Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton

After moving to New York, Clinton was elected in 2000 the first female senator from the state; she is the only First Lady ever to have run for public office. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she supported military action in Afghanistan and the Iraq Resolution, but subsequently objected to the George W. Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war. She opposed most of Bush's domestic policies. Clinton was re-elected to the Senate in 2006. Running in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton won far more primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in American history, but narrowly lost the nomination to Obama.
Selected to serve as Secretary of State by Obama, Clinton was confirmed by the Senate in January 2009, and served until February 2013. She was at the forefront of the U.S. response to the Arab Spring and advocated the U.S. military intervention in Libya. As Secretary of State, she took responsibility for security lapses related to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which resulted in the deaths of American consulate personnel, but defended her personal actions in regard to the matter. Clinton visited more countries than any other Secretary of State. She viewed "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values, by combining military power with diplomacy and American capabilities in economics, technology, and other areas. She encouraged empowerment of women everywhere and used social media to communicate the U.S. message abroad. Leaving office at the end of Obama's first term, she authored her fifth book and undertook speaking engagements before announcing her second run for the presidency in April 2015.