board report on the State Department's handling of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya - says he didn't think it was necessary to interview former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "because in fact we knew where the responsibility rested."
Hillary Clinton's excuses on Benghazi paint a picture of someone powerless, out of the loop and at the mercy of events, but is that really the image she wants.
WASHINGTON — The night of smoke, chaos, gunfire and grenades that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, is well-documented. Eight months later, it is the decisions made back in Washington that remain murky and in perpetual dispute.
Born in Chicago in 1947 and raised in Park Ridge, Ill., to a father who ran a curtain factory and a mother who was a homemaker, Clinton grew up in a Republican family. Anticommunist sentiment ran high with her father, Hugh Rodham, and at the public schools she attended.
Republican to Democrat
Clinton entered the ranks of the sparsely populated Wellesley College Young Republicans, becoming president of the group during her freshman year. True to her upbringing, she kept a volume of Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative" on her dorm-room shelf.
But with the United States fully committed to the Vietnam War, student protests and civil rights marches raged around her and Clinton's political views slowly evolved into liberal ones.
"My opinions on most human conditions are being liberalized," Clinton wrote in 1965 to Methodist minister Don Jones, who had been her mentor at home. "The combination of bleeding heart liberal and mental conservative is the inevitable conclusion one arrives at after following and pondering political events," she wrote.
Clinton was known for trumpeting change by working within the system through educational lectures, meetings and seminars instead of loud protests and sit-ins.
"I was rooted in a political approach that understood that you can't just take to the streets and make change in America," Clinton told Mark Leibovich of the New York Times. "You can't just give a speech and expect people to fall down and agree with you."
So it was slightly misrepresentative when Clinton rocketed to fame as the face of her generation on the cover of Life magazine after becoming the first student to give a commencement address at Wellesley when she graduated in 1969. She was picked because she was president of the student body. The magazine took note of her bold, antiwar response to Sen. Edward Brooke's (R-Mass.) address.
Life featured Clinton on its cover, as a symbol of the student counterculture, "in her Coke-bottle glasses of the moment, wearing striped bell-bottom trousers, her hair a mangy tangle," wrote Carl Bernstein his 2007 book "A Woman in Charge."
Yale and Meeting Bill Clinton
The unglamorous Rodham met her future husband, William Jefferson Clinton, at Yale Law School in 1970. Bernstein noted that she, not her future husband, was the rising star on campus.
Bernstein reports that Bill and Hillary Clinton met one night in 1971 in the stacks at the Yale Law library. Bill was glancing her way; Hillary noticed it and introduced herself. Bill was impressed by this boldness. They were soon a couple and worked together on George McGovern's failed 1972 presidential campaign.
Bernstein reports that it took Hillary "more than two years to make up her mind to marry" Bill. "She had serious doubts not only about his womanizing but about living in Arkansas," he wrote.
Bill was intent on building a political future in Arkansas while Hillary was expected to take advantage of the growing political opportunities for smart, activist women in the early 1970s. Those opportunities weren't in Arkansas. With her future still in limbo, she took a job in Washington with John Doar's impeachment staff investigating President Richard Nixon for Watergate. Bill ran for Congress in Arkansas.
On Aug. 9, 1974, the day Nixon resigned, Hillary made the change that more than any other would dictate her future; she accepted a job to teach at the University of Arkansas, and moved there to marry the future president of the United States. Hillary hadn't even wanted an engagement ring.
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were married in the living room of their 1,000 foot home in Fayetteville, Ark., in front of 20 guests.
Governor's Wife
Bill Clinton was first elected governor of Arkansas in 1978 and served two terms before losing that post unexpectedly, the consequences of which caused a major re-evaluation of the Clintons personal and professional lives. It was during Bill's first gubernatorial term on Feb. 27, 1980 that Hillary gave birth to their first and only child: Chelsea.
But instead of following the traditional path of Arkansas first ladies, Clinton continued to pursue her own legal career at the Rose Law firm under her maiden name, a choice that became fodder for Bill's political opponents. It was there that she became close to Rose partners Vince Foster and Web Hubbell. Concerned about her family's financial future, it was then that she began investing in the cattle futures market with longtime Clinton friend Jim Blair.
When Clinton lost the governership in 1980, Hillary was the one largely credited with engineering his comeback in a role she would reprise often in their political future. In a show of her dedication to his rehabilitation, she even publically dropped her maiden name and went by "Hillary Clinton." She called consultant Dick Morris to craft a comeback and took a leave of absence from the Rose law firm.
As he would later in the White House, Bill Clinton put Hillary in charge of his signature issue when he regained the governor's mansion 1982: education. The Clintons rallied voters around the idea of education reform and tackled the teachers' unions in demanding teacher testing, standardized curricula and smaller class-size. The overhaul would be funded by a tax increase.
Bernstein reported that Clinton would "prevail in the political battle for education reform. It would be her greatest achievement in public life until she was elected to the U.S. Senate…and the methodology she employed to win the battle…would haunt the Clinton presidency and doom health care reform from the start."
1992 Presidential Campaign
From the genesis of the 1992 presidential campaign, it became clear that Clinton would be a first lady unlike any other. But first, her husband had to get elected, and the biggest stumbling block was rumors of his womanizing.
A war room was established, chaired by Hillary herself, to deal with potentially troublesome questions about Bill's qualifications for the nation's highest office: his handling of the Vietnam War draft and allegations of multiple affairs, including with lounge-singer Gennifer Flowers.
On Jan. 23, 1992, the Washington Star ran a story alleging that Flowers had a 12-year affair with Bill. Campaign aides decided that the only way to defuse the crisis was a national interview on "60 Minutes" with Hillary at Bill's side. The couple confessed to "problems" in their marriage, said that they had been surmounted, but declined to reveal details.
Hillary's performance on "60 Minutes" was widely credited with saving her husband's candidacy and he went on to place second in the crucial New Hampshire primary, and secure the Democratic nomination and the presidency over George H. W. Bush. That television exposure also appeared to soften Hillary's image, which had sparked a major debate about the role of American women - and political spouses - in the post-feminist era. Clinton had made some major gaffes during the campaign, including defending her legal work while Bill was governor by sarcastically declaring, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies."
Conscious of the backlash, she once again toned down her rhetoric and presented herself as a more demure political spouse who would implicitly play a more traditional role in the White House.
When asked by a high-school student in August 1992 what she planned to do as first lady, Hillary said "I want to be a voice for children in the White House."
First Lady and Health-Care Reform
But Clinton's role was almost immediately redefined once her husband won the 1992 presidency. In a return to the partnership approach that had characterized their personal and professional lives, Bill put Hillary in charge of his Task Force on National Health Care Reform five days after his inauguration.
The task force was headed by Hillary and Clinton friend Ira Magaziner, and was intended to combine the wisdom of the best health-care experts in the country. But it was unwieldy (it grew to over 500 people), slow and secretive.
Hillary at first won over Capitol Hill with skilled testimony in September 1993 before five congressional committees (all with jurisidication over various parts of the health care puzzle). But things soon started disintegrating; the New York Times reported that the health-care experts had not coordinated with the fiscal ones, and that not even expected allies felt they could support what was deemed a radical plan.
Health care reform was defeated in September 1994, and Republicans took control of congress for the first time in 40 years in November, a devastating political rebuke that depressed both Clintons. Hillary helped bring consultant Dick Morris back to the White House, and began to exile herself from the inner circle.
Instead, she wrote a book in 1996 - "It Takes a Village" - and traveled to Southeast Asia for the State Department, taking up the cause of women globally, a foreshadowing of things to come. She would travel to 79 countries as first lady and frequently invoked this experience when running for president in 2008.
Whitewater
Scandals seemed to follow Bill and Hillary Clinton everywhere. In January 1994 - after the suicide of former Rose law partner and close Hillary friend and Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster, a flap over Hllary's involvement in the White House Travel Office firings, and rumblings about a land deal called Whitewater - the Clintons bowed to pressure and asked the Justice Department to hire a special counsel to investigate the various allegations. Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske, giving him a broad mandate to probe anything related to Whitewater and the removal of files from Vince Foster's office after his death.
But Whitewater was the hot topic at the end of 1993 and start of 1994. The word Whitewater itself became a catchphrase for alleged Clinton corruption, but actually referred to a $200,000 Clinton investment in a land deal with old friends from Arkansas: Jim and Susan McDougal. There were charges of conflict of interest because Jim McDougal owned Madison Guaranty, a savings-and-loan that failed (and was regulated by his friend, Gov. Clinton) and that was probed by the Treasury Department for funneling money to Arkansas political campaigns.At the Rose law firm when she wife of the governor, Clinton had worked for Madison Guaranty.
The Clintons refused to release documents they insisted would exonerate them (after all, they lost money in the Whitewater deal), but that refusal raised suspicion that they were hiding something nefarious. At the end of June 1994, Fiske issued two reports; one stating that Foster had indeed committed suicide, and the other concluding that the "evidence was insufficient" to establish that anyone had obstructed the Treasury probe into Madison Guaranty. A third probe, regarding the removal of files from Foster's office the night of his death, was incomplete.
Meanwhile, the Independent Counsel Act expired and Bill Clinton, sticking to a campaign promise, reauthorized it the same day that Fiske released the first two reports.
Instead of tasking Fiske, who was being bashed by congressional Republicans for going too easy on the president and first lady, Reno asked a three-judge panel (created by the reauthorization) to appoint someone else. Its choice was former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge and George H.W. Bush Solicitor General Kenneth Starr. The consequences of that decision would haunt the Clintons for the remainder of Bill's presidency.
Bill Clinton's Impeachment
The story of Bill's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky broke on Washingtonpost.com (though the Drudge Report had the story a week earlier) on Jan. 21, 1998. The paper reported that Clinton had asked Lewinsky to lie about their relationship to attorneys for Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. Reno had granted Starr additional authority to explore those charges in what would turn into one of the more bizarre and tawdry episodes in American political history.
At first, the president denied the affair to the public and to his wife. Hillary Clinton took to his defense immediately, knowing her role was as crucial to his political survival as ever. On Jan. 27, 1998, Hillary appeared on NBC's "Today" show and said that the impeachment inquiry was, "from my perspective … part of the continuing political campaign against my husband."
"The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is the vast, right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband from the day he announced for president," she declared famously.
But by August 1998, Bill was forced to admit his improper relationship with Lewinsky. Hillary, although privately devastated, according to Bernstein's book, was publicly forgiving.
Paradoxically, the embattled first lady had never been more popular with the American people. Her approval ratings had jumped 15 points from 35 percent in 1997 to 50 percent in fall 1998.
Hillary increased her public appearances and was a big draw for House and Senate candidates running in November 1998, shortly before her husband was impeached by the House.
Ironically, it was the latest incarnation of Hillary as scorned wife that allowed her to launch her own political career as a senator and now secretary of state.
Senator from New York
After Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) announced his retirement from the Senate in November 1998, Hillary began exploring her own political future, independent of Bill's and his failings. The first person to conceive of the plan was Harlem Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), who phoned Clinton to ask her to consider running for Moynihan's seat.
It was an interesting concept, and Clinton was intrigued. But she had never lived in New York, nor played in the state's notoriously rough-and-tumble politics. With her longtime political aide Harold Ickes, a vet of New York politics, she "pored over the map." Despite the obstacles, Clinton announced her candidacy at Moynihan's Pindar's Corner, N.Y., farm on July 7, 1999.
She ran a remarkable race, embarking on an exhaustive "listening tour" of New York, heavily focused on forgotten hamlets and towns upstate, where Republicans usually win big.
The Clintons bought a house in Chappaqua, N.Y., in suburban Westchester County, the perfect political swing turf. Despite Republican attacks calling her a carpetbagger, Clinton caught a break in May 2000 when New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) dropped out of the race to focus on treatment for prostate cancer. He was replaced by unknown Long Island Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.). Clinton and Lazio spent a combined $90 million on the race, and Clinton benefitted from her gender in at least one unexpected way. During a September 2000 TV debate, Lazio was slammed for appearing to intimidate Clinton by invading her personal space in an attempt to get her to sign a fundraising pact.
Clinton won the 2000 Senate battle on Nov. 7, 2000, 55 to 43 percent. She was sworn-in to the Senate on Jan. 3, 2001, the first time a former first lady won elected office in the United States.
During her first Senate term, Clinton kept a lower-profile than expected. In 2006, she won re-election to the Senate, 67 to 31 percent,spending $30 million against a little-known Republican. But it was all in preparation for attempting to match her husband's success as a presidential candidate.
2008 Presidential Campaign
On Jan. 20, 2007, Clinton officially declared her candidacy for president in an e-mail message to supporters. "I'm in it to win it," she stated. Her inevitability strategy placed her far ahead of her two most serious rivals: an upstart senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).
Indeed, for much of the first year of the historic contest she both cultivated and captured the title of frontrunner. Collecting endorsements from state politicians, and oodles of money, most political observers believed her nomination was all-but-inevitable. The poll numbers reflected the conventional wisdom; she dominated Obama, 41 to 17 percent, in a Washington Post-ABC poll at the end of January 2007.
Honed by campaign guru and veteran Clinton pollster Mark Penn, Hillary attempted to strengthen her aura of inevitability with a campaign theme of "experience." The thinking was that as the first plausible female presidential candidate, she had to prove her strength and credentials, especially to be a commander-in-chief.
Time's Karen Tumulty called the fact that Hillary and her advisers "misjudged the mood" of the American a crucial mistake. "In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability - and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics," Tumulty opined. "It made sense ... but in putting her focus on positioning herself to win the general election in November, Clinton completely misread the mood of Democratic-primary voters, who were desperate to turn the page."
In another bad move, Hillary decided against devoting large resources to the Iowa caucuses. Clinton's campaign was stunned when Obama claimed victory there on Jan. 3, 2000, with 37.6 percent of caucus voters. Clinton placed third behind Edwards.
Polls showed Obama with major momentum heading into the key New Hampshire primary a few days later and the Clinton campaign attempted to regroup. Speaking to a small group of women in a Portsmouth cafe, Clinton teared up when asked how she kept going.
"It's not easy, it's not easy," Clinton replied, her eyes watering. "I couldn't do it if I didn't just passionately believe it was the right thing to do. I have so many opportunities from this country and I just don't want to see us fall backwards as a nation. This is very personal for me…It's about our country, it's about our kids' futures, it's really about all of us together," she said, her voice cracking.
With the support of women, Hillary won the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary, 39 to 36 percent.
But Clinton's campaign was still struggling, both financially and thematically. Obama won 11 straight contests after the 22 Super Tuesday battles on Feb. 5th were divided between the two candidates, with Clinton winning larger states but Obama collecting more of them. Clinton's top-heavy campaign was criticized for failing to plan for a contest that lasted beyond Feb. 5. Obama had strategically opened offices in small states that typically went Republican; his strategy was to cherry-pick delegates in every state, slowly amassing what became a commanding delegate advantage.
Bill Clinton also became a liability in his appearances for his wife on the campaign trail, including a widely-criticized comment that compared Obama's win in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson Jr. The New York Post called Clinton the "Big Mouth of the South."
The battle lines were drawn; Obama's constituency appeared to be upper-income, educated whites and African-Americans, while Hillary increasingly tailored her pitch to working-class whites. Clinton's message propelled her to March 4 wins in Texas and Ohio, and a major April 22 victory in Pennsylvania.
Despite the fact that Clinton seemed to be finally finding her voice on the campaign trail, it was too late. Obama's campaign strategy had paid off. Not even the superdelegates (party insiders who had the power to overrule regular delegates bound by the primary contest) could save her.
After the last primary on June 3, 2008, Clinton heralded the historic nature of her candidacy as a woman. "Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it," she said. The final delegate count was 2,201 delegates for Obama to 1,896 for Clinton.
Secretary of State
Despite their bitter rivalry during the 2008 campaign, Clinton gave an impassioned speech for Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver and campaigned vigorously for him in the fall.
And in a surprise, one of Obama's first acts as president-elect was to announce her nomination as secretary of state, despite sharp disagreements over foreign policy during the campaign.
For Clinton, "smart power" is the buzzword that came to define her agenda as secretary of state, emphasizing "a new era of engagement based on common interests, shared values and mutual respect."
In a major July 2009 speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Clinton outlined her agenda: nuclear non-proliferation, Middle East peace, global human rights, isolating and defeating terrorists, pursuing global economic growth and combating climate change.
She also cautioned adversaries not to misinterpret a new emphasis on diplomacy as lack of strength. "And to these foes and would-be foes, let me say: You should know that our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal," Clinton said. "You should never see America's willingness to talk as a sign of weakness to be exploited. We will not hesitate to defend our friends and ourselves vigorously when necessary with the world's strongest military."
The Middle East and the Internet
But Clinton, and indeed the Obama administration's, best-laid Middle Eastern plans, were dramatically interrupted in early 2011 when pro-democracy protests stormed the Middle East, felling governments in Egypt and Tunisia and sparking protests elsewhere. While at first slow to react, Clinton and Obama ultimately sided with protestors demanding free and fair elections, which may allow the emergence of religious parties like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to emerge as stronger powers.
The protestors also once again demonstrated the importance of social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in international movements. In January 2011,Clinton made the second of two major speeches about Internet freedom and announced that the State Department would start Tweeting in Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, Hindi and Russian, as well as Spanish and French.
In January 2011, the department also offered $30 million in funds to those firms who could develop technologies to combat Internet censorship in repressive countries.
Afghanistan
Clinton was an early supporter of then-Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's request for additional troops in Afghanistan. As head of the U.S. diplomatic corps, she was also a key advocate for increasing development funding in the country. Clinton has worked with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to train drug farmers to cultivate legal crops.
Clinton has also advocated a full study of the links between terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, arguing that the U.S. cannot solve its long-term strategic problems without confronting the ties between the two countries.
Iraq
Perhaps nothing divided Barack Obama and Clinton more in the 2008 presidential contest than the Iraq war. During her first Senate term in 2002 and in the post 9/11 climate, Clinton voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Obama criticized the war from the start.
Since 2002, Clinton has been gradually revising her stance on Iraq. Clinton opposed the Iraq war surge in 2007 and voted to debate a Senate measure that would have repudiated it (the measure never made it to the Senate floor).
In March 2007, she supported a bill that conditioned continuing to the fund the war on starting to withdraw U.S. troops on a timetable. The bill passed, but was vetoed by President Bush. Clinton then opposed the compromise passed by Congress in May 2007 that removed withdrawal deadlines but made further funding contingent upon benchmarks for progress in Iraq.
As secretary, Clinton has travelled to Iraq a handful of times, pushing for increased security and fair elections. "Obviously, we are supporting the efforts to ensure that the elections are credible and legitimate, and that a new government is formed in a timely way to continue the peaceful stability and economic growth that is so important," she said in Oct. 2009.
Women and Children's Issues
Since her work on childrens' issues with mentor Marian Wright Edelman, Clinton has carved out a niche for herself on the role of women and children globally.
As First Lady, Clinton became the world's most famous women's rights advocate when she attacked Chineseofficials in their own country. "It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights," she told the Fourth World Conference on Women in China in September 1995.
Clinton has continued to be a forceful advocate for women as secretary of state. "the United States is taking steps to put women front and center in our development work," she said in Jan. 2010.
Clinton's circle differs largely from that of her husband's, and did so even when she was in the White House. Her longtime aide Maggie Williams came to the rescue when things began to go badly during the 2008 presidential contest. Harold Ickes, the former deputy White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton until he was ousted, went on to become a senior adviser and helpmate in Hillary Clinton's 2000 New York Senate race. In that contest, Clinton relied on a handful of trusted aides that included spokesman Howard Wolfson, media consultant Mandy Grunwald, policy adviser Neera Tanden, and longtime confidante Ann Lewis, who worked Bill's 1996 reelection race and Hillary's 2006 Senate campaign.
In the State Department, Clinton has surrounded herself with close friends and former Senate and irst lady staffers. Personal aide Huma Abedin is working on the seventh floor as a senior adviser. Close friend Melanne Verveer was named Ambassador-at-Large for Women's Issues. She named her friend Judith McHale under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs. Ellen Tauscher, who supported Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, will serve as under secretary for arms control.
Additional Resources
Bernstein, Carl, 'A Woman in Charge,' Alfred a. Knopf, 2007, p. 80
‘Rodham:’ The Hillary Clinton Movie
Not everyone is out to destroy Hillary Clinton all the time
2016 notebook: Republicans try to dent Clinton's armor
This Time it's not about Bill and Sex
Witness the Devastating Impact the Benghazi Story Has Had on Hillary Clinton's Poll Numbers
Rove group targets Clinton in first attack ad of 2016
Hillary Clinton Has The Most To Lose From Obama's Scandals
Hillary Clinton film won't be '50 Shades of Rodham'
