(Washington) During her husband’s 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton observed that “our lives are a mixture of different roles” and said that most people were trying to find the right balance.
“For me, that balance is between family, work and service,” she said.
Mme Clinton juggled these roles — and more — during eight years as first lady in the White House. She returns Tuesday for her first public appearance in the building since the Obama years to express her love for the arts.
During her years in the White House, she was a wife, a mother and the nation’s hostess, but also an aggrieved wife, leading a national health care task force and covering “Vogue.” Over the next few years, she crossed the threshold of the White House as a visiting senator and Cabinet member, but never in the sought-after role of Madam President.
Early on as first lady, she held a rare press conference in which she was asked about the Clintons’ past real estate dealings, saying she had been “rezoned” out of her private sphere.
Former first lady and current first lady Jill Biden will appear together to announce the recipients of the Praemium Imperiale, an annual global art prize awarded by the Japan Art Association for lifetime achievement. The two women will give a speech.
His return will likely be emotional.
“I have to imagine that she’s really looking forward to being back and seeing the Bidens, who she’s been close to for a long time,” said Lisa Caputo, who was M’s press secretary.me Clinton at the White House.
A regular at the White House
Hillary Clinton made her first visits with her husband Bill Clinton, who served as governor of Arkansas from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, to the nation’s annual gubernatorial receptions.
She was a regular at the White House in her roles as a U.S. senator and secretary of state, a position that allowed her to occupy a permanent seat alongside the president at Cabinet meetings.
Twice, she sought the ultimate seat in the White House, campaigning in 2008 and again in 2016 to become the first woman elected president. She failed every time and kept her distance from the White House during the Trump era.
Ellen Fitzpatrick, professor emeritus of history at the University of New Hampshire, says a return to the White House brings back memories for any former first lady.
She recalled visiting Jacqueline Kennedy with her children years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The former first lady later wrote to President Richard Nixon in a thank you note that the day she had dreaded had turned out to be one of the most precious she had spent with her children.
“For Hillary herself, I’m sure it will be quite a moment to return,” said Ms.me Fitzpatrick, author of “The Highest Glass Ceiling,” a book about women running for president.
Mixed memories
Hillary Clinton has had good and bad memories at the White House.
“My eight years in the White House have tested my faith and my political beliefs, my marriage, and our nation’s Constitution,” she wrote in Living Historyhis first memoir.
“I have become a lightning rod for political and ideological battles over America’s future and a magnet for feelings, good and bad, about the choices and roles of women. »
During his first year in office, President Clinton stood with his wife in the East Room and appointed her to head a national health care task force aimed at providing health insurance to all Americans. No first lady had ever been responsible for developing such important public policy. The work, carried out largely in secret, inevitably attracted criticism. The project ultimately died without a vote in Congress.
In 1994, Mr.me Clinton had fielded questions for more than an hour in the East Room about his financial dealings in the Whitewater affair, an Arkansas real estate project in which the couple lost money and on which the federal authorities were investigating.
At one point during the press conference, she said: “I’ve always believed in a zone of privacy, and I told a friend the other day that after resisting for a long time, I had the impression of having been rezoned. »
The Lewinsky Affair
Another notable image of the Clintons in the White House emerged in 1998, after the president’s sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was revealed. As the family planned a two-week vacation to the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the Clintons walked across the South Lawn to the waiting helicopter with their teenage daughter, Chelsea, as a buffer between her parents.
Hillary Clinton was also present in the Roosevelt Room of the White House when the president told the nation, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” She went on national television and blamed their political problems on a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
His public approval ratings increased as his marital woes played out in public. She also became the first first lady to appear on the cover of “Vogue” magazine, wearing a long-sleeved black velvet dress and sitting on a red sofa in the Red Room of the White House.
Senator and Secretary of State
After her husband was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial in January 1999, she ran for and won a U.S. Senate seat in New York in 2000, their final year in the White House. For a short time, she served as a legislator, while closing her chapter as first lady.
When Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination to fellow Senator Barack Obama in 2008, he persuaded her to become his secretary of state. She was once again a regular presence at the White House, with a seat next to Mr. Obama at the Cabinet table. She features prominently in the famous photo of officials crowded into the situation room when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Tuesday will bring Hillary Clinton full circle. She and President Clinton first celebrated the Praemium Imperiale Awards at the White House in 1994. She is the United States’ international advisor for these awards.
