Hillary Clinton is stepping over the White House threshold in yet another role.
observed that “our lives are a mixture of different roles” and said most people are trying to find the right balance.Clinton juggled those roles — and more — during eight years as first lady in the White House. She's returning Tuesday forIn her White House years, she was a wife, a mother and the nation’s hostess, but also a wronged spouse, the head of a national health care task force and on the cover of Vogue.
, an annual global arts prize for lifetime achievement by the Japan Art Association. Both women will deliver remarks.“I have to imagine she’s really looking forward to being back and being back with the Bidens, who she’s been close to for a long time,” said Lisa Caputo, who was Clinton’s White House press secretary.
Ellen Fitzpatrick, emeritus professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, said going back to the White House evokes memories for any former first lady. In his first year in office, President Clinton stood with his wife in the East Room and made her head of a national health care task force to bring health insurance to every American. No first lady had ever been responsible for shaping such major public policy. The work, largely done in secret, inevitably attracted criticism. The plan ultimately died without a vote in Congress.
Another notable White House image of the Clintons came in 1998 after the president's sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed. As the family kept plans for a two-week vacation on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, the Clintons walked across the South Lawn to the waiting helicopter with a teenaged Chelsea as a buffer between her parents.
After her husband was acquitted during a Senate impeachment trial in January 1999, she ran for and won a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2000, their final year in the White House. For a short period, she went about her duties as a freshman lawmaker while closing out her chapter as first lady.