Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton , 1947-, American lawyer and political figure, wife of U.S. President Bill Clinton , b. Chicago, grad. Wellesley College (B.A. 1969), Yale Law School (L.L.B., 1973). After law school she served on the House panel that investigated the Watergate affair . She was in private practice from 1977 until 1992, becoming an expert on children's rights. After her husband's election as president, she initially played a highly visible role in his administration, co-chairing the task force that proposed changes in the U.S. health-care system. Less publicly involved in policy issues after that program failed to gain support, she won sympathy for her support of her husband during the Lewinsky scandal and impeachment proceedings. She became the first first lady to be subpoenaed by a grand jury when she testified about the Whitewater affair in 1996. In 2000, Clinton won election as a Democrat to the U.S. senate from New York, becoming the first wife of a president to win election to public office; she was reelected in 2006. A candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, she ultimately narrowly lost to Barack Obama . Clinton is the author of It Takes a Village (1996) and the memoir Living History (2003).

Bibliography: See biographies by D. Radcliffe (1994), D. Brock (1996), G. Sheehy (1999), G. Troy (2006), Carl Bernstein (2007), and J. Gerth and D. Van Natta, Jr. (2007).

Clinton, Hillary Rodham (1947– ) US Senator (2000– ) from New York, attorney and first lady (1993–2001), wife of 42nd US President Bill Clinton. In 1993, she drafted a plan to provide health insurance for all Americans, but it was not implemented. Clinton involved herself with women's rights around the world. Along with her husband, she was implicated in the Whitewater land and banking scandal. She firmly supported Bill Clinton through a series of allegations of extra-marital liaisons.

Clinton, Hillary Rodham (b. 26 Oct. 1947). US Senator, 2001–  Born at Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1947 and originally a Goldwater Republican, Hillary Rodham studied at Wellesley College and Yale Law School. She became a distinguished and successful lawyer associated with children's rights who practised law in Arkansas and headed various state committees whilst her husband, Bill Clinton, was governor of that state. Rodham Clinton gave up her legal practice to become First Lady in 1993, but maintained a prominent policy role by chairing the Task Force on National Health Reform which produced proposals for the reform of the US health care system that were defeated in a venomous congressional battle in 1994. Rodham Clinton attracted strong criticism for her liberalism, her prominence in politics, and her association with the Whitewater charges. She saved her husband's career twice, by standing by him publicly after he admitted sexual relations with Paula Jones in 1992, and after the Lewinsky Affair. In 2000 she became a politician in her own right, when she was elected to the Senate for the State of New York. In her first years as a Senator, Rodham Clinton consciously avoided the controversial national policy agendas which had been her passion as the President's wife, preferring instead to build up a reputation of looking after her constituents' interests.