After Weeks of Speculation, Hillary Accepts State Post
Barack Obama's former rival is named secretary of state.
Dec. 1, 2008— -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was tapped today by President-elect Barack Obama to be America's next top diplomat, just months after losing her own historic bid to become the first female president.
Before the Iowa Caucus last January, the former first lady was considered a front-runner for the Democratic nomination. She remained a viable candidate throughout a long, heated primary battle with Obama during which she won more votes than any female candidate for president before her.
During the primaries, Clinton and Obama fought each other over foreign policy, something the new administration will endeavor to avoid. The two battled in particular over the Iraq war. Though Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein in 2003, she would eventually denounce the war. Obama, who was not in the Senate at the time, opposed the war from the start.
Perhaps the most infamous episode during the campaign was when Clinton claimed in a speech that, on a trip to Bosnia in 1996, she had landed under "sniper fire." When video later showed Clinton and her daughter Chelsea walking calmly off the plane in Tuzla, she had to recant.
Her campaign finally ended in June and, though Clinton would appear together with Obama just weeks later, resentment among her supporters lingered through the Democratic convention in August.
Clinton has served as New York's junior senator since 2001. She won election immediately after her husband, former President Bill Clinton, concluded his second term in the White House. She won the seat, despite having never resided in the state prior to her campaign.
In the Senate, Clinton held seats on several committees, including Armed Services, the Budget, Health, and Environment and Public Works. She won re-election in 2006. As a senator, Clinton has traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan to get a first-hand look at U.S. military operations there. She is widely respected in defense and foreign policy circles.
Clinton was born Hillary Rodham in Illinois in 1947. She attended Wellesley College, an all-female college outside Boston, where she became the first student to deliver the school's commencement address at her 1969 graduation.