Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: First lady activism is conditioned by many factors on various different levels. There are personal, institutional, societal and public policy levels and many variables within each level that contribute to first lady activism or performance. Former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was one of the most active first ladies in modern memory. This article explores the genesis of her activism in the foreign policy realm. We first discuss the general factors that affect first lady performance. These factors are arranged in various variable sets. We then apply these sets to First Lady Clinton in order to gain some systematic understanding of her activism. With such insight we next discuss the most important of these variables which have affected First Lady Clinton’s activism in foreign policy.
Factors Affecting First Lady Performance
Historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony once noted concerning first ladies, “Only the First Lady and the president determine the extent of her power, though frequently she has operated without his knowledge or permission.” Modern day first ladies operate within a textured and complicated political environment composed of many variables that affect their power, influence and ultimately activism. These variables are not only personal in nature but also involve the administrative environment within the White House and the Office of the First Lady. The public and the political climate during a first lady’s tenure can also affect her performance.
A list of factors affecting first lady performance or activism can be gleaned from the literature on first ladies. There are a series of personal attributes that can affect performance. The various variables here are the first lady’s background, her ambition, vision and ideology. The first lady’s background consists of her personal, professional and educational background, general biographical information, e.g. employment history, schools attended, etc. A first lady’s ideology is developed from her background and consists of things like religious, moral and political views. Ambition and vision develop from a first lady’s background. There seems to be a correlation between ambition and vision and the first lady’s attitude toward her office which is in turn linked to performance and activism. Performance can be defined in terms of how active a first lady will in using her office to affect public policy. In a strict sense it is not only the first lady but others who have had an impact upon her in her formative years that affects future performance.
There are administrative variables that also affect performance. The resources defined as staff and budget in the Office of the First Lady as well as the location of the office and its relationship with the White House Office (highly integrated or barely integrated) set the stage for first lady performance. Resources can and may contribute toward increased activism as can the location of the first lady’s office near the center of the policy action. More important is the level of integration of these resources and personnel with that of the White House Office. In addition, a first lady develops a relationship with other governmental agencies which can also affect performance and activism.
How a first lady perceives issues can contribute to performance. Does she adopt a non-policy or pet projects, traditional issue oriented approach to her office or will she take a policy advocate oriented approach and tackle controversial issues? If she adopts the latter she will most likely increase her interaction with interest groups, legislative committees and bureaucratic agencies in pursuit of legislative success. If she adopts the former she will function as a spokesperson for charitable and social causes and mainly for the president’s agenda.
A first lady’s professional relationship with the president can largely impact her performance because a first lady’s performance is tempered by the president’s performance in office. This is especially the case with the present high level of integration between the two offices. The level of performance is also tempered by the level of support the first lady receives from the president. If, within the nature of their professional relationship, the president is supportive and encourages the first lady to take a more active approach she will be more inclined to perform a host of duties serving in capacities from hostess to diplomat. She will also function as an active partner, presidential spokesperson, political player and overall assistant to the president.
The public has an impact upon first lady performance. Variables such as events, the media’s interpretation of these events, public expectations, public opinion polls and public criticism and approval all affect the political climate within which a first lady operates. Each of these variables can cause a change in the others in an interrelated way. Events affect the political climate encountered by a first lady. These events may include social movements, tragedies like September 11, and crises. The media alerts the public to the significance of these events and thus has an effect upon the political climate. What the media chooses to report or how it reports can affect public expectations. These too can affect the political climate and first lady performance. The public expresses its opinion through public opinion polls and the result applied to first ladies is either public criticism or approval. Witness the different opinions of First Lady Hillary Clinton in the beginning of her tenure as opposed to those during the Lewinsky scandal.
One of the variables that might have an impact upon the public’s expectations of first ladies is their knowledge of the historic duties and roles of first ladies. What is the public learning about first ladies? This educational variable is important because it can affect public attitudes towards first ladies. In a study of American Government and Presidency textbooks Eksterowicz and Watson concluded:
Many of these texts portray the first lady as simply an appendage of the president. Her political agenda, duties and influence are ignored…. While a few texts do offer glimpses of first ladies’ efforts on behalf of social causes, none gives the students enough information to understand why or how they were able to accomplish what they did. Moreover, a listing of first ladies’ “pet projects” fails to capture the essence and range of activism and influence of the first ladyship.

The authors go on to suggest that American government and Presidency textbooks devote increased coverage to the first ladyship as an institution. This includes coverage of her roles and responsibilities.
The lack of coverage of first ladies, especially in higher education general liberal studies courses can lead to the lack of knowledge concerning the roles and responsibilities of first ladies. This in turn can affect public opinion and coverage of first ladies by the media. Where do we find the most coverage of first ladies in the popular newspaper press and magazines? The answer is in the style section of newspapers and in magazines such as Good Housekeeping. Such coverage can lead to simplistic public assessments of the first lady and her office. This in turn can affect the performance of first ladies in their office.
A graphic depiction of the above variables in various variable sets is provided in the appendix of this essay. We now turn to a general discussion of the variables as they apply to First Lady Clinton.
Variable Sets and First Lady Clinton
The personal attribute variable set forms the bedrock foundation for First Lady Clinton’s performance and activism. In her autobiography, Living History, Mrs. Clinton discusses her early foundations. She notes the importance of her family especially her father from whom she inherited a competitive nature. Her sense of optimism and vision for policy issues can be derived from this early life. In this respect her Methodist background contributed to the mixing of religious good with that of public policy. Mrs. Clinton often writes of good public policy as a sacred duty with religious and moral overtones. Her education, especially at Wellesley College mixed classroom experience with real world activism and jobs. Her dedication to women’s, civil and children’s rights were all formed long before she met Mr. Clinton. Her tireless efforts to these causes form the basis for her vision and her innate competitive desire contribute to her high ambition to continuously work on public policy issues. There are no better words that capture this ambition then those that changed her mind toward a Senate race, “Dare to compete.”
While Mrs. Clinton held the job of first lady she was intimately aware of the contributions of previous first ladies such as Lady Bird Johnson, Rosalyn Carter, and Nancy Reagan all of whom increased the size, prominence and power of the first lady’s office. Mrs. Clinton did her share to contribute to these trends. Mrs. Clinton was the first first lady to have her office in the West Wing but in addition she also had one in the Old Executive Office Building just down the hall from other offices in the president’s official West Wing office. Mrs. Clinton’s second Chief of Staff Melanne Verveer cautions against citing this geographical proximity to the President’s oval office alone as a factor of activism or influence. She indicated that such proximity was important because of the integration of the two offices on public policy issues. Mrs. Clinton echoed this observation when she noted, “… some of my staff would be part of the West Wing team. I thought they should be integrated physically as well… These physical and staff changes were important if I was going to be involved in working on Bill’s agenda, particularly as it related to issues affecting women, children and families.” Indeed her work on the Health Care Task Force was integrated with the White House. Mrs. Clinton’s work on this issue led to a federal court of appeals decision in Association of American Physicians and Surgeons v. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The court sided with the Clinton Justice Department’s argument suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was a government employee. This is the first formal court ruling on the position of the first lady and it will serve to advance the Office of the First Lady as an institution. It is also an example of how location of office, resources and integration with other governmental agencies (via health care task force work) and integration with the White House Office can facilitate first lady policy activism.
As former First Lady Clinton describes her commitment to issues of women’s, children’s and civil rights one can view an all encompassing dedication to governmental policies that affect these issues. Mrs. Clinton was and is involved in health care, adoption, mitigation of abuse, electoral rights and fetal issues for women and children. She describes herself as policy oriented and she has engaged in extensive contacts with legislators and has testified before the Congress as First Lady on these and other issues. On these issues she has formed alliances of power both inside and outside Washington. She has aligned herself with groups such as Vital Voices and the Children’s Defense Fund which are committed to these issues and causes. She has had her failures such as universal health care but also successes such as the C.H.I.P. program. All of these variables are predictive of strong and intense first lady activism.
Mrs. Clinton’s personal relationship with her husband, President Clinton helped a great deal in her issue advocacy. First, the Clinton Administration was an activist one. A great number of initiatives were placed on the policy agenda. Second, many of the First Lady’s issues were championed by President Clinton from health care for children to women’s rights. Therefore the President and First Lady were in policy synch. This partnership included First Lady Clinton campaigning vigorously for President Clinton while tending to her more domestic first lady duties. Thus the strength of the Clinton Presidency, policy synch and the professional partnership of the Clinton’s all contributed to an activist first ladyship.
First Lady Clinton describes her ups and downs and the difficulty of managing public expectations for first ladies in general. She was no exception to the rule. Others have discussed the difficulty of First Ladies managing what has come to be known as the public/private divide. It is safe to say that First Lady Clinton’s public expectations shifted dramatically during her tenure as did her public approval and criticism from both the media and public. However it is also fair to characterize these expectations as shifting from a traditional outlook for First Lady Clinton to a more activist one. In other words, the public came to expect a certain amount of advocacy from Mrs. Clinton because this is who she was. Eventually the public and media caught up to the reality. Mrs. Clinton’s public approval ratings were quite high at the end of her term. Thus as the Clinton Presidency evolved so to did the public’s expectation concerning First Lady Clinton’s issue advocacy. Whether she changed the political climate or events such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the opposition to President Clinton (most notably the impeachment attempt) changed the climate remains an open question. Perhaps a fair answer would be a little bit of both. Nevertheless, there was increasing support for first lady activism as the Clinton Administration proceeded. Mrs. Clinton was one of the most active modern first ladies in the foreign policy area. It is our contention that many of the above factors or variables played a significant role in her foreign policy activism.

Mrs. Clinton’s Foreign Policy Activism


Hilary Rodham Clinton’s first trip abroad as first lady was accompanying President Bill Clinton to the G-7 economic summit in Japan in July 1993. In early 1994 she made her first official trip abroad without the president leading the American delegation to the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Later that year, in May, the first lady joined Vice President Al Gore as a last minute replacement for the president as a member of the U.S. delegation to the presidential inauguration of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. March 1995 would see Hilary Rodham Clinton take her first extended trip abroad without the president when she traveled to South Asia. In September she traveled to China where she served as honorary Chair of the American delegation and delivered a key address at the United Nations Fourth World Conferences on Women. In November, 1995 she would join the president on an official trip to England, Ireland, Germany, and Spain. The next summer she would partner with United Nations Ambassador Madeline Albright on a tour of Eastern and Central Europe. Accompanied by Chelsea as she often was on her foreign travels, the first lady returned to Africa in March 1997. In July Hillary Rodham Clinton accompanied the president to a NATO Summit in Madrid where she was the keynote speaker at Vital Voices: Women in Democracy meeting. Before the year ended she traveled to Great Britain and Northern Ireland for a “Third Way” meeting and to Central Asia. 1998 saw the Clintons visit Africa, China, Russia, Ireland, and the Middle East. They returned to the Middle East in January, 1999 for the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan. The first lady would also make trips that year to Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and the Balkans.
The preceding overview does not constitute a full listing of the overseas trips taken by Hilary Rodham Clinton as first lady between1992-2000. It does provide a sense of the frequency and scope of these travels. What are we to make of them? A traditionalist answer is to characterize them as falling under the heading of symbolic representation of the United States. This is one of three functions that diplomats perform, the other two being legal and political representation, and it is generally seen as the least significant to the overall conduct of diplomacy. Some trips certainly fall into this category. But can the totality of these undertakings be classified in this fashion or is there more to the first lady diplomacy of Hilary Rodham Clinton?
As practiced by Hilary Rodham Clinton first lady diplomacy was much more than an exercise in symbolism. Her diplomacy was consistent with the manner in which diplomacy is conducted in the contemporary international system. At the same time her diplomacy was the product of the interaction of a set of personal and institutional forces that are not universally present in every administration. There is thus no reason to expect that all first ladies that follow her will engage in non-symbolic diplomacy.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye identified complex interdependence as a prism through which to understand world politics today. It is organized around three characteristics: multiple channels of interaction, an absence of hierarchy among issues and the lessened utility of military force to achieve policy ends. Together these three characteristics hold profound implications for diplomatic activity. They leave unchanged the notion that the fundamental purpose of diplomacy is to lessen conflicts among states and promote peace. And, as Hans Morgenthau argued, it continues to be the primary mechanism for determining goals, strategies and power relationships. What they have done is has make diplomacy “messier” by permitting officials in one state to more readily reach citizens in another and to interact with each other more directly. Complex interdependence has enlarged the universe of political actors who can engage in diplomacy and the goals whose realization diplomacy can advance.
With these observations in mind we can take a new look at the global travels and diplomacy of First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton. The first point to stress is that her diplomacy was conceived of as part of a larger whole. It was never seen in isolation from the broader foreign policy goals of the Clinton administration. At one extreme this took the form of being told to avoid Cuba’s Fidel Castro “at all costs” at a diplomatic function so as not to enrage anti-Castro factions in Florida. It also meant being sent to places the State Department felt was “too small, too dangerous, or too poor” to send the president. A case in point was being sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina to show American support for the Dayton Peace Process. Other times it meant carefully considering the pluses and minuses of a trip to China when U.S.-Chinese tensions were running high due to conflicts over Taiwan, nuclear proliferation and human rights violations and having her speech gone over in advance by UN Ambassador Madeline Albright, Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord and National Security Council human rights specialist Eric Schwartz.
But with increased political resources and activism also comes the potential for pursuing one’s own foreign policy agenda. The first signs of this taking place came following her speech in Beijing. The first lady notes that “prior to Beijing when we traveled on official visits abroad I accompanied Bill where appropriate and attended spouses programs. In mid November [1996] when we made state visits to Australia, the Philippines and Thailand, I followed my own agenda as well as Bill’s.” She continues, “I usually branched off from Bill’s official delegation… and reinforced the message that a nation’s prosperity is linked to the education and well-being of girls and women.”
Hers was a personal diplomacy rather than an institutional diplomacy. It substituted direct and individual contacts with foreign leaders for the carefully scripted interactions between diplomats occurring in an organizational context that characterized traditional diplomacy. In 1994 she accompanied President Clinton on a trip to Russia that was designed to strengthen ties between Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin. During their discussions the first lady met with Naina Yeltsin. While leading U.S. delegation to the Winter Olympics she met with Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, who would go on to head the World Health organization, and discussed health care issues. Other trips would have her meeting with such leaders as South African President Nelson Mandela, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Hungarian Prime Minister Guka Horn, Zambian President Benjamin Mlkapa, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, Ghana’s President Jerry Rawlings , the Dali Lama, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar of Slovakia.
While not consistent with the conduct of traditional diplomacy, personal diplomacy has become an increasingly important tool for heads of government to use in trying to advance their international political agendas. Foreign Policy has included the ability to establish good relations and rapport with world leaders as one of its evaluative questions in its “Global Scorecard” of presidential performance in foreign policy. This was President Clinton’s highest scoring category and, conversely, President George W. Bush’s lowest scoring categories.
In her autobiography, Living History, Hilary Rodham Clinton speaks of the importance of her foreign contacts in language similar to that used by presidents in describing why they sought out meetings with foreign leaders. Late in the Clinton presidency she observed that “one of the most important lessons I learned during my years as First Lady was how dependent the affairs of state are on the personal relationships among leaders…But this sort of diplomacy requires constant nurturing and informal dialogue among the principals.” Good relations between spouses contributed to these positive relations. “Forging good relations with my fellow spouses provided a convenient low-key communication among heads of state.” Commenting on her five day trip to Latin America where she attended the annual meeting of the First Ladies of the Western Hemisphere she commented “the personal interactions reinforced the value of building relationships that can smooth the path toward cooperation on important projects.
First Lady Hilary Rodham Clinton’s diplomacy was also public diplomacy. Public diplomacy consists of the statements and actions of leaders that are intended to influence the public rather than the official leadership in another country. It is alien to classic diplomacy that emphasizes secrecy and confidential bargaining among like-minded elites. Public diplomacy has been described as the "theater of power.” It is conducted through such varied means as public statements, press briefings, and state visits. Often in the past public diplomacy degenerated into propaganda but new life was breathed into it after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 when it became clear that success in the war against terrorism required that the U.S. find a way to talk directly with the people of the Middle East and other societies in which terrorists recruit people and carry out acts of terrorism.
In practicing her public diplomacy the first lady’s principal audience was individuals attending a conference or citizens to whom she sought to bring a message of hope. On her visit to Japan for the G-7 summit attended by President Clinton, Hilary Rodham Clinton visited with a group of prominent Japanese women, the first of a dozen meetings of this type she would hold in her travels as first lady. Her trip to South Asia was organized at the request of the State Department that wanted to highlight the administration’s commitment to the region and was unable to arrange for either the president or vice president to make such a trip. In India Hilary Rodham Clinton spoke to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. In Nepal on that same trip she visited a women’s health clinic. Her most politically visible appearance came at the U.N. women’s conference in China where she asserted “it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights” and ended her speech with a call to action.” The speech was politically charged both for its content and timing, coming shortly after the arrest, imprisonment and then release of Chinese dissident Harry Wu. Later she would deliver the keynote address at a “Vital Voices” forum in Vienna. Vital Voices was an outgrowth of the Beijing trip and was designed to bring together NGOs, U.S. government representatives and private corporations to further democracy, entrepreneurship by women, and peace. A trip to Latin America was designed to highlight U.S. economic development programs and the Clinton administration’s attempt to shift popular perceptions of American foreign policy in the region away from foreign aid to military juntas to support for economic and political progress. In a similar fashion her trips to Africa were intended to highlight the self help efforts of African women as supported by U.S. foreign aid.
Her diplomacy also highlighted the blurring of the boundary between domestic and foreign policy. The issues Hilary Rodham Clinton chose to stress were those which have long been a staple of American domestic politics: health, children, education, and the position of women in society. She saw them as key to America and the world’s future as well. “In the new global economy, individual countries and region would find it difficult to make economic or social progress if a disproportionate percentage of their female population remained poor, uneducated, unhealthy and disenfranchised. The first lady also recognized that differences in the two spheres of action, domestic and foreign, continued to exist. At one point in her memoirs she noted “my message abroad carried few of the political overtones of my proposals for specific policies at home.
Here too we see elements of consistency with American activity in world politics. It has long been recognized that American international human rights policy reflects the traditional emphasis on legal and civil rights and to the detriment of economic and social rights. A similar condition exists in American international environmental policy.
We can also see the first lady breaking free of the American experience in her diplomacy in at least two respects. First, her definition of women’s rights clearly extended beyond the political and legal. Second, the solutions to the problems she identified were not seen as “foreign policy” solutions in a narrow sense but solutions that held relevance for the United States as well. Long ago, while Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas she had seen Microcredit projects such as those she toured in Bangladesh as having relevance for helping poor rural communities in that state. A trip to Nicaragua brought attention to “Mothers United,” a microcredit organization that was supported by USAID. It also brought forward a parallel with the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund that she had advocated creating in 1994 to provide financial assistance to distressed areas that were not being serviced by the established banking system. A visit to an AIDS Information Center in Uganda brought forward the revelation that this organization supported by USAID had pioneered tests at the clinic that were already being put to use in the United States. A final example comes from a trip to China where she saw parallels between the Center for the Women’s Legal Studies and Legal Studies of Beijing University with a small legal aid office she had run at the University of Arkansas.
The reasons for this ability to bridge the conceptual gap between foreign and domestic policy lie in one of the commonly noted features of contemporary politics. As individuals from groups that were previously largely excluded from political activity such as women and minorities become active they bring with them experiences and points of reference that do not fit with standard image of the American past. Consequently their definitions of problems and solutions will begin to extend and move beyond traditional conceptualizations. The first lady speaks not only of her long personal involvement in these types of problems of her mother as understanding from personal experience that “many children –through no fault of their own- were disadvantaged and discriminated against from birth...she had watched Japanese-Americans in her school endure blatant discrimination and daily taunts from the Anglo students.”

Conclusions

What then are the most important variables that influenced Hillary Rodham’s foreign policy activism? First, her early life was instrumental in forging her optimism and vision that she so passionately applied to the foreign policy area. Second, her education and knowledge of and commitment to her issues were especially important. They later contributed to her personal international diplomacy. Third, her professional relationship with the president was also very important. Her office was highly integrated with the White House Office. Mrs. Clinton practiced foreign policy in synch with the Clinton Administration but she also achieved a certain amount of independence as her trips to Australia, the Philippines and Thailand demonstrated. Fourth, the interplay between Mrs. Clinton’s issues and her alliances of power were crucial to her public diplomacy. She forged alliances with various NGOs and interest groups to advance the cause of issues important to women and children alike on the international level.
Overall the variables that affected Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy activism were personal, institutional, public and issue driven. Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy activism reflected the complex, complicated international environment that she operated within and her own complicated, complex nature.
Anthony, Carl Seferrazza, 1990. First Ladies: The Saga of the President’s Wives and Their Power, 1789-1961. New York: William Morrow.
For further information on these variables see, Anthony J. Eksterowicz, (2003) “Teaching First Ladies,” White House Studies, Vol.3, No.3, pp. 325-40 .
For a discussion of such integration see, Anthony J. Eksterowicz and Kristen Paynter, ‘The Evolution of the Role and Office of the First Lady: The Movement Toward Integration with the White House Office,” The Social Science Journal 37, 547-562.
Anthony J. Eksterowicz and Robert P. Watson, “Treatment of First Ladies in American Government and Presidency Textbooks: Overlooked, yet Influential, Voices,” Political Science and Politics 33, 593-94.
See for example the early coverage of Laura Bush. Ann Gerhart, “The First Lady’s First Semester Report, The Washington Post 27 July 2001, C1, C4 and Ellen Levine, “We’re Going To Be Okay,” Good Housekeeping, January 2002, 100-105. Note also when First Lady Bush spoke about the treatment of women in Afghanistan it was primarily covered by the Washington Post Style section. See Ann Gehart, “Laura Bush’s Signal to Afghanistan,” The Washington Post 22 May 2002, C1-2.
These diagrams are found in, Eksterowicz, Teaching First Ladies, 328-32.
Living History, pp.1-27; 495-528.
Verveer, Melanne, Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff, interview with Anthony J. Eksterowicz and Kristen Paynter, Old Executive Office Building, Washington D.C., October 19, 1999.
Living History, p. 132.
“The Evolution of the Role and Office of the First Lady,” In The Presidential Companion, p. 225.
Living History, pp. 58-58, 414-415, 429, 228-233, 49-50.
Ibid. pp. 119-20.
Ibid, p. 119.
See for example, Kay Knickrehm and Robin Teske, “First Ladies and Policy Making: Crossing the Public/Private Divide,” in The Presidential Companion.
For a discussion of these events see, Living History, pp. 294-96; 474-75, 486-87.
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, third edition (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1962), 542-43.
Rosalyn Carter was also active in foreign policy. See Glenn Hastedt, “First Ladies and U.S. Foreign Policy,” in Robert Watson and Anthony Eksterowicz (eds.), The Presidential Companion (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 192-109.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence, third edition (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 2001).
Morgenthau, p. 540.
Hilary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Scribner, 2003), 235.
Living History, p. 341.
Ibid., p. 386.
Ibid., p. 388.
Grading the President" (FOREIGN POLICY, Winter 1997-8).
Living History, 409.
Ibid., 410.
Ibid., 315.
Ibid., 298.
Ibid., 278.
Glenn Hastedt (ed.), One World, Many Voices (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995), 240-250 and 288-299.
Living History, p. 284.
Ibid., p. 313.
Ibid., p. 405.
Ibid. p. 459.
Ibid., pp. 10-11.