Hillary Clinton: Her Notable Moments

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/us/politics/hillary-clinton-moments.html

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The name Hillary Rodham first appeared in the pages of The New York Times 47 years ago, in a 1969 article about her commencement address at Wellesley, the women’s college in Massachusetts. It was five years before her husband, Bill Clinton, would be mentioned in The Times.

Since then, The Times has covered her rise, beginning with her role as a lawyer and governor’s wife who first gained the national spotlight in Arkansas. She then became an influential first lady, United States senator, secretary of state and presidential candidate (twice).

Here are some highlights from over the years.

The country wasn’t sure what to make of Mrs. Clinton when she first burst on the national stage during the 1992 presidential campaign. A product of the feminist movement who had followed her husband to Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton seemed to be breaking the mold of candidate’s wife. And yet, talk of her hairstyle still permeated many conversations … and has ever since.

Mrs. Clinton’s 1993 interview with The New York Times Magazine, in which she expounded on the “politics of meaning” and her Methodism and New Age beliefs, was met with widespread ridicule. It has often been cited as a reason for Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to discuss her spiritual side. She even resisted wearing white for years after the magazine’s cover portrayed her as a saintly figure.

Soon after her husband’s inauguration, Mrs. Clinton was appointed by the president as head of a task force on health care reform. It was her first time working to develop policy on a national stage, and it “ran into a political buzzsaw,” as The Times found in a 1994 post-mortem on what critics nicknamed Hillarycare.

Instead of cowering after a White House scandal broadcast Bill Clinton’s infidelities around the world, Mrs. Clinton did the opposite: She ran for the Senate in New York, subjecting herself to the harsh local tabloids. Her victory was the first time a first lady was elected to public office. (Never mind that she hadn’t been living in New York.)

As the first woman with a real shot at the presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton wasn’t sure how to approach gender. In her 2008 campaign, she emphasized strength and experience, often at the expense of warmth. The Times’s Mark Leibovich highlighted the few times she showed a softer side, as when she spoke at her friend Diane Blair’s funeral in 2000.

After Mrs. Clinton lost to Barack Obama, she surprised the nation again by accepting the position of secretary of state and diving into diplomatic work. Although her tenure is now marked by controversy over her email, in the period she served as the country’s top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton enjoyed some of her highest approval ratings. Gallup consistently named her the country’s most admired woman.

The image was of Mrs. Clinton’s facial features superimposed on a moon with the names of old Clinton friends, aides and hangers-on orbiting around her. It symbolized the challenges she would face as she considered another run for the presidency and how to organize the circle of people who hoped to tag along.

As issues of race and criminal justice dominated the 2016 contest, little-known parts of Mrs. Clinton’s biography began to form a central part of her campaign’s story. Mrs. Clinton declined to be interviewed about the time in 1972 when she went undercover to investigate “segregation academies” in the South. But after an article about it ran, she and Bill Clinton talked openly about this chapter in her life, including at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.