Hillary Clinton's Life Pivots Once More

Former President Bill Clinton applauds his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on her re-election as she speaks to supporters at a Democratic victory party in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006. Clinton will embark on a widely anticipated campaign for the White House Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007, a former first lady intent on becoming the nation's first female president. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin ) (Frank Franklin - AP)

WASHINGTON -- The extraordinary life and adventures of Hillary Rodham Clinton began with an utterly ordinary childhood in the middle of the country, in the middle of the century, in the house at the corner of Wisner and Elm.

Hers was an Ozzie and Harriet youth of dodge ball, baby-sitting and bologna sandwiches in suburban Chicago. The girl scout grew into a Goldwater girl, the Goldwater girl became a Democrat, the Democrat became a lawyer, and the lawyer fell in love with a lawyer.

That is where the story line begins its improbable, serpentine path, wending from Watergate to Whitewater to the White House. Now, after a side trip to the Capitol, Clinton hopes it will take her back to the White House once again, this time as the first female president rather than the dutiful spouse.

Her future, says Clinton, has always been unpredictable.

"It's a constant surprise what I do and what happens to me," she said when she turned 50, in 1997.

Hillary Diane Rodham was the darling of Wellesley College, president of the college government during her senior year. In a commencement address, she addressed herself to fellow members of the all-girl class of 1969 who, she said, were "not in the positions yet of leadership and power."

Not yet, she said. But clearly she felt that the day would come for them, and for her.

She excelled at Yale Law School, too, one of 27 women in a class of 235 that included a young Arkansan named Bill Clinton.

Within months of graduation in 1973, both were invited to come to Washington to join the House Judiciary Committee's special impeachment inquiry staff as the Watergate scandal unfolded. Rodham jumped at the chance; her boyfriend, Clinton, opted to stay in Arkansas and make an ultimately unsuccessful run for Congress.

So at 26, Rodham helped to craft the presidential impeachment procedures that, in a twist of fate, would decades later be used against her husband. Then, abruptly, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency and she was out of a job.

This is when the Clinton factor kicked in. Rodham thought she might want to be a trial lawyer, but she felt the tug to join Clinton so she accepted a teaching position at the University of Arkansas.

"If we were to be together, one of us had to give ground," she wrote later.