Hillary Rodham Clinton, The First Woman Who Got Closest to The Presidency in America

Abstract

This paper focuses on the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first female politi-cian who ran for presidential election of the United States in 2016. Based on the biograp-hies, autobiographies of Hillary Clinton, articles from academic journals and dailies pub-lished mostly in the last ten years, the paper comprehends the main characteristics of Clinton’s social and political life and highlights her leadership skills and obstacles she has ever encountered. Clinton, a lawyer by training, was an organizer ever since she was a child and a political actor since her college years. She was a First lady (January 1993 - January 2001), a senator from New York (2001 - 2009) and Secretary of State (2009 - 2013). She ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and then for the presidential race in 2016. She lost to Barack Obama and Donald Trump respectively. The fact that vo-ters looked for a change after an eight year democratic rule experience, the ongoing FBI investigations related to her use of a private email server when she was the secretary of state, her support of President George W. Bush’s Iraqi intervention, her supposed part in the killings of American citizens in Benghazi, and her gender were put forward as the main reasons why Clinton failed. No matter what the result is, Hillary Rodham Clinton did her best in trying to shatter the glass ceiling for women in politics.