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Sure enough, Hillary Rodham Clinton turned out to be an activist First Lady, diving into personnel and policy decisions in the Clinton White House. Among the biggest controversies that enveloped her: the firing of the White House travel office and her lead role in the Administration’s failed attempt at legislating universal health insurance. She was involved in all kinds of intrigues, ranging from the Whitewater investigation to the fund-raising scandals of the Clinton-Gore reelection effort.
Yet she was an effective liaison for the Administration with women’s groups in the United States and an esteemed ambassador abroad. In the time since the White House, she has also penned two bestsellers and, most important, twice run successfully for the Senate, where she has disarmed critics by earning a reputation for effectiveness and collegiality.
“When I got to the Senate, a lot of people were curious about what I would do there, to say the least,” she told Reader’s Digest in an interview last summer in Iowa. “And my view is, when you’re given a position of trust—as I was, being a Senator from New York—you want to find common ground. I want to bring people together. There’s so much work to do.”
Clinton speaks with a quiet confidence about her time in the Senate because she’s earned positive reviews from across the spectrum, both for her demeanor and her legislative acumen. West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, who helped scuttle her health- care initiative when she was First Lady, now sings her praises. So does Arizona Republican John McCain, who would like to run against her next November. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, another Republican Presidential hopeful, once approached Clinton at a Senate prayer group and apologized for having said unkind things about her in the past. These feelings have translated into bipartisan cooperation, the key to getting things done in the Senate.
Clinton spoke with similar self-assurance about how she would begin her Presidency, suggesting that she expects to take the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.
“It depends on what I inherit,” she said when asked what she would do in her first hundred days. “If our troops are still bogged down in a civil war in Iraq, I will summon my Secretary of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff and my national security advisors, and begin the process of getting our troops out of that civil war. I will also commence a very robust diplomatic effort, not only with respect to Iraq but on so many of the issues that have been neglected and frankly gotten so dangerous over the past six and a half—by then, eight—years.”
But can Hillary Clinton win the Presidency? She carries more baggage because she’s been under a microscope for 16 years. She’s trying to move back to a White House where she lived for eight years and that was the scene of some of her greatest triumphs and most humiliating tribulations. She is still plagued by stories about her role in the White House travel office firings, her belated discovery of missing billing records that had been under subpoena for two years (and had her fingerprints on them when they turned up), and her involvement in a political fund-raising scandal symbolized by rewarding wealthy donors with overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom.
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