Blumenthal Karen - Hillary Rodham Clinton: a woman living history

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To Abby

During the blistering primary battles against U.S. Senator Barack Obama, Hillary drew an enthusiastic crowd in Fort Worth, Texas.

Generally, the subject of a biography is referred to by last name throughout. But keeping Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton distinct from each other in a text is tricky because they share a surname. Adding titles is also messy: Mrs. or Ms.? President? Senator? Secretary? Too often, this challenge is resolved by calling a woman by her first name and a man by his last, but that is a poor solution that isnt acceptable here.

As a result, for simplicity and clarity, Hillary Rodham Clinton is called Hillary on second reference and Bill Clinton is called Bill. No disrespect is intended.

In losing, Hillary Rodham Clinton gave perhaps the best speech of her life.

For more than a year, she had debated, glad-handed, flown, phoned, conferenced, preached, pleaded, promised, speechified, scraped, and scrambled in her quest for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. She had started out as the front-runner and then lost ground to a youthful and charismatic senator from IllinoisBarack Obama. She had won close to 18 million votes.

But that wasnt enough. Obama had finally clinched the nomination.

On June 7, 2008, the former First Lady stood before a jam-packed audience to say thank you to her supporters and to endorse her opponent. This isnt exactly the party Id planned, she told them, but I sure like the company.

She told the crowd that she had run because I have an old-fashioned conviction that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams.

She counseled her supporters not to wonder what if? Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward, she said. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been.

And though she fell short of her goals, she urged her followers to pursue their own. Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in, she said. And when you stumble, keep faith. And when youre knocked down, get right back up, and never listen to anyone who says you cant or shouldnt go on.

Supporters from around the country fill the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., for Hillarys 2008 concession speech and final rally.

Throughout her campaign, she had avoided talk about her historic role as the first woman in American history to win a binding primary and the first to come oh-so-close to the nomination. She would say that she was running as a candidate, not as a woman. But not today.

When we first started, people everywhere asked the same questions. Could a woman really serve as commander in chief? she asked. Well, I think we answered that one.

She acknowledged that women still face barriers and bias because of their sex. But she hoped that in future campaigns, no one would marvel at the idea that women could compete and win.

Although we werent able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, she told them, thanks to you, its got about eighteen million cracks in it.

Following that rough race, Hillary did something else: She turned a painful and very public loss into a win. Obama was so impressed with her smarts, her toughness, and her tenacity that he sought her for secretary of state after he was elected president.

It was a dramatic conversionbut not an unusual one. For much of her life, Hillary Rodham Clinton had been defying conventional wisdom, breaking barriers, and baffling even her closest friends with a bundle of personal contradictions.

As a promising young lawyer on the cusp of the womens movement, she chose a traditional path, following her future husband, Bill Clinton, to Arkansas. Once there, she broke new ground as a law-firm partner and as a most untraditional First Lady, first in the state and then in the White House. After the humiliation of Bills embarrassing sex scandal, she transformed herself again, becoming a senator from New Yorkand the first First Lady to run for and win political office.

Since becoming First Lady of the United States in 1993, she has been the Gallup Polls most admired woman in the United States nineteen times in twenty-two years, losing only to Mother Teresa (twice) and First Lady Laura Bush (once). As an advocate for international womens rights, she is admired around the world.

Hillarys husband, Bill Clinton; mother, Dorothy Rodham; and daughter, Chelsea, join the candidate before her 2008 concession speech.

Yet this supremely confident and strong woman has also made her share of very visible mistakes, giving her a reputation as secretive and arrogant. She is controversial and divisiveas reviled by some as she is respected by others. She turned into a fund-raising powerhouse for Democrats, and thenin that strange business that is politicsher name became a powerful fund-raising tool for Republicans who despise her.

For more than two decades, she has been in the public eye as much as any movie star, yet she remains intensely protective of her private life. She has never developed a good rapport with the media, but reporters cannot write or talk enough about her, her ambitions, her marriage, her pantsuits, and her hair. No other woman has been on as many covers of Time magazine as she has.

As the 2016 presidential election approached, she tried to defy one more convention. On April 12, 2015, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced she would run again for the nations highest office. At sixty-seven years old, she was again considered a front-runner in the race for the presidency.

After more than forty years in politics and public life, one question still remained: Who is she?

I have an old-fashioned conviction that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams.

Hillary as a toddler, in 1950.

The first child of Hugh Ellsworth Rodham and Dorothy Howell Rodham entered the world at more than eight pounds, a bigger-than-average bundle of joy.

Very mature upon birth, her mother joked.

Born October 26, 1947, the good-natured little girl was part of the baby boom that followed the end of World War II. Her parents named her Hillary Diane, a daring choice, since Hillary was generally considered a boys name at the time. Her mother liked it because it was unusual and sounded exotic.