in the early days with Bill?
A week ago I posted a diary detailing some of the events of Hillary Clinton's life before she met Bill. One of the oft repeated criticisms of Hillary is that "without Bill, she would be nothing". I'd like to argue that without Hillary, Bill might have been nothing. They were both integral to each other's success. To continue this series, I'd like to discuss her life and career up to about 1992.
My source for the information is mainly a biography owned by
© 2003 The HW Wilson Company 800-367-6770 / 718-588-8400 950 University Avenue, Bronx, New York 10452
http://www.hwwilson.com/...
I've deleted some information because I know this diary is too long as it is. If you'd like, go over there to read it in it's entirety.
"...in her second year at Yale Hillary Clinton had met her future husband, Bill Clinton, at the law library. From then on, Hillary and Bill were inseparable. As well matched temperamentally as they were intellectually, both were equally dedicated to public service. Having spent the previous year in Oxford, England on a Rhodes scholarship, Bill Clinton was then in his first year of law school. Before graduating in the same class in 1973, the couple had spent the summer of 1972 in San Antonio, Texas, where Bill had run George S. McGovern's presidential campaign and Hillary had registered Hispanic voters."
We see early on that Hillary had a connection with hispanics, an important demographic.
"For several months after her graduation, Hillary worked as a staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts while Bill taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville. In January 1974 Hillary Clinton moved to Washington, D.C., at the behest of John Doar, the special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, who was in charge of the committee's inquiry into the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. One of only three women on the staff of forty-three lawyers, Clinton was put in charge of legal procedures.
"Clinton is often accused of being a closet Republican. Well, this "closet republican" aided the impeachment of one of the flag bearers of his party.
"She impressed her peers with her objectivity and her ability to distinguish advocacy from judicial guidance. Her colleagues found her to be energetic, emotionally supportive, and cooperative. When the impeachment staff was disbanded following Nixon's resignation, on August 8, 1974, Clinton was deluged with offers of high-paying jobs at prestigious law firms on the East Coast in addition to an invitation to return to her post at the Children's Defense Fund. To the dismay of her friends and family, she instead joined Bill Clinton on the faculty of the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville in September 1974."
This is also an example of Hillary putting aside her own ambitions in favor of Bill.
"In the summer of 1974 Bill Clinton had launched a bid for a seat in the House of Representatives from Arkansas's Third Congressional District, a Republican stronghold. Hillary became his unofficial campaign manager when she demonstrated her remarkable organizing skills. Although Bill Clinton lost the election to the Republican incumbent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, by four percentage points, he came closer to defeating Hammerschmidt than any Democrat before or since."
So far, Clinton has been running a well disciplined Presidential campagin, and we can perhaps see the seeds of that in the 1974 Congressional race.
"During the campaign, Hillary had made extensive contacts throughout the state and discovered that she enjoyed teaching criminal law, running a legal-services clinic, and doing prison projects and advocacy work in the quiet college town in the Ozark Mountains. Upon her return to Fayetteville in August, Bill surprised her with a house and a proposal of marriage. When they were wed, on October 11, 1975, Hillary retained her maiden name, a decision that would surface as a controversial issue in her husband's subsequent political campaigns.
After Bill Clinton was elected state attorney general in 1976, he and Hillary moved to Little Rock, where she taught law as an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas and directed the school's legal-aid clinic. Earlier that year she had impressed Jimmy Carter with her work on his presidential campaign, which Bill had directed in Arkansas. In 1977 President Carter appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, a Washington-based organization that provides federal funds to legal-aid bureaus throughout the United States."
Hillary was clearly involved with Washington politics from an early age, having aided the Nixon impeachment, worked for Mondale's subcommittee and served Presiden Carter. She would use her growing clout to make progress in Arkansas.
"In the same year she founded and presided over the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a nonprofit legal advocacy group whose mandate was to identify the problems facing low-income children"
Clinton's dedication to children clearly did not abate with her Washington service.
"she was among the first female associates hired by Rose Law Firm, where her salary enabled her and Bill to buy a house in the upper-middle-class suburb of Hillcrest."
While Bill took in a modest salary as a public servant or as a professor, Hillary was the breadwinner. During this time, she also did pro bono child advocacy (Wikipedia).
"In 1978 Hillary campaigned for Bill in his first run for governor, which he won by defeating his Republican opponent, A. Lynn Lowe, by a margin of almost two to one. Hillary, who had recently been named to the board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund, continued to work at Rose Law Firm after the election, giving Arkansas something it had never had: a working first lady. After moving into the governor's mansion, Bill appointed Hillary chairperson of the Rural Health Advisory Committee, whose members dealt with the problems involved with providing health care in isolated areas."
While Hillary would become known for her Health care push in the 90's, she was clearly involved with the issue in Arkansas.
"Neither Hillary's retention of her last name nor her assumption of official duties engendered much controversy at that time. In early 1980 she was made a partner at Rose Law Firm and gave birth to Chelsea Victoria Clinton, who was named after the song "Chelsea Morning."
In announcing the birth of a daughter to Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, the governor offended some of his more traditional constituents, who began to carp that something must be wrong with his marriage if his wife would not take his name. Compounding his problems in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan would sweep Republicans into office in a nationwide landslide, was President Carter's decision to intern 18,000 Cuban refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. After some of them rioted that summer, Bill Clinton's Republican opponent, Frank White, played on racist sentiments in his campaign and unseated Clinton, who fell into a period of despair. He traveled the state apologizing for his mistakes and asking voters to forgive him, which they did by returning him to office in 1982. Arkansans also forgave Hillary for her "brash" independence after she took her husband's last name and underwent a comprehensive image makeover, which included trading in her thick glasses for contact lenses, lightening and taming her hair, losing fifteen pounds, and dressing more fashionably."
Again, here Hillary was willing to do what it took to re-elect her husband, and to bring herself back into a position to influence policy.
"Over the following decade Hillary Clinton honed her campaigning skills as her husband was reelected governor in 1984, 1986, 1988, and 1990. She learned many valuable lessons--about dealing with the press, gaining popularity, and fending off attacks on her husband's character and the quality of their marriage--that would serve her well in 1992. In 1983, as head of the Arkansas Education Standards Committee, Hillary Clinton set out to improve the quality of public education, in which Arkansas ranked forty-ninth in the nation in per pupil expenditures. Her most controversial recommendation was the establishment of teacher competency testing. She ultimately prevailed, and the state passed a law, instituted in 1985, allowing teachers to be dismissed if they failed to demonstrate adequate reading, writing, and math skills. For her educational reforms, Hillary Clinton received the Arkansas Press Association's first headliner-of-the-year award in 1984."
Hillary was continually proving that their marriage was indeed a partnership, with the ultimate goal being public service".
"Throughout her ten years in the governor's mansion, Hillary Clinton demonstrated her influence in positions of public service. She provided disadvantaged families with access to an already existing program called HIPPY, for Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters; served on the board of directors of the Arkansas Children's Hospital; worked for the Southern Governors' Association Task Force on Infant Mortality; organized the state's first neonatal care unit and a helicopter service, called Angel One, that would bring emergency care to people living in outlying rural areas; and served on the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession. She served on the boards of directors of the retail giant Wal-Mart, TCBY (a yogurt company), and LaFarge, resigning from them all in May 1992. In 1988 and 1991 she was named among the most influential lawyers in the United States by the National Law Journal, and in 1989 she was named among the best business-litigation attorneys in Arkansas."