Hillary Clinton was the First Lady of the United States during her husband’s presidency, but she is also a successful politician, in her own right, who served as the Secretary of State under President Barack Obama.
Clinton has spent plenty of her time at the White House, even attempting to run for the presidency herself during the presidential elections of 2016.
She continually pressed herself forward, never allowing herself to become complacent with her previous successes.
Was Hillary Clinton Born Rich?
No, Hillary Rodham Clinton was not born rich.
Her father owned and ran a textile business in Park Ridge, Illinois.
While her family of five was comfortable, the Rodhams were by no means wealthy.
Her parents always expected their children to do their best in school, so they could afford a good education.
Clinton took her parents’ lessons to heart, often becoming a leader in her classes at school, and she was an active member of her church’s youth group at First United Methodist Church.
Hillary Rodham went on to go to Wellesley College, where she had decided to get her law degree.
The political influence from her parents led Hillary to represent the Republican Party for the first few years of her political career.
Rodham had campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, who was a Republican presidential candidate.
She also led the local chapter of Young Republicans, which is a youth group that helped support local Republican candidates.
The political party switch came after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
She was inspired to work in public service after hearing a sermon from Reverend Martin Luther King.
She then began attending Yale University and served as a volunteer for the Democratic Party.
It was at Yale University where Hillary Rodham would meet her future husband and future president, Bill Clinton.
After graduating from Yale, Hillary went on to work for the Children’s Defense Fund in Edelman, Massachusetts.
She had always had a passion for helping children, so working with the fund allowed her to learn more about the laws and struggles surrounding children.
Miss Rodham worked incredibly hard to get where she is currently.
Her success has been built on the dedication to her life’s work that she learned early on from her parents.
Hillary Rodham’s Involvement With The Watergate Scandal
During the spring of 1974, Watergate Scandal broke out after being reported by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from the Washington Post.
There had been burglaries at the Watergate Hotel where important documents had been reported as being stolen.
As reporters and investigators were looking deeper into the incident, they had found a connection between the robbers and the president of the United States, Richard Nixon.
Further investigation found that the robbers had also wiretapped many of the phones throughout the White House.
During the trial, Hillary Rodham served as a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff.
It was her job to advise the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.
The investigation found that members of Nixon’s Campaign team were committing illegal espionage by stealing copies of secret documents and bugging the phones of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate.
However, they hadn’t been caught when they originally wiretapped the phones.
The burglars were caught when they had to return to the building because the wiretaps hadn’t been put in properly and ended up failing.
President Nixon denied the allegations at first, and the American people believed him.
As more information came to light, getting caught in his own lies ended up forcing him to resign from office by August 5th of 1974.
Nixon had tried wiring the convicted robbers hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money, which ended up being found and cemented his guilt in the eyes of the public.
Rodham, like many of her fellow Democratic Party members, had been waiting to see the day when Nixon’s crimes were brought to light.
The Watergate Scandal reminded Americans that even the president would have to be subject to the consequences of breaking the law.
Becoming A Clinton
In 1975, Hillary moved to Arkansas to be with her long-time boyfriend, Bill Clinton and began teaching at the University of Arkansas.
While they were out on the town, she had spotted a house that she particularly liked and commented on it.
Before proposing to Hillary, Bill had secretly bought the house.
He didn’t reveal he had bought the home of her dreams until after she said yes.
The political power couple was married at their Fayetteville, Arkansas home.
Bill Clinton had to work his way through school in a similar fashion to Hillary.
He hadn’t come from money either.
His father had died in a car accident months before he was born, and his mother remarried an abusive man who suffered from an addiction to alcohol.
Despite these struggles, Bill Clinton focused on his studies in high school and his love of music.
Attending Yale University is what brought the two together.
The couple’s devotion to academics and political work brought them together and led them towards success in the future.
After getting married, Hillary Rodham began working at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.
She later became a partner at the firm where she worked, even while Bill Clinton had become governor of Arkansas.
During this time, she was also appointed chairman of the Legal Services Corporation by President Jimmy Carter, for whom she had helped run a successful presidential campaign.
Up until the election for governor of Arkansas, Hillary had gone by her maiden name, Hillary Rodham.
However, voters saw the fact that she had not taken her husband’s name as a sign of a lack of commitment from her to her husband.
She decided to finally change her last name in order to appeal to the public.
Hillary Clinton’s Time As First Lady
When Bill Clinton won the presidential election of 1992, Hillary Clinton found herself back in the White House with vastly more power and responsibility than ever before.
With her husband taking the lead of the country, she was given many major opportunities to make an impact on the citizens of the United States.
Hillary Clinton was put in charge of the Task Force for National Health Care Reform.
The group’s job was to take a critical look at how the American healthcare system worked and to recommend solutions to the White House Interdepartmental Working Group.
The Interdepartmental Working Group consisted of workers from both the public and private sectors.
Members represented different federal agencies, state agencies, nonprofit organizations, congressional offices, healthcare professionals, and healthcare reform activists.
In September of 1993, President Bill Clinton presented the Task Force’s findings to a joint session of Congress.
They wanted universal healthcare coverage that would require all citizens to be signed up for it.
Employers were to be responsible for paying 80% of their employees’ healthcare costs.
However, the bill that the President had proposed to enact such a healthcare system had been turned down by the majority of Congress.
The President wasn’t willing to accept any form of the bill that didn’t include the universal coverage that the original bill had outlined.
While this was going on, opponents ordered an investigation into the Whitewater real estate project, which the Clintons were involved in throughout the ‘80s.
The project’s goal was to build more vacation areas along the White River in Arkansas to increase tourism and boost the economy, but the bank that had given the Whitewater project the loan ended up failing.
This failed investigation ended up costing the federal government $73 million.
The Clintons were cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident, but it did leave a mark on their reputation.
Troubles With The 1998 Sex Scandal
Hillary Clinton’s years as the First Lady of the United States were anything but glamorous.
Between having a failed bill that she had dedicated her time to and dealing with the crisis surrounding the Whitewater estates, Hillary Clinton had a lot of troubling situations to deal with.
In 1998, the news broke out about the secret sexual relationship that Bill Clinton had with one of the White House interns, Monica Lewinsky.
Their relationship began in 1995, while Lewinsky was in her early 20s.
The relationship went on until 1997 when Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon after her frequent visits to the Oval Office raised suspicions.
This is where she met Linda Tripp, who Lewinsky told about the affair she had with the current President of the United States.
Tripp ended up secretly recording one of their conversations on the subject and leaked the information to the public by 1998.
At first, Bill Clinton completely denied the affair, but he later admitted to “inappropriate intimate physical contact” between him and Monica Lewinsky.
During the entire situation, Hillary Clinton was publicly extremely supportive of her husband.
However, in private, she considered ending her marriage with him after finding out about the affair.
It was their daughter, Chelsea, who held the marriage together during this troubling time in her life.
Giving her a proper upbringing is what kept Bill and Hillary Clinton together.
Clinton also chose to support her husband despite his wrongdoings because she felt that the impeachment process was being misused.
They had built so many different aspects of their lives together, and she couldn’t bear to watch her husband sink.
Bill Clinton has since admitted that his actions were completely inexcusable, and he regrets making the decision he did because of how much damage came from it.
Her Career As New York Senator
In 2000, Hillary Clinton became the first former First Lady to hold an elected office.
She became senator of New York after defeating Republican Candidate Rick Lazio, who had stepped in and raised the money to run at the last minute after the previous Republican candidate had to step down.
Before campaigning against Rick Lazio, Clinton campaigned against Rudy Giuliani, who was the Mayor of New York City at the time.
When the Democratic Party approached her about potentially campaigning for the role, she had not yet lived in the state of New York.
While waiting for her husband’s impeachment trials to die down in public interest, she bought a home in Chappaqua, New York.
She announced her campaign soon after the news of her husband’s affair had become less popular.
During her campaign, she traveled to every county in the state in order to improve her public image.
Clinton ended up beating Lazio, gaining 55% of the votes.
Lazio had only managed to get 43% of all the votes.
Within the first year as senator of New York, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City occurred on September 11th, 2001.
Clinton used her time at Capitol Hill to try to strengthen and rebuild New York City, hoping to return a sense of security to the traumatized city.
Hillary Clinton was given three assignments to work on while a senator in her first term.
She was to reevaluate New York’s budget, find ways to improve environmental issues and public works and needed to focus on health, education, labor, and pensions.
She worked on the Budget Committee for five years before stepping down to focus her efforts on the Armed Service Committee.
This made her the first New York senator in history to ever serve on the committee.
Her Time As Secretary Of State And Presidential Run
When President Barack Obama was elected, he chose Hillary Clinton to become the Secretary of State.
She served as the Secretary of State from 2009 until 2013, making her the 67th Secretary of State.
With the new platform that she had gained as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton chose to speak on the topics of women’s rights and human rights.
Social media was becoming increasingly popular, so Clinton used it to her advantage to amass more supporters.
Under her leadership, the State Department was investigated after the death of United States Ambassador Christopher Stevens at a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
The results of the investigation claimed that the deaths that occurred at the post were caused by “systemic failures in leadership and management deficiencies”.
Hillary Clinton took responsibility for the problem at the diplomatic post.
Although medical problems kept her from testifying at first, she returned to work in order to testify as soon as she was able to.
An 800-page final report was released on the topic that ended up never finding any new evidence that proved Clinton’s wrongdoing.
Instead, the blame was shifted to the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the State Department.
During her testimony to the House Foreign Relations Committee, she took full responsibility for what happened at the outpost and eventually stepped down from her position on February 1st, 2013.
This didn’t stop Clinton from trying to achieve further heights in her political career.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton decided to run as the Democratic candidate in the presidential election against Donald Trump.
A scandal broke out surrounding the fact that Hillary Clinton used her personal email to discuss government business.
Although she did not win the presidential election, Clinton did become the first female presidential candidate to win the popular vote.
Hillary Clinton’s Legacy
Hillary Clinton is a woman who doesn’t let it bother her that a woman has never filled a role before, but rather, it empowers her to chase down the next opportunity.
While she may not have come from a wealthy family, her parents taught her the value of hard work early on in her life.
Clinton has made most of her fortune through her political career, although she has done other jobs like teaching, writing, and public speaking.
Her dedication to her work allowed her to build up a career that has lasted and affected multiple generations.
During her presidential campaign, many voters voted for her simply because they finally wanted to see what America would look like with a woman as the president.
Many people thought she would be the one to do it, but the honor of being the first woman president is still left open to the future generations of women in politics that she has inspired.
Hillary Clinton helped pave the way to open up government elected offices to more women, and she is one of the many women in American history to have paved the way towards the first woman president.
Many people are eager to see how long it will take and what she will be like.
NEXT: Why Are Dumbbells So Expensive? (Top 10 Reasons)