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Tenure
During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton and
President Obama forged a positive working relationship that lacked power
struggles. Clinton was regarded to be a team player within the Obama
administration. She was also considered a defender of the administration to the
public. She was regarded to be cautious to prevent herself or her husband from
upstaging the president. Obama and Clinton both approached foreign policy as a
largely non-ideological, pragmatic exercise. Clinton met with Obama weekly, but
did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had
had with their presidents. Nevertheless, Obama was trusting of Clinton's
actions. Clinton also formed an alliance with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates with whom she shared similar
strategic outlooks.
As secretary of state, Clinton sought to lead a
rehabilitation of the United States' reputation on the world stage. After
taking office, Clinton spent several days telephoning dozens of world leaders
and indicating that U.S. foreign policy would change direction. Days into her
tenure, she remarked, "We have a lot
of damage to repair."
Clinton advocated an expanded role in global economic issues
for the State Department, and cited
the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq where
the Defense Department had conducted
diplomatic missions. Clinton announced the most ambitious of her departmental
reforms, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and
Development Review, which establishes specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions
abroad; it was modeled after a similar process in the Defense Department that she was familiar with from her time on the
Senate Armed Services Committee. The first such review was issued in late 2010
and called for the U.S. to lead through "civilian
power" and prioritize the empowerment of women throughout the world.
One cause that Clinton promoted throughout her tenure was the adoption of
cookstoves in the developing world, to foster cleaner and more environmentally
sound food preparation and reduce smoke dangers to women.
In a 2009 internal Obama administration debate regarding the
War in Afghanistan, Clinton sided
with the military's recommendations for a maximal "Afghanistan surge", recommending 40,000 troops and no
public deadline for withdrawal. She prevailed over Vice President Joe Biden's opposition but eventually supported
Obama's compromise plan to send an additional 30,000 troops and tie the surge
to a timetable for eventual withdrawal.
In March 2009, Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a "reset button" symbolizing U.S. attempts to rebuild ties
with that country under its new president, Dmitry
Medvedev. The policy, which became known as the Russian reset, led to
improved cooperation in several areas during Medvedev's presidency Relations
between the United States and Russia, however, would decline considerably,
after Medvedev's presidency ended in 2012 and Vladimir Putin's returned to the Russian presidency.
In October 2009, on a trip to Switzerland, Clinton's
intervention overcame last-minute snafues and managed to secure the final
signing of an historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic
relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations. Beginning
in 2010, she helped organize a diplomatic isolation and international sanctions
regime against Iran, in an effort to force curtailment of that country's
nuclear program; this would eventually lead to the multinational Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action being
agreed to in 2015.
In a prepared speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies
between the Iron Curtain and the
free and unfree Internet, which marked the first time that a senior American
government official had clearly defined the Internet as a key element of
American foreign policy.
In July 2010, she visited South Korea, where she and Cheryl Mills successfully worked to
convince SAE-A, a large apparel subcontractor, to invest in Haiti despite the
company's deep concerns about plans to raise the minimum wage. This tied into
the "build back better"
program initiated by her husband after he was named the UN Special Envoy to Haiti in 2009 following a tropical storm season
that caused $1 billion in damages to Haiti.
The 2011 Egyptian protests posed the most challenging
foreign policy crisis yet for the Obama administration. Clinton's public
response quickly evolved from an early assessment that the government of Hosni
Mubarak was "stable", to a
stance that there needed to be an "orderly
transition [to] a democratic participatory government", to a
condemnation of violence against the protesters. Obama came to rely upon
Clinton's advice, organization and personal connections in the behind-the-scenes
response to developments. As Arab Spring protests spread throughout the region,
Clinton was at the forefront of a U.S. response that she recognized was
sometimes contradictory, backing some regimes while supporting protesters
against others.
As the Libyan Civil
War took place, Clinton's shift in favor of military intervention aligned
her with Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice
and National Security Council figure
Samantha Power. This was a key turning point in overcoming internal
administration opposition from Defense
Secretary Gates, security advisor Thomas
E. Donilon and counterterrorism advisor John Brennan in gaining the backing for, and Arab and U.N. approval
of, the 2011 military intervention in Libya. Secretary Clinton testified to
Congress that the administration did not need congressional authorization for
its military intervention in Libya, despite objections from some members of
both parties that the administration was violating the War Powers Resolution. The State Department's legal advisor argued
the same point when the Resolution's 60-day limit for unauthorized wars was
passed (a view that prevailed in a legal debate within the Obama
administration). Clinton later used U.S. allies and what she called "convening power" to promote
unity among the Libyan rebels as they eventually overthrew the Gaddafi regime.
The aftermath of the Libyan Civil War
saw the country becoming a failed state. The wisdom of the intervention and
interpretation of what happened afterward would become the subject of considerable
debate.
During April 2011, internal deliberations of the president's
innermost circle of advisors over whether to order U.S. special forces to
conduct a raid into Pakistan against Osama
bin Laden, Clinton was among those who argued in favor, saying the
importance of getting bin Laden outweighed the risks to the U.S. relationship
with Pakistan. Following the completion of the mission on May 2 resulting in
bin Laden's death, Clinton played a key role in the administration's decision
not to release photographs of the dead al-Qaeda leader. During internal
discussions regarding Iraq in 2011, Clinton argued for keeping a residual force
of up to 10,000–20,000 U.S. troops there. (All of them ended up being withdrawn
after negotiations for a revised U.S.–Iraq
Status of Forces Agreement failed.)
In a speech before the United
Nations Human Rights Council in December 2011, Clinton said that, "Gay rights are human rights",
and that the U.S. would advocate for gay rights and legal protections of gay
people abroad. The same period saw her overcome internal administration
opposition with a direct appeal to Obama and stage the first visit to Burma by
a U.S. secretary of state since 1955. She met with Burmese leaders as well as
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
and sought to support the 2011 Burmese democratic reforms. She also said the
21st century would be "America's
Pacific century", a declaration that was part of the Obama administration's
"pivot to Asia".
During the Syrian
Civil War, Clinton and the Obama administration initially sought to
persuade Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to engage popular demonstrations with
reform. As government violence allegedly rose in August 2011, they called for
him to resign from the presidency. The administration joined several countries
in delivering non-lethal assistance to so-called rebels opposed to the Assad
government and humanitarian groups working in Syria. During mid-2012, Clinton
formed a plan with CIA Director David
Petraeus to further strengthen the opposition by arming and training vetted
groups of Syrian rebels. The proposal was rejected by White House officials who
were reluctant to become entangled in the conflict, fearing that extremists
hidden among the rebels might turn the weapons against other targets.
In December 2012, Clinton was hospitalized for a few days
for treatment of a blood clot in her right transverse venous sinus. Her doctors
had discovered the clot during a follow-up examination for a concussion she had
sustained when she fainted and fell nearly three weeks earlier, as a result of
severe dehydration from a viral intestinal ailment acquired during a trip to
Europe. The clot, which caused no immediate neurological injury, was treated
with anti-coagulant medication, and her doctors have said she has made a full
recovery.
Overall themes
Throughout her time in office (and mentioned in her final
speech concluding it), Clinton viewed "smart
power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values. In a
world of varied threats, weakened central governments and increasingly
important nongovernmental entities, smart power combined military hard power
with diplomacy and U.S. soft power capacities in global economics, development
aid, technology, creativity and human rights advocacy. As such, she became the
first secretary of state to methodically implement the smart power approach. In
debates over use of military force, she was generally one of the more hawkish
voices in the administration. In August 2011 she hailed the ongoing
multinational military intervention in Libya and the initial U.S. response
towards the Syrian Civil War as
examples of smart power in action.
Clinton greatly expanded the State Department's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to get its message out and to help empower citizens of
foreign countries vis-à-vis their governments. And in the Mideast turmoil,
Clinton particularly saw an opportunity to advance one of the central themes of
her tenure, the empowerment and welfare of women and girls worldwide. Moreover,
in a formulation that became known as the "Hillary
Doctrine", she viewed women's rights as critical for U.S. security
interests, due to a link between the level of violence against women and gender
inequality within a state, and the instability and challenge to international security
of that state. In turn, there was a trend of women around the world finding
more opportunities, and in some cases feeling safer, as the result of her
actions and visibility.
Clinton visited 112 countries during her tenure, making her
the most widely traveled secretary of state (Time magazine wrote that "Clinton's endurance is
legendary".) The first secretary of state to visit countries like Togo
and East Timor, she believed that in-person visits were more important than
ever in the virtual age. As early as March 2011, she indicated she was not
interested in serving a second term as secretary of state should Obama be
re-elected in 2012; in December 2012, following that re-election, Obama
nominated Senator John Kerry to be
Clinton's successor. Her last day as secretary of state was February 1, 2013.
Upon her departure, analysts commented that Clinton's tenure did not bring any
signature diplomatic breakthroughs as some other secretaries of state had
accomplished, and highlighted her focus on goals she thought were less tangible
but would have more lasting effect. She has also been criticized for accepting
millions in dollars in donations from foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation during her tenure as
Secretary of State.
Benghazi attack and
subsequent hearings
On September 11, 2012, the U.S. diplomatic mission in
Benghazi, Libya, was attacked, resulting in the deaths of the U.S. Ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens
and three other Americans. The attack, questions surrounding the security of
the U.S. consulate, and the varying explanations given afterward by
administration officials for what had happened became politically controversial
in the U.S. On October 15, Clinton took responsibility for the question of
security lapses saying the differing explanations were due to the inevitable
fog of war confusion after such events.
On December 19, a panel led by Thomas R. Pickering and Michael
Mullen issued its report on the matter. It was sharply critical of State Department officials in
Washington for ignoring requests for more guards and safety upgrades and for
failing to adapt security procedures to a deteriorating security environment.
It focused its criticism on the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; four
State Department officials at the assistant secretary level and below were
removed from their posts as a consequence. Clinton said she accepted the
conclusions of the report and that changes were underway to implement its
suggested recommendations.
Clinton gave testimony to two congressional foreign affairs
committees on January 23, 2013, regarding the Benghazi attack. She defended her
actions in response to the incident, and while still accepting formal
responsibility, said she had had no direct role in specific discussions
beforehand regarding consulate security. Congressional
Republicans challenged her on several points, to which she responded. In
particular, after persistent questioning about whether or not the
administration had issued inaccurate "talking
points" after the attack, Clinton responded with the much-quoted
rejoinder, "With all due respect,
the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it
because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they'd they go kill
some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to
figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening
again, Senator." In November 2014, the House Intelligence Committee issued a report that concluded there
had been no wrongdoing in the administration's response to the attack.
The Republican-led
House Select Committee on Benghazi was created in May 2014 and conducted a
two-year investigation related to the 2012 attack. The committee was criticized
as partisan, including by one of its ex-staffers. Some Republicans admitted
that the committee aimed to lower Clinton's poll numbers. On October 22, 2015,
Clinton testified at an all-day and nighttime session before the committee.
Clinton was widely seen as emerging largely unscathed from the hearing, because
of what the media perceived as a calm and unfazed demeanor and a lengthy,
meandering, repetitive line of questioning from the committee. The committee
issued competing final reports in June 2016; the Republican report offered no
evidence of culpability by Clinton.
Email controversy
During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton conducted
official business exclusively through her private email server, as opposed to
her government email account. Some experts, officials, members of Congress and
political opponents contended that her use of private messaging system software
and a private server violated State
Department protocols and procedures, and federal laws and regulations
governing recordkeeping requirements. The controversy occurred against the
backdrop of Clinton's 2016 presidential election campaign and hearings held by
the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
In a joint statement released on July 15, 2015, the
inspector general of the State Department
and the inspector general of the intelligence community said their review of
the emails found information that was classified when sent, remained so at the
time of their inspection and "never
should have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system". They
also stated unequivocally this classified information should never have been
stored outside of secure government computer systems. Clinton had said over a
period of months that she kept no classified information on the private server
that she set up in her house. Government policy, reiterated in the
nondisclosure agreement signed by Clinton as part of gaining her security
clearance, is that sensitive information can be considered as classified even
if not marked as such. After allegations were raised that some of the emails in
question fell into the so-called "born
classified" category, an FBI probe was initiated regarding how
classified information was handled on the Clinton server. The New York Times reported in February
2016 that nearly 2,100 emails stored on Clinton's server were retroactively
marked classified by the State Department. Additionally, the intelligence
community's inspector general wrote Congress to say that some of the emails "contained classified State Department
information when originated". In May 2016, the inspector general of
the State Department criticized her
use of a private email server while secretary of state, stating that she had
not requested permission for this and would not have received it if she had
asked.
Clinton maintained she did not send or receive any emails
from her personal server that were confidential at the time they were sent. In
a Democratic debate with Bernie Sanders
on February 4, 2016, Clinton said, "I
never sent or received any classified material—they are retroactively
classifying it." On July 2, 2016, Clinton stated: "Let me repeat what I have repeated for many months now, I never
received nor sent any material that was marked classified."
On July 5, 2016, the FBI concluded its investigation. In a
statement, FBI director James Comey
said:
110 e-mails in 52
e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified
information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains
contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains
contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential
information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those,
about 2,000 additional e-mails were "up-classified" to make them
Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the
e-mails were sent.
Out of 30,000, three emails were found to be marked as
classified, although they lacked classified headers and were marked only with a
small "c" in parentheses,
described as "portion markings"
by Comey. He also said it was possible Clinton was not "technically sophisticated" enough to understand what the
three classified markings meant. The probe found Clinton used her personal
email extensively while outside the United States, both sending and receiving
work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Comey
acknowledged that it was "possible
that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email
account". He added that "[although]
we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues
intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,
there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very
sensitive, highly classified information". Nevertheless, Comey
asserted that "no reasonable
prosecutor" would bring criminal charges in this case, despite the
existence of "potential violations
of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information". The
FBI recommended that the Justice Department decline to prosecute. On July 6,
2016, U.S. Attorney General Loretta
Lynch confirmed that the probe into Clinton's use of private email servers
would be closed without criminal charges.
Two weeks before the election, on October 28, 2016, Comey
notified Congress that the FBI had begun looking into newly discovered Clinton
emails. On November 6, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had not changed the
conclusion it had reached in July. The notification was later cited by Clinton
as a factor in her loss in the 2016 presidential election. The emails
controversy received more media coverage than any other topic during the 2016
presidential election.
The State Department
finished its internal review in September 2019. It found that Clinton's use of
a personal email server increased the risk of information being compromised,
but concluded there was no evidence of "systemic,
deliberate mishandling of classified information".
Clinton Foundation,
Hard Choices, and speeches
When Clinton left the State
Department, she returned to private life for the first time in thirty
years. She and her daughter joined her husband as named members of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton
Foundation in 2013. There she focused on early childhood development efforts,
including an initiative called Too Small
to Fail and a $600 million initiative to encourage the enrollment of girls
in secondary schools worldwide, led by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
In 2014, Clinton published a second memoir, Hard Choices, which focused on her time
as secretary of state. As of July 2015, the book has sold about 280,000 copies.
Clinton also led the No
Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to
gather and study data on the progress of women and girls around the world since
the Beijing conference in 1995; its March 2015 report said that while "There has never been a better time in
history to be born a woman ... this data shows just how far we still have to go."
The foundation began accepting new donations from foreign governments, which it
had stopped doing while she was secretary of state. However, even though the
Clinton Foundation had stopped taking donations from foreign governments, they
continued to take large donations from foreign citizens who were sometimes linked
to their governments.
She began work on another volume of memoirs and made
appearances on the paid speaking circuit. There she received $200,000–225,000
per engagement, often appearing before Wall Street firms or at business
conventions. She also made some unpaid speeches on behalf of the foundation.
For the fifteen months ending in March 2015, Clinton earned over $11 million
from her speeches. For the overall period 2007–14, the Clintons earned almost
$141 million, paid some $56 million in federal and state taxes and donated about
$15 million to charity. As of 2015, she was estimated to be worth over $30
million on her own, or $45–53 million with her husband.
Clinton resigned from the board of the Clinton Foundation in April 2015, when she began her presidential
campaign. The foundation said it would accept new foreign governmental
donations from six Western nations only.
2016 presidential
campaign
On April 12, 2015, Clinton formally announced her candidacy
for the presidency in the 2016 election. She had a campaign-in-waiting already
in place, including a large donor network, experienced operatives and the Ready for Hillary and Priorities USA Action
political action committees and other infrastructure. Prior to her campaign,
Clinton had claimed in an interview on NDTV in May 2012 that she would not seek
the presidency again, but later wrote in her 2014 autobiography Hard Choices that she had not decided.
The campaign's headquarters were established in the New York City borough of
Brooklyn. Her campaign focused on: raising middle class incomes, establishing
universal preschool, making college more affordable and improving the Affordable Care Act. Initially
considered a prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, Clinton
faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from democratic socialist Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont. His longtime stance against the influence of corporations
and the wealthy in American politics resonated with a dissatisfied citizenry
troubled by the effects of income inequality in the U.S. and contrasted with Clinton's Wall Street ties.
In the initial contest of the primaries season, Clinton only
very narrowly won the Iowa Democratic caucuses, held February 1, over increasingly
popular Sanders — the first woman to win them. In the first primary, held in
New Hampshire on February 9, she lost to Sanders by a wide margin. Sanders was
an increasing threat in the next contest, the Nevada caucuses on February 20,
but Clinton managed a five-percentage-point win, aided by final-days campaigning
among casino workers. Clinton followed that with a lopsided victory in the
South Carolina primary on February 27. These two victories stabilized her
campaign and showed an avoidance of the management turmoil that harmed her 2008
effort.
On March 1 Super
Tuesday, Clinton won seven of eleven contests, including a string of
dominating victories across the South buoyed, as in South Carolina, by
African-American voters. She opened up a significant lead in pledged delegates
over Sanders. She maintained this delegate lead across subsequent contests
during the primary season, with a consistent pattern throughout. Sanders did
better among younger, whiter, more rural and more liberal voters and states that
held caucuses or where eligibility was open to independents. Clinton did better
among older, black and Hispanic voter populations, and in states that held
primaries or where eligibility was restricted to registered Democrats.
By June 5, 2016, she had earned enough pledged delegates and
supportive superdelegates for the media to consider her the presumptive
nominee. On June 7, after winning most of the states in the final major round
of primaries, Clinton held a victory rally in Brooklyn becoming the first woman
to claim the status of presumptive nominee for a major American political
party. By campaign's end, Clinton had won 2,219 pledged delegates to Sanders'
1,832; with an estimated 594 superdelegates compared to Sanders' 47. She
received almost 17 million votes during the nominating process, as opposed to
Sanders' 13 million.
Clinton was formally nominated at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 26,
2016, becoming the first woman to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political
party. Her choice of vice presidential running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, was
nominated by the convention the following day. Her opponents in the general
election included Republican Donald
Trump, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill
Stein of the Green Party. Around the time of the convention, WikiLeaks released emails that
suggested the DNC and the Clinton campaign tilted the primary in Clinton's
favor.
Clinton held a significant lead in national polls over Trump
throughout most of 2016. In early July, Trump and Clinton were tied in major
polls following the FBI's conclusion of its investigation into her emails. FBI Director James Comey concluded
Clinton had been "extremely
careless" in her handling of classified government material. In late
July, Trump gained his first lead over Clinton in major polls following a three
to four percentage point convention bounce at the Republican National Convention. This was in line with the average
bounce in conventions since 2004, although it was toward the low side by historical
standards. Following Clinton's seven percentage point convention bounce at the Democratic National Convention, she
regained a significant lead in national polls at the start of August. In fall
2016, Clinton and Tim Kaine
published Stronger Together, which
outlined their vision for the United States.
Clinton was defeated by Donald
Trump in the November 8, 2016, presidential election. By the early morning
hours of November 9, Trump had received 279 projected Electoral College votes, with 270 needed to win; media sources
proclaimed him the winner. Clinton then phoned Trump to concede and to
congratulate him on his victory, whereupon Trump gave his victory speech. The
next morning Clinton made a public concession speech in which she acknowledged
the pain of her loss, but called on her supporters to accept Trump as their
next president, saying: "We owe him
an open mind and a chance to lead." Though Clinton lost the election
by capturing only 232 electoral votes to Trump's 306, she won the popular vote
by more than 2.8 million votes, or 2.1% of the voter base. She is the fifth
presidential candidate in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose the
election. She won the most votes of any candidate who did not take office and
the third-most votes of any candidate in history, though she did not have the
greatest percentage win of a losing candidate. (Andrew Jackson won the popular vote by 10.4% but lost to John Quincy Adams).
On December 19, 2016, when electors formally voted, Clinton
lost five of her initial 232 votes due to faithless electors, with three of her
Washington votes being cast instead for Colin
Powell, one being cast for Faith
Spotted Eagle, and one in Hawaii being cast for Bernie Sanders.
Post-2016 election
activities
Clinton attended the inauguration of Donald Trump, writing on her Twitter
account, "I'm here today to honor
our democracy & its enduring values, I will never stop believing in our
country & its future."
Clinton delivered a St.
Patrick's Day speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 2017. In it,
alluding to reports that she had been seen taking walks in the woods around
Chappaqua following her loss in the presidential election, Clinton indicated
her readiness to emerge from "the
woods" and become politically active again. However, the following
month she confirmed she would not seek public office again. She reiterated her
comments in March 2019 and stated she would not run for president in 2020.
In May 2017, Clinton announced the formation of Onward Together, a new political action
committee that she wrote is "dedicated
to advancing the progressive vision that earned nearly 66 million votes in the
last election". Clinton has also made occasional comments on political
issues in the time since losing her presidential campaign, and a "shameful failure of policy &
morality by GOP", even authoring several op-eds.
On April 28, 2020, Clinton endorsed the presumptive
Democratic nominee, former Vice
President Joe Biden, for president in the 2020 election and she addressed
the 2020 Democratic National Convention
in August.
Clinton has authored several books since her 2016 defeat. In
September 2017, Clinton's third memoir, What Happened, was published the same
day, a picture book adaption of her 1996 book It Takes a Village was also published. Marla Frazee was the illustrator. Clinton had worked on it with
Frazee during her 2016 presidential election campaign. Clinton and her daughter
Chelsea co-authored the 2019 book The
Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience. Clinton
co-wrote her first fiction book with Louise
Penny. The book, a political mystery thriller, is titled State of Terror and was released in
October 2021.
Clinton has also been involved in a number of media
ventures. Clinton collaborated with director Nanette Burstein on the documentary film Hillary, which was released
on Hulu in March 2020. On September 29, 2020, Clinton launched an interview
podcast in collaboration with iHeartRadio titled You and Me Both. She has also produced television series, so far
being a producer on the Apple TV+ series Gutsy and the upcoming The CW adaption
of The Woman's Hour.
On January 2, 2020, it was announced that Clinton would take
up the position of Chancellor at Queen's University Belfast. Clinton
became the 11th and first female chancellor of the university, filling the
position that had been vacant since 2018 after the death of her predecessor, Thomas J. Moran.
In January 2023, Columbia
University announced that Clinton would join the university as professor of
practice at the School of International
and Public Affairs and as a presidential fellow at Columbia World Projects.
Political positions
Using her Senate votes, several organizations have attempted
to measure Clinton's place on the political spectrum scientifically. National Journal's 2004 study of
roll-call votes assigned Clinton a rating of 30 on the political spectrum,
relative to the Senate at the time, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100
being most conservative. National Journal's subsequent rankings placed her as
the 32nd-most liberal senator in 2006 and 16th-most liberal senator in 2007. A
2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University and Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University found her likely to be the sixth-to-eighth-most
liberal senator. The Almanac of American
Politics, edited by Michael Barone
and Richard E. Cohen, rated her
votes from 2003 through 2006 as liberal on economics, social issues, and
foreign policy. According to FiveThirtyEight's
measure of political ideology,
"Clinton was one of the most liberal members during her time in the Senate."
Organizations have also attempted to provide more recent
assessments of Clinton after she reentered elective politics in 2015. Based on
her stated positions from the 1990s to the present, On the Issues places her in
the "Left Liberal" region
on their two-dimensional grid of social and economic ideologies, with a social
score of 80 on a scale of zero more-restrictive to 100 less-government stances,
with an economic score of ten on a scale of zero more-restrictive to 100
less-government stances. Crowdpac,
which does a data aggregation of campaign contributions, votes and speeches,
gives her a 6.5L rating on a one-dimensional left-right scale from 10L (most
liberal) to 10C (most conservative).
Economics
In March 2016, Clinton laid out a detailed economic plan,
which The New York Times called "optimistic" and "wide-ranging". Basing her
economic philosophy on inclusive capitalism, Clinton proposed a "clawback" that would rescind
tax relief and other benefits for companies that move jobs overseas; providing
incentives for companies that share profits with employees, communities and the
environment, rather than focusing on short-term profits to increase stock value
and rewarding shareholders; increasing collective bargaining rights; and
placing an "exit tax" on
companies that move their headquarters out of America to pay a lower tax rate
overseas.
Domestic policy
Clinton accepts the scientific consensus on climate change and
supports cap-and-trade, and opposed the Keystone
XL pipeline. She supported "equal
pay for equal work", to address current shortfalls in how much women
are paid to do the same jobs men do. Clinton has explicitly focused on family
issues and supports universal preschool. These programs would be funded by
proposing tax increases on the wealthy, including a "fair share surcharge". Clinton supported the Affordable Care Act and would have
added a "public option"
that competed with private insurers and enabled people "50 or 55 and up" to buy into Medicare.
LGBT rights
Clinton supports the right to same-sex marriage, a position
that has developed throughout her political career. In 2000, she was against
such marriages altogether. In 2006, she said only that she would support a
state's decision to permit same-sex marriages, but opposed federally amending
the Constitution to permit same-sex marriage. While running for president in
2007, she again reiterated her opposition to same-sex marriage, although expressed
her support of civil unions. 2013 marked the first time that Clinton expressed
support for a national right to same-sex marriage. In 2000, she was the first
spouse of a U.S. president to march in an LGBT pride parade. In 2016, she was
the first major-party presidential candidate ever to write an op-ed for an LGBT
newspaper, the Philadelphia Gay News.
Immigration
Clinton held that allowing undocumented immigrants to have a
path to citizenship "[i]s at its
heart a family issue", and expressed support for Obama's Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program,
which would allow up to five million undocumented immigrants to gain deferral
of deportation and authorization to legally work in the United States. However,
in 2014, Clinton stated that unaccompanied children crossing the border "should be sent back." She
opposed and criticized Trump's call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering
the United States.
Foreign policy
On foreign affairs, Clinton voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force
Against Iraq in October 2002, a vote she later "regretted". She favored arming Syria's rebel fighters in
2012 and has called for the removal of Syrian
president Bashar al-Assad. She supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in
1999 and the NATO-led military intervention in Libya to oust former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Clinton is in favor of maintaining American influence in the Middle East. She
has told the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, "America
can't ever be neutral when it comes to Israel's security and survival." Clinton
expressed support for Israel's right to defend itself during the 2006 Lebanon War and 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. In a 2017
interview, after a poison gas attack in Syria, Clinton said that she had
favored more aggressive action against Bashar
al-Assad: "I think we should
have been more willing to confront Assad. I really believe we should have and
still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use
them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them."
Religious views
Clinton has been a lifelong Methodist, and has been part of United Methodist Church congregations
throughout her life. She has publicly discussed her Christian faith on several
occasions, although seldom while campaigning. Professor Paul Kengor, author of God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, has suggested that
Clinton's political positions are rooted in her faith. She often expresses a
maxim often attributed to John Wesley: "Do
all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can."
Cultural and
political image
Clinton worked at Rose
Law Firm for fifteen years. Her professional career and political
involvement set the stage for public reaction to her as the first lady.
Over a hundred books and scholarly works have been written
about Clinton. A 2006 survey by the New
York Observer found "a virtual
cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton
literature" put out by Regnery
Publishing and other conservative imprints. Some titles include Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White
House, Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the
White House and Can She Be Stopped?: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President
of the United States Unless ... Books praising Clinton did not sell nearly
as well (other than her memoirs and those of her husband). When she ran for
Senate in 2000, several fundraising groups such as Save Our Senate and the Emergency
Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton sprang up to oppose her. Don Van Natta found that Republican and
conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters, on a par
with Ted Kennedy, and the equivalent
of Democratic and liberal appeals mentioning Newt Gingrich.
Clinton has also been featured in the media and popular culture
in a wide spectrum of perspectives. In 1995, writer Todd S. Purdum of The New
York Times characterized Clinton as a Rorschach test, an assessment echoed
at the time by feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan, who said, "Coverage
of Hillary Clinton is a massive Rorschach test of the evolution of women in our
society." She has been the subject of many satirical impressions on Saturday Night Live, beginning with her
time as the first lady. She has made guest appearances on the show herself, in
2008 and in 2015, to face-off with her doppelgängers. Jonathan Mann wrote songs about her including "The Hillary Shimmy Song", which went viral.
She has often been described in the popular media as a
polarizing figure, though some argue otherwise. In the early stages of her 2008
presidential campaign, a Time magazine cover showed a large picture of her with
two checkboxes labeled "Love
Her", "Hate Her". Mother Jones titled its profile of her "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary". Following
Clinton's "choked up moment"
and related incidents in the run-up to the January 2008 New Hampshire primary,
both The New York Times and Newsweek found that discussion of gender's role in
the campaign had moved into the national political discourse. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham summed up the relationship between Clinton and the
American public by saying the New Hampshire events, "brought an odd truth to light: though Hillary Rodham Clinton has
been on the periphery or in the middle of national life for decades ... she is
one of the most recognizable but least understood figures in American politics".
Once she became secretary of state, Clinton's image seemed
to improve dramatically among the American public and become one of a respected
world figure. Her favorability ratings dropped, however, after she left office
and began to be viewed in the context of partisan politics once more. By
September 2015, with her 2016 presidential campaign underway and beset by
continued reports regarding her private email usage at the State Department, her ratings had slumped to some of her lowest
levels ever. In March 2016, she acknowledged that: "I'm not a natural politician, in case you haven't noticed."
In September 2022, Clinton discussed the evolution of her
trademark pantsuits. She noted that she began wearing them because of "suggestive" photos taken
during a trip to Brazil in 1995 that showed her underwear when she was seated
that ended up being used in an ad for lingerie company DuLoren. The ad was supposedly meant as a compliment but ended up
being pulled once the American embassy complained.
Books and recordings
It Takes a Village:
And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (1996). Clinton received the Grammy
Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 1997 for the book's audio recording.
Dear Socks, Dear
Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets (1998)
An Invitation to the
White House: At Home with History (2000)
Living History
(Simon & Schuster, 2003). The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction
work, went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following
publication, and was translated into twelve foreign languages.
Hard Choices
(2014). As of July 2015 The book has sold about 280,000 copies.
With Tim Kaine,
Stronger Together (2016)
What Happened
(Simon & Schuster, 2017, in print, e-book, and audio read by the author)
With Chelsea Clinton,
The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories
of Courage and Resilience (Simon & Schuster, 2019, in print, e-book,
and audio)
With Louise Penny,
State of Terror (Simon & Schuster & St. Martin's Press, 2021).
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