After she graduated from Wellesley, she went to Yale where she encountered a man who could be alternately considered an impasse and an impetus to her political career.
Bill Clinton, like most other Yale students who shared courses with Hillary Rodham, noticed her straight away and effectively stalked her around campus, trying to be noticed by her. But Hillary had her head down, her eyes on the prize—and he wasn’t it.
One day, after he’d spent the better part of it staring at Hillary from across the library, she stood up and strode purposefully over to him, exasperated. “If you’re going to keep staring at me then I’m going to keep looking back and I think we ought to know each other’s names.” So, she stuck out her hand and said, “I’m Hillary Rodham.”
Source: The Guardian
When asked about this piece of Rodham-Clinton lore, former President Bill Clinton has laughed, admitting that it was all true. He was “dumbstruck — I couldn’t think of my own name.” While Hillary figured out relatively soon that she was falling for the Southern, side-burned law student, once Clinton had nabbed the girl he’d been making eyes at, he realized just how much of a force to be reckoned with she was. They were already set to be a powerful law-practicing couple: while Hillary always operated at a highly analytical level, Bill could, when warranted, tap into his emotional reserves to be friendly and likable.
Source: Mother Jones
That being said, as much as Hillary liked Bill Clinton, she didn’t jump into committing to him, at the very least because above all else, Bill Clinton wanted to go home, to the South, and work there. He didn’t have his sights set so high as Washington D.C. He didn’t have dreams of the White House.
Source: Time
But she did. Even at twenty-five, she knew what she wanted. And slowly she began to realize that she wanted to be with someone who wanted it, too. Or someone who, at the very least, would let her get him there.
Once she arrived in Fayetteville, Arkansas to work alongside the man she had decided to marry, even if he didn’t know it yet, tensions flared. Those around him recognized that her goal was not just to marry him, but to get him the hell out of Arkansas. Even before they were married his reputation as a womanizer hounded not him, but her: she was the provincial “college girlfriend” and those in Clinton’s inner circle tutted her, making sure that she understood he’d have “a different woman every damn day” — and that was just part of his stratagem.
But, like many ill-fated romances, there was a chemistry between them that no one around them (either at the backyard barbeques or the political bullpen of his gubernatorial campaign headquarters) could deny. Still, Bill Clinton’s formidable mother, Virginia, had hoped he’d pursue a girl who could be a good wife. He was set on marrying a woman who would be a good coconspirator, a good political ally. So, he proposed to Hillary Rodham—not just a proposal of marriage, but a proposal of political promise: let’s run.
Source: US Magazine
But she didn’t jump to accept his proposal. He still wasn’t itching to leave Arkansas for D.C., and she was. In fact, she often did, traveling back East to see friends in New York, Boston, whenever she had the chance. While Hillary had broader political goals for herself, Bill’s were very specific—and very Southern.
Two months after he asked, she accepted, but stated that she didn’t want to make a big deal of it. She didn’t want a formal announcement or an engagement ring. Hillary planned a very small, intimate wedding at their house in Fayetteville, and bought her dress from a department store at the last minute. Their reception turned into a political pep rally, since most of their guests and friends were politicians. Paul Fray took Bill Clinton aside to warn him, rather ominously, that “Hillary Rodham will be your Waterloo.”
Source: The Boston Globe
For the next three decades, the Clintons ascended in the political sphere: Bill entered the White House in 1993, and Hillary announced her second bid for the presidency within the past several weeks. Almost fifty years ago, when Hillary Rodham was a nervous undergrad, she wrote to her friend John and said, “I wonder who is me. I wonder if I’ll ever meet her. If I did, I think we’d get along famously.”
Source: Blogspot
Twenty-something Hillary Rodham, sitting in her dorm at Wellesley, wondering who she was, who she would become, is an intriguing image, but a misleading one. We could imagine her sitting there, trying to picture herself in the Senate one day, in the White House, wondering if it was possible.
The truth is, she was never wondering if—but when.
