Hillary Diane Clinton (0)

Tallinna Mustamäe Gümnaasium
G3K
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton
Report
Jaana-Kristiina Jõgevest
Tallinn 2010
Introduction
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama . She was a United States Senator of New York from 2001 to 2009. In the 2008 election, Clinton was leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham attracted national attention in 1969 for her remarks as the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College. She embarked on a career in law after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973. Following a stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas in 1974 and married Bill Clinton in 1975. Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977, and became the first female chair of the Legal Services in 1978. Named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979, she was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as Governor, she successfully led a task force to reform Arkansas's education system.
She was the First Lady of the United States since January 30, 1993 to January 20, 2001. As the First Lady, she became active in domestic policy.
Her early years
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was born on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up, along with two younger brothers, in suburban Chicago. Her parents , Hugh and Dorothy Howell Rodham, raised their children with traditional middle -American values that stressed family, church , school and social obligations.
As a youth , Clinton was influenced by her religious education, especially from the Reverend Don Jones , who introduced Rodham to some of the issues , causes, and movements of the time. It was under Jones's guidance that she read religious philosophers and helped the needy by babysitting the children of migrant farm workers. Another influence was meeting the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68) during his trip to Chicago on a speaking tour .
In 1965 Rodham enrolled in Wellesley College in Massachussetts, where she majored in political science and minored in psychology. Her undergraduate studies inspired her developing world view. A natural communicator, she motivated many of the movements for change occurring the Wellesley campus. Graduating with highest honors in 1969, Rodham gave the first student address delivered during graduation ceremonies in the history of the college. In fall she enrolled in Yale University Law School.
Family life and law career, First Lady of Arkansas
In Yale Law School she served on the Board of Editors of Yale Law Review and Social Action, interned with children's advocate Marian Wright Edelman, and met Bill Clinton. After graduation, Hillary advised the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge and joined the impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. After completing those responsibilities, she ''followed her heart to Arkansas'', where Bill had begun his political career.
They married in 1975. She joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School in 1975 and the Rose Law Firm in 1976. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of the Legal Services Corporation , and Bill Clinton became governor of Arkansas. Their daughter , Chelsea, was born in 1980.
In November 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his bid of reelection. Bill Clinton returned to the governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes Mrs. Bill Clinton.
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 , but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there .
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988-1992) and the Children's Defence Fund. In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY, Wal-Mart Stores and Lafarge. Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to the board. Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more woman to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labour union practices.
Hillary Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992. Bill Clinton said that electing him woult get ''two for the price of one'' or ''buy one, get one free'', referring to the prominent role his wife would assume.
First Lady of the United States
After Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States in 1992, Hillary's involvement in political issues, both in the United States and in foreign countries, increased. She began to remold the role of the First Lady. Hillary Clinton remained an advocate for many of the programs and issues to which she earlier devoted her time and professional skills. She provided leadership in a number of areas , including the Task Force on National Health Care, which was responsible for proposals and passing reform packages before Congress .
Her White House agenda went beyond health care reform and included pushing for children's and women 's issues. Hillary Clinton proved to be and active and vital figure in the White House throughout her husband's presidency. In August of 1995, Hillary Clinton was invited to deliver the keynote address at the United Nations International Conference on Women near Beijing, China.
In November, 1996, Bill Clinton was reelected President of the United States. In that same year Hillary Clinton published her first book entitled ''It Takes a Village : and Other Lessons Children Teach Us''. The book became a best -seller.
On September 20, 2000, Independent Counsel Robert Ray announced his final report reviewing the Clinton's 1970s-era Whitewater real estate partnership. Although the first family's involvement in the partnership was somewhat unclear, ''Whitewater'', as it would become known , was a real estate scandal that followed the Clintons throughout the 1990s . Ray said in his final report reviewing the scandal that there was not enough evidence to prove that either President Clinton or Hillary Rodham Clinton had been guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.
Hillary Clinton was elevted United States Senator from New York on November 7, 2000. She is the first First Lady elected to the United States Senate and the first woman elected statewide in New York.
Lewinsky scandal
In 1998, the Clintons' relationship became the subject of much speculation when investigations revealed that the President had had extramarital sexual activities with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandal eventually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. When the allegations against her husband were first made public, Hillary Clinton stated that they were the result of a ''vast right-wing conspiracy'', characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Clinton's political enemies rather than a wrongdoing by her husband. She later said that she had been misled by her husband's initial claims that no affair had taken place. 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.
There was a mix of public reactions to Hillary Clinton after this: some women admired her strength and poise in private matters made public, some sympathised with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behaviour, others critizised 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.
Presidential campaign of 2008
Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for United States President since at least early 2003. On January 20, 2007, Clinton announced via her web site the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008. No woman has ever been nominated by a major party or President of the United States. In April 2007, the Clintons liquidated a blind trust , that had been established when Bill Clinton became president in 1993, to avoid the possibility ot ethical conflicts or political embarrassments in the trust as Hillary Clinton undertook her presidential race.
Clinton's closest competitors were Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.
Following the final primaries on June 2, 2008, Obama gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee. In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama. Clinton gave a passionate speech supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and campaigned frequently for him in Fall 2008.
Secretary of State
In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration, and on November 21, reports indicated that she had accepted the position . On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State.
Writings and recordings
As First Lady of the United States, Clinton published a weekly syndicated newspaper column titled ''Talking It Over'' from 1995 to 2000, distributed by Creators Syndicate. It focused on her experiences and those of women, children and families she met during her travels around the world.
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 was a New York Times Best Seller, and Clinton received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 1997 for the book's audio recording. The title refers to an African proverb that states ''It takes a village to raise a child .''
Other books released by Clinton when she was First Lady include ''Dear 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 the foreword to the childrens ' book '' Beatrice 's Goat''.
In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, '' Living History''. In anticipation of high sales , publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near- record advance of $8 million. The book sed a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work , went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication, and was translated into twelve foreign languages . Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spolen Word Album.
References:
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ch-Co/Clinton-Hillary-Rodham.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies/hillaryclinton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton
http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0684825457.jpg