CHAPTER 1 BEFORE THE WHITE HOUSE, BEFORE WASHINGTON, THERE WAS A GIRL FROM ILLINOIS
Long before the motorcades, the Secret Service agents, the packed campaign rallies, and the television cameras, Hillary Rodham Clinton was simply Hillary Diane Rodham—a girl growing up far from the center of American political power.
She was born on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest child of Hugh Ellsworth Rodham and Dorothy Howell Rodham.
Her younger brothers, Hugh and Tony, would follow.
The family eventually made its home in Park Ridge, a suburb northwest of Chicago.
Nothing about those early years could have revealed with certainty what lay ahead.
There was no way for the people around young Hillary to know that the girl growing up among the ordinary rhythms of postwar suburban America would one day live in the White House.
They could not know she would become a United States senator.
They could not know she would travel across the world as America’s Secretary of State.
And they certainly could not know that millions of Americans would eventually cast ballots for her for president.
History rarely announces itself when it begins.
Sometimes it begins quietly.
Sometimes it begins in a classroom.
At a dinner table.
Inside a library.
Or in the mind of a child who has begun asking questions about why the world works the way it does.
For Hillary Rodham, the road toward public life began decades before most Americans knew her name.
THE WORLD SHE WAS BORN INTO
Hillary was born less than two years after the end of World War II.
America was entering a period of enormous transformation.
Returning soldiers were building families.
Suburbs were expanding.
Television was beginning to reshape American culture.
The Cold War was taking form.
Questions involving communism, democracy, nuclear weapons, civil rights, women’s roles, and America’s place in the world were moving toward the center of national life.
But American society also carried deeply established expectations about gender.
A girl born in 1947 entered a country where the possibilities available to women were far narrower than they would become during her lifetime.
Women certainly worked, studied, organized, taught, wrote, practiced medicine and law, and participated in politics.
But many of the country’s most powerful institutions remained overwhelmingly controlled by men.
There had never been a female president.
There had never been a female vice president.
No woman had served on the United States Supreme Court.
For many young women, the cultural expectations surrounding adulthood remained closely tied to marriage, family, and traditional occupations.
Hillary would grow up while those expectations were being challenged.
And eventually, she would become part of that challenge herself.
But the story did not begin with rebellion.
It began with family.
THE RODHAM HOUSEHOLD
Hugh Rodham built a small business in the textile industry.
Dorothy Rodham managed the home and raised their children.
The household in which Hillary grew up emphasized discipline, responsibility, education, and self-reliance.
Those values mattered.
Hillary was growing up in a family where achievement was expected to come through effort rather than entitlement.
She attended public schools in Park Ridge and became involved in the activities available to an ambitious suburban student.
But childhood is never shaped by only one influence.
The two people raising Hillary had experienced very different early lives.
Her father’s approach emphasized toughness and hard work.
Her mother’s history had taught her something different: how important security, opportunity, and encouragement could be to a child.
Those influences would eventually intersect with one of the central themes of Hillary’s professional life.
Children.
Long before presidential campaigns entered her story, questions involving children’s welfare, education, and legal rights would become important to her.
That interest would later lead her toward work with organizations such as the Children’s Defense Fund.
But before any of that happened, Hillary was still discovering what she believed.
And some of her earliest political beliefs might surprise people who know her primarily from the Democratic politics of later decades.
A YOUNG REPUBLICAN
The political identity Hillary Clinton eventually became famous for was not the political identity with which she began.
As a young person, Hillary Rodham was associated with Republican politics.
That fact matters because her later political evolution was gradual rather than instantaneous.
Like many Americans, her beliefs changed as she encountered new experiences, new arguments, and a rapidly changing country.
The America of Hillary’s teenage years was moving into one of the most turbulent political periods of the twentieth century.
The civil rights movement was forcing the nation to confront racial injustice.
The Vietnam War would divide families, universities, and political parties.
Young Americans were questioning institutions their parents had trusted.
The women’s movement was expanding.
Assassinations would traumatize the country.
Protests would fill streets and campuses.
Old political coalitions were beginning to fracture.
Hillary was not observing those changes from a distance forever.
Soon, she would enter college.
And college would change the direction of her life.
WELLESLEY
In 1965, Hillary Rodham entered Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
She was leaving the familiar world of Park Ridge and entering an intellectually demanding environment filled with ambitious young women.
The transition was significant.
College gave her greater exposure to political ideas, national debates, activism, and people whose experiences differed from her own.
The political convictions she had carried from adolescence began facing serious examination.
This was exactly the kind of environment in which a person’s inherited assumptions could collide with experience.
And Hillary’s political thinking evolved.
She studied political science.
She became involved in campus life.
She developed a reputation as a serious student and an active participant in political discussions.
But something larger was happening around her.
America itself seemed to be arguing about its identity.
A COUNTRY IN CRISIS
By the late 1960s, political life in the United States had become extraordinarily volatile.
The Vietnam War was escalating.
Television brought images of conflict into American homes.
Civil rights activists continued demanding equality.
Young Americans increasingly challenged authority.
Then came 1968.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April.
Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June.
Cities experienced unrest.
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago descended into scenes of confrontation between demonstrators and police.
For a young political science student from the Chicago suburbs, these were not abstract events from a distant history textbook.
They were happening in real time.
Hillary’s political identity continued to evolve amid that turbulence.
The young woman who had entered Wellesley with Republican roots was moving toward a different political worldview.
Yet one characteristic remained remarkably consistent.
She wanted to participate.
Watching from the sidelines was not enough.
THE STUDENT WHO TOOK THE MICROPHONE
By the time Hillary approached graduation in 1969, she had become a prominent student leader.
Then something happened that would later appear almost symbolic.
Her classmates selected her to speak at commencement.
She became Wellesley’s first student commencement speaker.
It was an unusual platform for a twenty-one-year-old.
Imagine the moment.
A young woman nearing the end of college stands before an audience at one of America’s best-known women’s colleges.
She does not yet possess a law degree.
She has never held elected office.
She has never lived in the White House.
She has never been called Senator Clinton.
She has never been called Secretary Clinton.
She is simply Hillary Rodham.
But she has already discovered something about herself.
She is willing to stand before a crowd and speak about public questions.
That willingness would follow her for the rest of her life.
After Wellesley, however, another decision awaited.
She could have chosen many directions.
Instead, she chose law.
YALE
Hillary entered Yale Law School after graduating from Wellesley in 1969.
The move placed her inside another demanding institution and closer to the intersection of law, policy, and social change.
Her interests increasingly included the relationship between law and the lives of children and families.
At Yale, she would encounter people who would influence her professional direction.
One particularly important influence was Marian Wright Edelman, a lawyer and children’s rights advocate who would later found the Children’s Defense Fund.
Hillary’s interest in children’s issues would become more than an academic concern.
It would become part of her work.
But Yale would also introduce another person whose presence would transform her life in ways no one could have predicted.
A young man from Arkansas was studying there too.
His name was Bill Clinton.
TWO AMBITIOUS LAW STUDENTS
Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham came from different parts of America.
He was from Arkansas.
She had grown up outside Chicago.
Both were intensely interested in politics and public affairs.
Both were studying law.
Both possessed large ambitions, although neither could have known how extraordinary their shared political future would become.
Their meeting at Yale would eventually lead to one of the most consequential political partnerships in modern American history.
But it is easy to distort the past by looking backward from the ending.
At Yale, they were not yet President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.
There was no Clinton administration.
No presidential library.
No Oval Office meetings.
No Senate campaign.
No Secretary of State.
No presidential nomination.
There were simply two law students trying to decide what kind of lives they wanted.
And for Hillary, the answer was not automatically Arkansas.
Her future remained open.
LAW, CHILDREN, AND PUBLIC SERVICE
Hillary received her law degree from Yale in 1973.
Her early professional work increasingly demonstrated an interest in children’s rights and public policy.
She worked with the Children’s Defense Fund after law school, an experience connected to the influence of Marian Wright Edelman.
This part of Hillary’s biography is important because it predates the national political identity that would later dominate public perceptions of her.
Before she became America’s First Lady, she was a lawyer.
Before she became a senator, she was working on issues involving children and families.
Before presidential politics defined her public image, she was building a professional identity of her own.
Then Washington called.
And the assignment awaiting her would place the young lawyer close to one of the greatest political scandals in American history.
WATERGATE
In 1974, Hillary Rodham joined the staff assisting the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment inquiry involving President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
She was still in her twenties.
Yet suddenly she was working near the center of a constitutional crisis.
Watergate was not merely another partisan disagreement.
Questions about presidential power, obstruction of justice, accountability, evidence, and the constitutional process had consumed Washington.
The scandal ultimately led Richard Nixon to resign the presidency on August 9, 1974.
For Hillary, the experience provided an extraordinary early encounter with the machinery of American government during a moment of institutional crisis.
She had studied politics.
She had studied law.
Now she had seen Washington at close range.
A conventional assumption might have suggested that an ambitious young lawyer with growing political experience would remain there.
But Hillary Rodham was about to make a decision that would redirect her life.
The decision pointed south.
Toward Arkansas.
And toward Bill Clinton.
THE ROAD TO ARKANSAS
After the Watergate-era work ended, Hillary faced a personal and professional crossroads.
Bill had returned to Arkansas.
His political ambitions were beginning to take shape.
Hillary had opportunities of her own.
Following him south was not simply a career decision.
It meant entering a very different world from the one she had known in Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Washington.
Eventually, she made the move.
She accepted a position teaching law at the University of Arkansas.
In 1975, Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton married.
That marriage would bind together two careers that would repeatedly intersect with American political history.
But Hillary did not disappear into her husband’s ambitions.
She continued developing a legal career of her own.
Soon she would join the Rose Law Firm.
She would become involved in children’s advocacy.
She would enter Arkansas public life.
And as Bill Clinton’s political career accelerated, Hillary would confront a question that would follow her for decades:
What was the proper role of a political spouse who possessed substantial ambitions, expertise, and opinions of her own?
America would eventually debate that question intensely.
But first, the Clintons had to survive Arkansas politics.
THE FIRST GREAT TRANSFORMATION
Looking back at Hillary Rodham’s life before 1975 reveals several transformations already underway.
The suburban girl from Park Ridge had become a Wellesley graduate.
The young Republican had moved toward Democratic politics.
The political science student had become a Yale-trained lawyer.
The student activist had entered national political work.
The young lawyer who had participated in the Watergate impeachment inquiry had chosen Arkansas over Washington.
And Hillary Rodham had become Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Yet even then, the most famous chapters of her life remained unwritten.
The White House was still almost two decades away.
The United States Senate was even farther away.
The State Department belonged to another future.
And the idea that Hillary herself might someday run for president would have sounded extraordinary to much of America.
But Arkansas was about to become the laboratory in which Hillary would learn what public political life actually demanded.
There would be victories.
There would be defeats.
There would be criticism.
There would be questions about her career, her marriage, her name, and her role beside an increasingly ambitious husband.
There would also be a daughter.
And eventually, there would be a presidential campaign that would carry the Clintons from Little Rock all the way to Washington.
The girl from Park Ridge was gone.
In her place stood a young lawyer in Arkansas, married to a man who wanted a future in politics and determined not to surrender her own identity along the way.
Neither of them could know exactly what was coming.
But the road to the White House had quietly begun.
And before America would meet Hillary Clinton, Arkansas would have to meet her first.
CHAPTER 2 HILLARY IN ARKANSAS — MARRIAGE, MOTHERHOOD, LAW, POLITICAL DEFEAT, AND THE ROAD TOWARD THE WHITE HOUSE
When Hillary Rodham arrived in Arkansas, she was not arriving as a future First Lady of the United States.
There was no White House waiting for her.
There was no presidential motorcade.
There was no Secret Service protection.
There was no Senate seat with her name on it.
There was not even a guarantee that Bill Clinton’s political ambitions would succeed.
There was simply Arkansas.
And a decision.
Hillary had spent much of her young adulthood preparing herself for a serious professional career.
She had graduated from Wellesley.
She had earned a law degree from Yale.
She had worked on children’s issues.
She had participated in the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate-era impeachment inquiry.
Washington could have offered her a path.
Instead, she went south.
The decision would alter the course of her life.
And eventually, it would help alter the course of American political history.
A DIFFERENT WORLD
Arkansas was very different from the places where Hillary had spent the previous years.
She had grown up outside Chicago.
She had attended Wellesley in Massachusetts.
She had studied law at Yale in Connecticut.
She had worked in Washington.
Now she was entering a Southern state whose political culture, social traditions, and expectations could feel very different from the elite academic and professional environments she had known.
She accepted a position teaching at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville.
Bill Clinton was there too.
Their relationship had survived distance, career decisions, and uncertainty.
Now came a much larger question.
Would they build a life together?
In October 1975, Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton married in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
She did not simply become the wife of an ambitious politician.
She remained Hillary Rodham professionally.
That choice might seem ordinary to many readers today.
In the Arkansas political environment of the 1970s, however, it could attract attention.
Hillary was entering a world in which the public could judge not only a politician but also his wife.
How she dressed mattered.
How she spoke mattered.
What she called herself mattered.
Whether she appeared traditional enough mattered.
And Hillary Rodham was not particularly interested in pretending that her education, profession, and opinions had disappeared when she married.
That tension would become one of the recurring themes of her public life.
America would repeatedly ask what kind of political wife Hillary Clinton was supposed to be.
Hillary would repeatedly answer by refusing to fit neatly into only one category.
BUILDING HER OWN CAREER
Marriage did not end Hillary’s professional ambitions.
In 1976, she joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock.
It was a significant step.
Hillary was establishing herself as a lawyer in Arkansas while her husband’s political career was accelerating.
Bill Clinton had already experienced political defeat.
In 1974, he had unsuccessfully run for Congress.
But defeat did not end his political ambitions.
In 1976, Arkansas voters elected him attorney general.
Two years later, he ran for governor.
He won.
At only thirty-two years old, Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas.
And Hillary Rodham suddenly found herself in another new role.
First Lady of Arkansas.
The title sounded ceremonial.
Hillary did not intend to treat it that way.
FIRST LADY — BUT NOT THE TRADITIONAL KIND
The American public had long been accustomed to political spouses performing certain recognizable roles.
They attended events.
They welcomed guests.
They supported charities.
They stood beside their husbands during campaigns.
They smiled for photographs.
Some became influential behind the scenes, but the expectation was often that their influence remain discreet.
Hillary did not fit comfortably inside that model.
She had a law degree from Yale.
She had professional experience.
She had policy interests.
She had strong opinions.
She wanted to work.
And she continued doing so.
That made her unusual enough to attract attention.
It also created political risk.
Every political family eventually discovers that voters do not judge only policies.
They judge personalities.
They judge appearances.
They judge families.
And sometimes they judge symbols more intensely than substance.
Hillary’s independence became one of those symbols.
To supporters, an accomplished professional woman continuing her career after marriage represented changing possibilities for women.
To some critics, however, she appeared unfamiliar or insufficiently traditional for the role expected of a governor’s wife.
Those competing perceptions would follow Hillary far beyond Arkansas.
But first came something even more important than politics.
CHELSEA
On February 27, 1980, Bill and Hillary Clinton became parents.
Their daughter was named Chelsea Victoria Clinton.
For Hillary, motherhood added another identity to a life already crowded with them.
Lawyer.
Political spouse.
First Lady of Arkansas.
Advocate.
And now mother.
The public would eventually watch Chelsea grow up.
Years later, millions would see her enter the White House as a twelve-year-old girl.
But in 1980 there was no certainty that the Clinton family was headed toward Washington.
In fact, politically, the opposite was about to happen.
Bill Clinton was about to lose.
THE DEFEAT THAT CHANGED THEM
Political careers often look inevitable when viewed backward.
Once someone becomes president, every earlier election can seem like another step toward destiny.
Real life does not work that way.
Careers collapse.
Candidates lose.
Voters change their minds.
Mistakes become expensive.
In 1980, Bill Clinton sought another term as governor of Arkansas.
He lost.
For a politician who had risen rapidly, the defeat was a major interruption.
For the Clinton family, it was also a lesson.
Arkansas voters had delivered a message.
Bill Clinton would have to understand why.
So would Hillary.
Political defeat can produce two very different reactions.
Some people blame everyone else.
Others study what happened.
The Clintons chose to rebuild.
And Hillary herself would make changes.
One of the most visible concerned her name.
During her earlier years in Arkansas, she had continued using Hillary Rodham.
Later she increasingly used Hillary Rodham Clinton.
To outsiders, the distinction might have seemed trivial.
In politics, almost nothing involving identity is trivial.
The change reflected the realities of navigating Arkansas public life while trying to preserve her own identity.
It was an early lesson Hillary would encounter repeatedly:
Public life does not merely ask what you believe.
It asks how you present yourself.
And sometimes voters respond to presentation before they ever examine policy.
THE COMEBACK
Bill Clinton did not remain outside the governor’s office for long.
In 1982, he ran again.
This time he won.
The Clintons returned to the governor’s mansion.
But they did not return as exactly the same people who had left it.
They had experienced victory.
Then rejection.
Then recovery.
And in the years ahead, Hillary would take on one of the most significant policy assignments of her Arkansas years.
Education.
THE EDUCATION QUESTION
Arkansas faced serious challenges in its public education system.
Improving schools became a major priority of Bill Clinton’s governorship.
In 1983, Hillary Rodham Clinton was chosen to lead an Education Standards Committee.
This was not merely a ceremonial assignment.
The committee traveled across Arkansas and held dozens of meetings.
It examined weaknesses in the state’s educational system and developed proposals aimed at raising standards.
The work touched politically sensitive questions.
What should schools require?
How should teachers be evaluated?
How much should Arkansas spend?
Who should pay for reform?
What standards should students be expected to meet?
Education policy sounds technical until reform requires money, testing, accountability, and changes to established systems.
Then it becomes intensely political.
Hillary was entering that arena.
The committee eventually developed recommendations involving curriculum and teacher quality.
Many proposals became part of the broader education reform effort pursued in Arkansas.
The experience gave Hillary something that would later distinguish her from many presidential spouses.
She had participated directly in policy development before entering the White House.
She was learning how policy moved from research and meetings into political negotiation.
She was also learning that changing a system required more than good intentions.
People had to be persuaded.
Legislators had to vote.
Money had to be found.
Interest groups had to be confronted or convinced.
And compromise was unavoidable.
These lessons would become extremely important a decade later.
Because Hillary would eventually be asked to tackle a policy problem far larger than Arkansas education.
Health care.
And the outcome would be very different.
THE LAWYER AND THE GOVERNOR
Throughout much of this period, Hillary maintained a professional life independent of Bill’s elected office.
That arrangement fascinated some observers and irritated others.
The political marriage was unusual.
Bill was the elected official.
But Hillary was not merely standing behind him.
She had her own career.
Her own professional relationships.
Her own expertise.
Her own public responsibilities.
That created opportunities.
It also created complications.
When one spouse holds political power and the other maintains a prominent professional career, questions about conflicts of interest can arise.
Those questions would become increasingly important as Bill Clinton moved closer to national politics.
For years, however, Arkansas remained their political world.
Bill served as governor for most of the period from 1979 until the beginning of 1993.
Hillary served as First Lady of Arkansas during those gubernatorial years.
Their daughter grew up surrounded by political life.
And gradually, Bill Clinton’s reputation began extending beyond the state.
FROM LITTLE ROCK TO THE NATIONAL STAGE
Governors often occupy an unusual place in American presidential politics.
They are far enough from Washington to campaign as outsiders.
But they possess executive experience.
They manage budgets.
They negotiate with legislatures.
They respond to crises.
They oversee state agencies.
For an ambitious politician, a governor’s mansion can become a training ground for the presidency.
Bill Clinton increasingly became involved in national policy conversations, particularly through organizations involving governors.
Education became one of the issues associated with his national profile.
Hillary’s work in Arkansas was part of that larger political story.
The couple who had once met as law students at Yale were becoming something more complicated.
A political partnership.
But that phrase requires care.
Bill Clinton was the candidate.
Hillary Clinton had her own career.
Their ambitions overlapped without being identical.
And as the 1980s moved toward the 1990s, a question that had probably hovered around Bill Clinton for years became increasingly difficult to ignore.
Would he run for president?
AMERICA WAS CHANGING AGAIN
By the beginning of the 1990s, the United States looked very different from the country Hillary had known as a college student.
The Cold War was ending.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
President George H. W. Bush had enjoyed enormous public approval following the Gulf War, although economic concerns later became increasingly important in domestic politics.
A new generation of political leaders was emerging.
Bill Clinton belonged to that generation.
Born in 1946, he was younger than many of the national political figures who had dominated Washington.
He could speak about the future rather than World War II.
He could present himself as a Southern Democrat who understood both traditional Democratic concerns and the political changes that had transformed the country during the Reagan years.
But running for president meant something different for Hillary too.
Everything would be examined.
Their finances.
Their marriage.
Her legal career.
Her personality.
Her opinions.
Her role in Bill’s political life.
The scrutiny that Arkansas had given Hillary would look small compared with what national politics was capable of producing.
Still, the decision came.
OCTOBER 3, 1991
Bill Clinton announced his campaign for president in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The governor who had once lost reelection in his own state was now asking the entire country to consider him for the White House.
Hillary stood beside him.
The campaign would transform her public identity.
Until then, millions of Americans had never heard of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
That was about to change.
And not always comfortably.
“WHO IS HILLARY CLINTON?”
Presidential campaigns introduce candidates to voters.
They also introduce families.
Reporters began examining Hillary’s background.
Wellesley.
Yale.
The Children’s Defense Fund.
Watergate-era work.
The University of Arkansas.
Rose Law Firm.
Education reform.
Her marriage.
Her career.
Her political influence.
Her independence.
Almost immediately, Hillary became more than “the candidate’s wife.”
She became a national subject of debate.
Some Americans admired her accomplishments.
Some questioned the amount of influence she might have in a Clinton administration.
Others debated whether her professional identity represented a welcome modernization of the First Lady role or a departure from traditions they preferred.
Hillary was discovering a reality that would define much of her public life:
People rarely reacted to her neutrally.
She could inspire admiration.
She could provoke intense opposition.
Sometimes the reaction seemed connected to policy.
Sometimes it was connected to gender.
Sometimes it involved personality or political partisanship.
Usually, several factors were tangled together.
And the presidential campaign magnified everything.
THE CAMPAIGN BECOMES PERSONAL
Running for president places enormous pressure on a marriage.
Every disagreement becomes potential news.
Every old acquaintance may receive a reporter’s phone call.
Every financial record can attract scrutiny.
Every rumor can become a headline.
The Clinton campaign experienced all of this.
Questions arose about Bill Clinton’s personal life.
Other controversies followed.
Hillary could no longer live primarily as a lawyer in Arkansas.
She had become part of a national campaign operation.
She defended her husband.
She appeared in interviews.
She campaigned.
And Americans began forming opinions about her before she ever stepped inside the White House.
Those opinions would prove remarkably durable.
A NEW KIND OF POLITICAL SPOUSE
Hillary represented a question America had not fully resolved.
What happens when the spouse of a presidential candidate is herself an accomplished professional with political interests?
For generations, First Ladies had influenced American public life in important ways.
Eleanor Roosevelt had transformed expectations of the position decades earlier.
Lady Bird Johnson championed environmental beautification.
Betty Ford spoke publicly about issues many political families avoided.
Rosalynn Carter attended Cabinet meetings and worked on mental-health policy.
Nancy Reagan became associated with the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign.
Barbara Bush promoted literacy.
Hillary would inherit that evolving tradition.
But she would push it into new territory.
During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton sometimes presented voters with the idea that electing him would bring Hillary’s talents into the administration as well.
That raised expectations.
It also raised suspicion among opponents.
If Bill won, exactly what would Hillary do?
Nobody yet knew how consequential that question would become.
ELECTION NIGHT
November 3, 1992.
Americans went to the polls.
The race included incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush, Democratic challenger Bill Clinton, and independent candidate Ross Perot.
When the votes were counted, Bill Clinton had won the presidency.
The political journey that had passed through defeat in Arkansas now reached the White House.
For Hillary, the moment represented something equally extraordinary.
The girl from Park Ridge was about to become First Lady of the United States.
Chelsea was twelve.
Their family was leaving Arkansas.
And Washington—the city Hillary had known as a young lawyer during Watergate—was about to become home.
But Hillary would not return to Washington in the role she had occupied before.
She would arrive as one of the most closely watched women in America.
THE LAST DAYS IN ARKANSAS
Imagine the distance between the beginning and the end of this chapter of her life.
When Hillary first came to Arkansas, she was a young lawyer following a relationship into uncertain territory.
There had been no guarantee the relationship would lead to marriage.
No guarantee Bill would become governor.
No guarantee his political career would survive defeat.
No guarantee Hillary would find a professional place for herself in Arkansas.
Yet by the end of 1992, nearly every part of their lives had changed.
They were married.
They had a daughter.
Hillary had built a legal career.
She had participated in education reform.
Bill had become one of America’s most prominent governors.
And now he was president-elect of the United States.
But victory contained a hidden complication.
For years, Hillary had managed to be several things at once.
Lawyer.
Mother.
Advocate.
Governor’s wife.
Policy participant.
Soon, she would receive America’s most famous unelected title.
First Lady.
And the country was about to discover that Hillary Rodham Clinton had no intention of interpreting that title narrowly.
JANUARY 1993
Washington prepared for a new administration.
Bill Clinton would become the 42nd President of the United States.
Hillary would become First Lady.
Chelsea would move into the White House.
For millions of Americans, it looked like the conclusion of an extraordinary political journey.
For Hillary, it was only the beginning of a much more difficult one.
Because soon after entering the White House, President Clinton would give his wife an unprecedentedly prominent policy assignment.
Health care.
It was one of the most complicated domestic policy problems in America.
Presidents had struggled with it for decades.
Industries worth billions of dollars had enormous stakes in the outcome.
Doctors, hospitals, insurers, employers, unions, patients, Republicans, Democrats, and advocacy groups all had competing interests.
And Bill Clinton was going to put Hillary near the center of the effort to reform the system.
Arkansas had taught her how difficult political reform could be.
Washington was about to teach her something harsher.
A policy battle can change a career.
A failed policy battle can change a public image for decades.
Hillary Clinton had reached the White House.
But getting there would turn out to be much easier than what came next.
END OF CHAPTER 2
NEXT CHAPTER
CHAPTER 3
“WELCOME TO THE WHITE HOUSE” — HILLARY CLINTON BECOMES FIRST LADY, TAKES ON HEALTH CARE, AND DISCOVERS THE PRICE OF POLITICAL POWER
In January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton walked into the White House carrying expectations unlike those placed on almost any First Lady before her.
Within months, she would be placed at the center of an enormous attempt to change American health care.
Supporters saw an opportunity for historic reform.
Opponents saw something very different.
The political fight would become fierce.
The plan would collapse.
Republicans would score sweeping victories in the 1994 midterm elections.
And Hillary Clinton would be forced to reconsider how she used power, how she communicated with the public, and what kind of First Lady she intended to become.
But health care would not be the only storm approaching the Clinton White House.
Investigations would follow.
Controversies would multiply.
Old Arkansas business dealings would become national news.
And eventually, a scandal involving the President himself would place Hillary’s marriage—and the entire presidency—under a level of scrutiny few American families had ever experienced.
The Arkansas years had prepared Hillary for politics.
They had not prepared her for this.
