Happy Birthday Hillary Rodham Clinton

Former First Lady and junior Senator from New York, current Secretary of State of the United States Hillary Rodham Clinton (born this day in 1947) is often referred to as a polarizing figure; but why?

Obviously, any number of 'faults' can be attributed to her because she's a politician: that she has no opinions except those of her pollsters, that she does what she does because it's politically expedient (rather than personally meaningful to her), that she is coached and scripted to such a degree that a candid remark is as out of the question as a shag from Bill.

On all counts she is guilty of nothing that every other successful politician does (or ought to do), and in fact many of these qualities are (or ought to be) essential for a politician. After all, she's not elected to represent herself, but all her constituents, even those who did not vote for her.

It may be that she's a woman, and these are still misogynistic times; it may be that she came to her public role as a politician's wife (as First Lady of Arkansas, then of the United States) even though she was a successful lawyer first. Since the First Lady has no official role, the fact that she took on the urgently needed task of health care reform in 1993 rankled a considerable number of very powerful people, both in government and out, mainly since it looked (at first at least) as though she might actually succeed - much to the chagrin of vested interests opposed to publicly-funded health care.

In any event, corporate health care (aided and abetted by the machinery of government) chewed up and spat out whatever good she might have done for the health of the American poor, and she turned her attention elsewhere - namely to an unsuccessful but still meaningful run for the Presidency, which brought her to the very pinnacle of the Department of State, if it failed to provide her a triumphant return to the White House...
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