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TwitThisHer Chance to Make History
As the speculation built, it became all the more intriguing: The First Lady was thinking of running for New York’s open Senate seat. Never mind that Hillary Rodham Clinton had never run for office before or lived in New York a day in her life. This would make history.
There was no doubt that Mrs. Clinton had been preparing for a larger role on the world stage. She gave an inspiring speech on human rights in Beijing in 1995 and had earned the respect of women everywhere. After leaving the White House, many regarded her as the unofficial leader of the world’s women.
At the 1999 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, I asked Mrs. Clinton why she would trade that exalted status just to be one of 100 voices in the staid old U.S. Senate. Her reply was instructive. Money, she said. She didn’t mean for herself. She was talking about the government’s purse strings and her desire to help direct how that money gets spent. That Saturday night, she rhapsodized about the vast influence of Congress, and she wasn’t coy about her desire to join that institution.
Now, as Senator Clinton, she’s running again with that same clear-eyed focus. But this time, she has her sights set on a bigger job. This time, she aspires to the most powerful position on earth.
It seems we’ve known her forever, but it hasn’t actually been that long. Hillary Clinton burst onto the scene on January 26, 1992, in a special edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes, which aired after the Super Bowl to a huge national audience. Bill Clinton, his wife at his side, was addressing allegations of marital infidelity that were threatening to undermine his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination. At one point, Hillary piped up, “I’m not sitting here,” she said pointedly, “as some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”
Actually, that’s exactly what she was doing, but viewers got her meaning: Mrs. Clinton was saying she was much more than a loyal wife. If Bill Clinton was running as “a new kind of Democrat,” Hillary Clinton was running as a new kind of helpmate—“two for the price of one,” as she put it during that campaign. This Wellesley College valedictorian and Yale Law School star had become a partner in the most prestigious law firm in Little Rock. In Arkansas, she put her own political ambitions on hold to raise a daughter and help Bill launch his career. So now, yes, she was standing by her man, but standing on her own two feet as well. It wasn’t decorating the White House that interested Hillary Clinton—it was helping run a nation.
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