First Ladies (62 page)

The Washington Research Project had no funds to pay student workers over the summers, but in 1970 Hillary got a small stipend from Yale and went to the capital. A student intern there in 1968, she now approached her second job in Washington—at age twenty-two. Assigned to study migrant workers, she became most concerned about the welfare of children who moved with their parents from one camp to the next, and by the time classes resumed in the fall, she had narrowed her career focus. Resolving to study child development and the legal issues involved in protecting children's health and safety, she began to question old traditions, including those holding that a parent always knew best and would—or could—act to protect children. She wrestled with the topic of parental hegemony—when it should be limited and when government could justifiably step in to protect a child's interests. To inform her answers, she turned to courses in psychology and texts in child development.

This new interest diverted some of her attention from the traditional, required courses and funneled her energy into issues related to family law. She assisted professors writing on the subject and published her own findings. Part of that effort was later incorporated into a Carnegie Council book,
All Our Children: Families Under Pressure in the United States,
that listed Hillary as a research associate. Much of the book reiterates old arguments about a child's best interests being served by improving economic conditions for the entire family through better pay and flexible work schedules, but one section deals with the right of minors to challenge decisions that affect them. It advocated “due process” in the case of suspensions from school involving more than one week.
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These pursuits outside the classroom tacked another year on to what would normally have been a three-year-law degree and put Hillary Rodham's graduation date in 1973, the same as Bill Clinton's although he had entered one year after her. Fourteen months older than Hillary, he had followed graduation from Georgetown with a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, before returning to the United States to enter law school. The story of their meeting, in the Yale library, is not unique in the history of presidents and their wives. Lou Henry had first encountered young Herbert Hoover in the geology lab at Stanford University, and Lou, like Hillary, had gone on to earn the same degree as her husband earned.

But unlike the Hoovers who evidently decided to link their lives soon after they met, the Clintons made their decision more slowly. By the 1970s, women had more options than in Lou Hoover's days. While Bill returned to his native Arkansas, Hillary took a job in Washington working for the House Judiciary Committee investigating the intricacies of President Nixon's culpability in the Watergate break-in and its aftermath. One of three women on a legal team that totaled 41, Hillary came to the job with high recommendations and plenty of zeal, and she forged friendships there that she would take with her to the White House. The legal team brought impressive credentials, and Hillary later told Washington reporter Donnie Radcliffe that working on it had been a “great experience. … What a gift! I was twenty-six years old. I felt like I was walking around with my mouth open all the time.”
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President Nixon's resignation in August 1974, abruptly ended the work of the investigative team, and Hillary made a momentous, but not irreversible, decision about her future. Although she later admitted she had been cautioned against the effect such a move would have on her career, she relocated to Bill's Arkansas. They did not marry until November 1975, but she had evidently made her decision a year earlier to fit her professional life around his. Had she contemplated a political career of her own, she would have been better advised to remain in the capital, return to her own state of Illinois, or put down new roots in another state more amicable to the idea of women candidates. But like many of the women who became First Lady, she recognized that political work did not always include holding office in her own name.

As Bill Clinton moved single-mindedly into politics, Hillary Rodham taught at the state university's law school. When he won his first statewide election to attorney general and moved to the state capital, she gave up teaching and joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, becoming the first woman hired by this prestigious old law firm. During her years at Rose, she forged close professional ties with people who would later assist in the campaign for president and then in running the Oval Office. Vincent Foster, a fellow attorney, served as Assistant White House Counsel until his death in the summer of 1993, and another attorney, Webster Hubbell, went to Washington as Associate Attorney General, the third highest rank in the Justice Department.
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Had she never married, Hillary Rodham could have consoled herself in her middle years that she had a remarkably successful career. Work on corporate boards and her legal practice earned her a comfortable six-figure income, thus putting her at the very top among
American professional woman at the time. Popular with colleagues at work, she was twice named to the list of “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.”
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Garry Wills, writing in the
New York Review of Books,
singled her out as “one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades.”
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But like most other women of her generation, Hillary combined this success at work with a full family life—as wife and mother. The birth of Chelsea Victoria Clinton on February 27, 1980, evidently made only a tiny glitch in her mother's career path. Like other women who were her contemporaries, Hillary had learned to juggle the demands of household management and a stressful job, and although the events in her daily life were not those of every woman—hosting a reception at the Governor's Mansion and arguing an important case in court—the logistics were identical. Often it seemed she had to be in two places at the same time, but she refused to complain publicly.

When Bill Clinton first announced he would try for the presidency in 1992, few observers foresaw any chance of his winning or showed much interest in his wife. President Bush's popularity stood at an all-time high at the end of the Kuwait war, and many Americans did not think or hope that he would be denied a second term.

Among the spouses of Democrats who challenged President Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton (as her press releases announced her at the time) did not have a high profile. She had not campaigned in 1988 when so much attention went to candidates' spouses. The spotlight had actually turned on the women early in that race when Democrats in Polk County, Iowa, decided to sponsor a forum featuring candidates' wives twelve months before the nominating conventions took place. Invitations went out to the headquarters of all the contenders, and six wives agreed to appear. When they arrived in Des Moines, on July 26, 1987, they found hundreds of journalists, many armed with microphones and television cameras, and an auditorium full of interested listeners.

The forum, moderated by Attorney Ruth Harkin (whose husband served in the U.S. Senate), featured an impressive lineup of speakers: attorney Harriet Babbitt, wife of Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt; attorney Jeanne Simon, spouse of Illinois Senator Paul Simon; author Tipper Gore, who had just written a book decrying sexually explicit lyrics in rock songs; educator Jill Biden, who had completed two master's degrees and vowed to continue teaching emotionally disturbed children even if her husband won the presidency; Kitty Dukakis, whose list of professional activities and community service totaled four pages; and Jane Gephardt, spouse of Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt
and the only speaker to present herself as a traditional wife without a career of her own. Bill Clinton had dropped out of the race one week earlier or Hillary would have participated in this panel of six mothers who were also attorneys, authors, educators, and public advocates.

Hillary's first big opportunity for national attention came in early 1992, when the Clintons asked for a chance to respond to charges made by an Arkansas woman, Gennifer Flowers. A supermarket tabloid, the
Star
, had just run large headlines quoting Flowers talking about “My 12-Year Affair with Bill Clinton.”
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Had the story stopped with the
Star
, it might have been ignored, but when the mainstream media picked it up, Clinton staffers decided that it required a response.

In American political history, it is not unprecedented for a wife to be called on to help defend her husband against charges of marital infidelity—or to deflect the damage by seeming not to care or to have been too hurt if the candidate chooses to acknowledge other liaisons. Memories of Lee Hart's dejected appearance in front of television cameras when Gary Hart decided to talk about his boat trip with Donna Rice were still fresh in viewers' minds. Some even remembered Joan Kennedy's grim expression as she appeared in public with Ted Kennedy after Chappaquiddick. But Hillary assigned herself a more difficult role—she would not only sit beside her husband while he answered questions—she would also speak for herself.

The interview involved considerable risk. Scheduled for the entire broadcast of
60 Minutes
on January 26, 1992, it followed the Super-bowl game when the television audience was expected to approach 100 million. Now many of these voters would watch the Clintons closely, looking for discomfort in Hillary or evidence that Bill was lying. To put the Gennifer Flowers story to rest seemed essential to winning the nomination, but the spouse's part in that effort equaled the candidate's.

Years of facing television cameras and of public speaking paid off for both Clintons. While he squirmed slightly, choosing his words carefully enough so as to admit “bringing pain” to his marriage without actually confessing what he had done, she charged ahead. In a final touch of defiance that he did not quite match, she challenged voters to consider what the Clintons represented and then if they did not like what they saw, “then heck, don't vote for him.”
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The Clinton campaign hit other rough spots before Bill captured the nomination but Hillary's name had become a household word. She remained central to her husband's campaign, and when candidate
Jerry Brown charged that she had gained professionally from her husband's governorship, she replied that she “could have stayed home and baked cookies” but had chosen not to. Her comment was picked up by the press and repeated out of context to convey the idea that she disparaged women who had no career outside their home and families. In fact, she had gone on to say that she had made her choices with the hope that she could ease the way for other women to have more options. But the “cookies” quote dogged her steps and tagged her, in opponents' eyes, as an enemy of traditional family values—a woman full of her own importance.
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Very quickly it became apparent that 1992, dubbed in politics “the year of the woman,” was not the “year of the wife.” Journalists still struggling with how to report on female candidates (and to discuss their ideas instead of their wardrobes) faced new questions when writing about political wives. One like Hillary Rodham Clinton, with a substantial career involved in controversial public issues, invited extra scrutiny. Yet she was not the candidate, and it seemed unfair to hold her spouse responsible for every view she had ever expressed. Candidates' wives in the past had typically worked for their own causes and projects, but they had done so as committed volunteers and thus were less threatening. They had labored hard for beautification of highways, restoration of the White House, improved mental health benefits, and literacy—all projects that very few of their countrymen would decline to support. Their efforts had made them no enemies, except perhaps among people who disagreed on how much to spend on them.

Hillary Rodham Clinton came to the White House with weighty professional baggage. She had been packing it for twenty years. Since leaving law school she had chaired meetings, argued cases, and taken actions that affected people's lives and made some people angry. It could not be otherwise for a practicing attorney who had also taken on an advocacy role. Critics looked particularly closely at her work with the Legal Services Corporation, set up as a federally funded non-partisan attempt to provide legal aid to the nation's indigent. President Jimmy Carter had named Hillary to the board of directors in 1978, and she had chaired it for the next two years. Several of the board's decisions came under fire, and conservatives were particularly chagrined when stories circulated about federal funds going through the corporation to less than mainstream causes, such as defending requests for transsexual surgery and upholding Native Americans' claims to ownership of a sizeable chunk of the state of Maine.
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Hillary's directorship of a philanthropy, the New World Foundation, also invited scrutiny. Incorporated in 1954, the foundation had quietly
handed out small grants for years, in pursuit of equal rights for minorities, avoidance of war, and development of community initiative programs. But Hillary's new prominence focused special attention on what it had done during the two years she chaired its board. Her final report, issued in 1988, reiterated the foundation's commitment to “citizen organizing, in groups and coalitions, to put public needs back on the national agenda and to hold bureaucracies and elected officials accountable.” In listing the hundred or so grants made during her two-year stint, she included many that were small and hardly controversial (such as $5,000 each to the MS Foundation for Women and to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York). But other grants later rankled critics who deemed the recipients part of the “hard left.” Particularly annoying was the $2,500 award made to an admittedly anti-conservative group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and $5,000 to the Committee in Support of the People of El Salvador.
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