The Secretary (55 page)

By the end of 2009, Clinton and Obama were settling into their new roles as team players
and Clinton was making her voice heard more forcefully within the administration.
She had always had a good rapport with Biden.
(W
HITE
H
OUSE
)

Clinton congratulates Obama in the Situation Room on March 23, 2010, after the health
care reform bill was passed. During the Clinton administration, Hillary took on a
leading and controversial role in the health care reform project. It was an unprecedented
move for a First Lady and her role in the failed effort continued to haunt her into
her presidential campaign.
(W
HITE
H
OUSE
)

In July 2010 Clinton traveled to the Demilitarized Zone, which straddles the 38th
parallel and divides the Korean peninsula into North and South Korea. A North Korean
soldier peers through a window as Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates get a
tour of a UN building. The visit was meant as a display of soft and hard power. Clinton
forged strong ties with Gates and his successor, Leon Panetta.
(AP)

Clinton believed in building close ties with world leaders and in being accessible,
in order to gain added leverage during diplomatic crises. At the Elysée Palace in
January 2010, she had a “Cinderella moment” with French president Nicolas Sarkozy
(
above
). She also had good ties with Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai but had little
to show for it—here the two take a stroll in Dumbarton Oaks gardens in Washington
(
below
).
(AP)

Clinton worked to engage leaders in emerging powers, including Brazil, though exchanges
with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and foreign minister Celso Amorim (
above
) were often testy. Clinton also made women’s and children’s rights a central part
of her work as secretary of state and met with nongovernmental organizations everywhere
she went. Here she visits an orphanage in Cambodia (
below
).
(AP)

Clinton’s efforts, along with President Obama, to bring peace to the Middle East got
off to a terrible start and ended with possibly the shortest round of talks ever between
the Israelis and the Palestinians, in Sharm el-Sheikh in September 2010. Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, second from the right (flanked by Benjamin Netanyahu and
Mahmoud Abbas), would be ousted from office in a popular revolution in February 2011.
(AP)

On March 16, 2011, Clinton took a stroll in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The square had
been taken over by hundreds of thousands of protestors during the revolution. The
Arab uprisings were spreading, two dictators had already been deposed, and one thousand
miles to the west, Libya was next.
(AP)

Life on the road with Clinton was gruelling, often with up to ten events and four
countries in day. Philippe Reines, Clinton’s media gatekeeper, and Victoria Nuland,
the department spokesperson (
above
), keep up with the world while on the road. The traveling journalists filed their
stories wherever they could—here in a palace in Bahrain—often while waiting for Clinton
to finish her meetings (
below
). The delegation traveled by motorcade, often in heavily armored vehicles, right
up to Clinton’s plane on the tarmac.
(K
IM
G
HATTAS
/N
ICOLE
G
AOUETTE
)