Dr. Maya Shankar
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who served as a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science…
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People have been asking Hillary to change ever since the 1970s, when she defied the stereotype of First Lady of Arkansas. And she was willing to change…just never in the way people had hoped.
Hillary Clinton
It is a constant balancing act. It's everything from how you dress and what your hairstyle is to how loudly you speak or how loudly you laugh or who you are seen with or... I mean, it's just a constant judgment.
Maya Shankar
Hillary Rodham Clinton had a complicated relationship with the public. It started in the 1970s when she challenged the cookie cutter role laid out for her as First Lady of Arkansas.
Speaker 3
The thought occurs to me that you really don't fit the image that we have created for the governor's wife in Arkansas. You're not a native, you've been educated in liberal Eastern universities, you're less than 40. You don't have any children. You don't use your husband's name. You practice law. Does it concern you that maybe other people feel that you don't fit the image that we have created for the governor's wife in Arkansas?
Hillary Clinton
No. That doesn't bother me and I hope that it doesn't bother very many people.
Maya Shankar
But it did bother many people. Hillary being Hillary made people uncomfortable. One by one, her critics started asking her to change herself. Despite all her extraordinary accomplishments, including senator, Secretary of State, first Woman to be nominated for president by a major political party... I mean, she even won the popular vote in the 2016 election. Despite all of that, people kept at it. They wanted Hillary to be different, for her to change, and she was willing to change just never in the way that people had hoped. I'm Maya Shankar and this is A Slight Change of Plans, a show that dives deep into the world of change and hopefully gets us to think differently about change in our own lives.
Hillary Clinton
Hi, how are you?
Maya Shankar
Hi. It's great to meet you, Secretary Clinton. I just wanted to welcome you formally to my closet.
Hillary Clinton
Yes.
Maya Shankar
I always dreamed it would be this way. The first time I met Hillary Clinton, it would be from my makeshift recording studio with clothes everywhere, but I guess this is the world we live in right now.
Hillary Clinton
It is the world we live in. I have been privy to many closets over the last year, because as I've been doing my podcast and talking with friends on Zoom and everything, people are in closets. They're in corners of their bedroom, they're in kitchens. I mean, it's just been quite a tour of everybody's living space.
Maya Shankar
Yeah, exactly. You get an intimate glimpse into people's lives.
Hillary Clinton
Yes, exactly.
Maya Shankar
I'm just going to jump in. Do you mind if I call you Hillary?
Hillary Clinton
Not at all. Not at all.
Maya Shankar
Okay, thank you. I'd love to rewind the clock to your 20s, if we can take the little time machine back in time. You're a lawyer in DC, you've just wrapped up your work on the Nixon impeachment hearings, and then love gets in the way, and you end up moving to Arkansas. Bill becomes governor and you are not the typical First Lady, and that's met with some resistance, right? Do you mind sharing what it was that people were taking issue with?
Hillary Clinton
Well, I think that back in what would've been the 1970s, it was still somewhat unusual to have graduated from law school to be teaching law or practicing law. I did both and I really saw that, but I didn't think it would impede me in any way. Then when I married Bill in 1975, I determined that I would keep my own name, which seemed, to me, to make a lot of sense because that's what I had written under at law school. That's what I had practiced law under, taught, et cetera. I think it was really at the point that our daughter was born in February of 1980 and Bill was having to run for reelection because there were only two-year terms for governors back then.
The front page announcement was: "Governor Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham announced the birth of their daughter Chelsea." It was probably that moment that really pierced people's public consciousness that, "Oh, my gosh. She has a different name." Then that became a really big issue. When Bill lost for reelection in 1980 in the Reagan landslide, among the top reasons people said that they didn't vote for him was because I didn't take his last name or change my name, as they would say. It was a truly surprising revelation to me that that would matter so much to people, but now it frankly wouldn't make that big a difference to anybody. But it was significant.
I had so many people come to me and say, "You really have to take your husband's last name. You're really stopping him from being able to run again and be governor again, and there's a lot at stake with him being governor." The one person who never asked me to do that was my husband. He thought it was pretty ridiculous also, but I concluded that it was, for me, something that I was willing to do. I made an announcement that I would be Hillary Clinton and, obviously, it went against what I thought was my decision, but I balanced all of the pros and cons and decided that, on balance, it was the right thing for me to do.
Maya Shankar
Yeah. I think a lot of people, women especially, face the same kind of tension, which is knowing when it makes sense to compromise. Do I take a principled stance at every turn, but then risk getting kicked out of the arena altogether and then lose my ability to have impact? Or do I try to more thoughtfully pick my battles and stay in the arena and just play the longer game?
Hillary Clinton
Well, that's exactly right. I was not going to stop practicing law. I was not going to stop being outspoken about a lot of issues that really mattered to me. When Bill was reelected in 1982, I dove back in and chaired a task force to reform education in the state. It was, I'm sure, easier for some people to hear the changes I was advocating for because I was all of a sudden truly understood to be the governor's wife. It is a constant balancing act and I'm sure that's true for all people, but I think you're right to say that, as women, we make those decisions constantly. It's everything from how you dress and what your hairstyle is to how loudly you speak or how loudly you laugh or who you are seen with or... I mean, it's just a constant judgment. Both internally, you're judging yourself, but most importantly how you're being judged because there continues to be a rather active double standard.
Maya Shankar
Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's some really telling footage from back in the day, where you're getting interviewed about your role as First Lady. Underneath your face it says Hillary Rodham, and underneath that, in parentheses, it says Mrs. Bill Clinton. I mean, I just laughed out loud. I'm part of a different generation where it just seems like, "Of course, I'm going to keep my last name," but I recognize that, at the time, that was a truly bold feminist statement. I want to dig into that a little bit more, which is when you did first marry Bill, what fueled your decision to keep your last name?
Hillary Clinton
I was just feeling like he was going into politics and he would have a very public life. At that time, I never thought I would personally run for office, but I thought I would stay as an advocate. I'd been working for the Children's Defense Fund, I'd been a lawyer on the impeachment inquiry staff. I'd had really fascinating, important jobs for me and I wanted my professional life to be considered separate from his.
I'll tell you a funny story. Before I took his last name, I was helping on a big lawsuit in my law firm with one of the senior partners. We went to trial and we went to trial in this rural county outside of Little Rock. The judge was, at that time, under investigation and the office investigating him was the Attorney General's office headed by my husband. We were in the courtroom and this was the kind of judge back in the day who would say how pretty I looked and asked me to stand up and twirl around to show everybody what a pretty dress I was wearing. On and on.
We made our case and we moved to be dismissed from the case and we were successful. We get back to our office, and the next day, the senior partner calls me in and he said, "Well, I'm sure glad we got dismissed yesterday because, on one of the breaks, the judge was cursing out your husband, talking about how terrible the Attorney General was to be investigating him." One of the other lawyers said, "Well, Your Honor, that young woman that was in the courtroom, that's Bill Clinton's wife." And the judge said, "Well, if I'd known that, I wouldn't have dismissed the case against her client." Now, that, to me, encapsulated the challenge of being married to a public figure, but being very committed to my own professional career.
Maya Shankar
I mean, I love that Bill never asked you to change your name.
Hillary Clinton
He never did.
Maya Shankar
When you finally took the plunge, what did he say to you? Was he kind of like, "Thanks, but..."
Hillary Clinton
Yeah. He basically said, "Look, I wish you wouldn't have to do this. I wish you didn't think you had to do it. Please don't do it for me." He said everything the right thing, but he also encountered from a lot of his male supporters, men who would say, "Bill, I always thought of you as a really strong guy and how come you don't make your wife take your name?" I mean, it was such a flashpoint and it was something that, I guess, both of us should have predicted. We would be just laughing at it, but look at what they make big issues out of today. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that anything which touches a cultural hot point is going to provoke a reaction.
Maya Shankar
Do you remember the first time you introduced yourself as Hillary Clinton?
Hillary Clinton
Oh, sure. I did a press conference. I mean, I was at an event and I said, "Look, I know this means a lot to a number of people and I don't want their concern about my last name to interfere with doing what's right for the state and making some tough decisions. From now on, I will be known as Hillary Rodham Clinton." I just did it very matter of fact. I didn't make a big deal out of it. I assumed that, "Okay, now you can argue about me about other things." Why is she still working? Why is she telling people to raise their taxes to pay for teachers? What is she doing? And then later, why is she fighting for healthcare when Bill was president? Fine. If this gets you to focus on what I actually think is important, and that is how we're going to live together, make tough decisions together, let's do that.
Maya Shankar
It's interesting. I mean, there was an element of a slippery slope, which is you change your name, it's met with positive reception, and then all of a sudden people are like, "Oh, yeah, but what about your hair and your glasses and your makeup? Can we get you a stylist?" I'm curious to know whether changing any of these parts of yourself ever affected your self-perception.
Hillary Clinton
I never thought any of it affected my self perception or my identity. There were parts that I ended up enjoying. I finally got around to forcing myself to wear contact lenses. It made a big difference and how I could actually see as well as be seen. I had a lot of fun all of a sudden thinking, well, I don't have to just wear turtlenecks and baggy vests and skirts and pants or whatever. There are parts of it that were interesting that maybe I wouldn't have pursued had I not married Bill or had I not ever married anybody, but I didn't ever feel like it affected my core as to who I was. And I give my parents credit for this, Maya.
I never really felt like anybody was damaging me or undermining me or subverting me because I just didn't either respond to that or didn't frankly allow it. Maybe it's stubbornness, maybe it's just the strength of two parents who never told me that there wasn't anything I couldn't do as a woman. I don't feel like any of the sort of small choices, compromises that I made along the way were that significant. I did feel so strong in my own sense of being and purpose. I think that also caused a reaction. I think that was hard for people, men and women, to understand, but it's just who I am.
Maya Shankar
Yeah. This is so interesting because it almost seems like the people of Arkansas wanted you to suffer a bit more from that name change. It would've almost felt more satisfying if it had been a really challenging thing for you. Maybe they were hoping you were going to give them something meaningful to show how much you... I don't.
Hillary Clinton
How wrong I'd been. How-
Maya Shankar
Yeah. It's the fact that it was easy in some sense because you're such a pragmatist to change your last name left people feeling like, "Okay, she changed the last name, but damn it."
Hillary Clinton
But she didn't do enough.
Maya Shankar
Yeah. We were trying to change her and she's not willing to change.
Hillary Clinton
That's 100%. That's really perceptive, Maya. That is exactly right. This has been a constant theme through my adult life. There's something about women stepping into the arena, particularly being unapologetic about it, being willing to stand up against or call out strong groups or interest groups or forces at work, whatever, that is in and of itself still somewhat surprising and even not fully acceptable. I really did experience that and I think I paid a price for it. I mean, I think that being unapologetically outspoken and willing to challenge conventional wisdom is discomforting for a lot of people. Did I put up with a lot of stuff? Yeah. Did I put up with a lot of stuff when I ran for office? Yeah. Did I put up with all kinds of sexism and misogyny? Absolutely. I just ignored for all the reasons that women of my age ignored that stuff. It just wasn't worth the battle.
Maya Shankar
Even in the case of Arkansas, you made all these superficial changes to your look and you changed your last name, but it didn't do what people were hoping to do, which is to break you a little bit, to expose some deep vulnerabilities. Because what do bullies want? Ultimately, they want to get a rise out of you. They want to see you crack a bit.
Hillary Clinton
But this is so interesting to me, because in the 2016 campaign, for example, the famous incident of the second debate where Trump is looming over me, leering at me and trying to intimidate me, and I'm madly going through. What are my options here? Do I turn around and say, "Back up, you creep. You know, don't intimidate me"? Do I try to laugh it off? What do I do? How do I deal with what is a clearly signaled effort on his part to his supporters that he's got the little lady in hand? Because he's a master manipulator?
It was hard. Eventually I decided, no, I'm not going to respond. I'm not going to either laugh it off or try to expose it because I don't want people to think I can't take it. I mean, I'm trying to be President of the United States for heaven's sake. This is a highly complicated calculation as a woman. I probably would guess that women make that calculation dozens of times a day.
Maya Shankar
Yeah. I think that this constant critique that you've gotten over the course of your whole life is we don't know the real Hillary Clinton. I just wonder, in having this conversation, if that's a euphemism for we don't accept the real Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton
It is. That is exactly... "She is not like me or she's not like the women that I know or she's not like what I want a woman to be." I used to laugh when people in the media would say, "Oh, she yells." Have you ever gone to a rally where any man is running for anything and he doesn't, at some point, yell? I mean, good grief, look who I was running against in 2016 and all of the yelling that went on, but that's not what we want. This is one of the areas that is really rich for further research and understanding, because how do you communicate about that? You don't want to sound like you're whining, you don't want to sound like you can't take it, you don't want to sound like you're asking for special treatment, but how do you begin to unpack that?
Maya Shankar
We'll be back in a moment with A Slight Change of Plans.
When Hillary Clinton moved into the White House after her husband became president, she again challenged the cookie cutter role laid out for her, this time as First Lady of the United States. Instead of sticking to her ceremonial duties, Hillary was asked by her husband to lead the task force on national healthcare reform. It was an ambitious role that had never been given to a First Lady before. She said yes, and almost immediately the public criticism began to pour in.
You've been under this glaring spotlight. It's unimaginable for a lot of people to be under such sustained scrutiny for so many decades. It's almost like you've had this mirror permanently stationed in front of you that's just been reflecting things back in the form of a constructed Hillary. Obviously, many of the things reflected back to you had been false, had been distorted, but was there ever something reflected back to you over the course of your long career that taught you something new about yourself?
Hillary Clinton
Yes. I think I say this often because young people ask me all the time, "How do you get into politics? How do you take all the attacks and everything?" And I said, "Look, I learned to take criticism seriously but not personally." By that, I mean your critics can teach you things that your friends either won't or don't know to. You have to be careful about where the criticism is coming from, because a lot of times it's not well-meaning, it's not well-intentioned at all, but you do have to at least understand and try to figure out how best to deal with it.
With respect to healthcare, I learned a lot about the perceptions shaping reality. My view was that we had all these really hardworking, incredibly smart people from all over the country who were coming up with a plan that would make it possible for us to get to universal healthcare and make it affordable.
I mean, I worked on that very hard to help shape it and then to help present it. But I really believe that, because I was the president's wife, it was hard for a lot of people to accept the plan for what it was. If I had known that going in, I still would've worked really hard on it but I wouldn't have headed it. Somebody else would've been the face of it, because all I cared about was trying to get it done. You're taking it on as the First Lady of the United States, unpaid, volunteer, but nevertheless, in that role. That may just be too much for the body politic to absorb.
Maya Shankar
What did that teach you about yourself in terms of where a specific blind spot was or something that you just needed to learn the hard way?
Hillary Clinton
Well, I mean, it was a very big learning curve to be in a position that was totally vicarious. Everybody in a White House is there for only one reason: the president wants them there. Who the president marries ends up in the White House, who the president picks as vice president ends up in the White House, all these people end up in the White House. So, I didn't have agency in a way that made it my responsibility as I did when I became a senator.
Maya Shankar
I do wonder whether learning this lesson when you were First Lady in the White House and recognizing that you maybe didn't love playing the vicarious role ended up fueling your interest in untethering yourself and running for Senate. Was that part of the evolution for you?
Hillary Clinton
Yes, it was. I'll tell you the exact moment that it all came together, because I had, as I said, no idea that I would ever actually run for office. Then having been in the White House and knowing that it was going to end, trying to think about what I was going to do next was pretty much on my mind. After the 1998 midterm elections, when then Senator Moynihan said he wasn't going to run again, immediately Democrats in New York started calling me, asking me to run. I'm sure some of them thought I would be an excellent senator, but a lot of them thought that I was the only person they could think of who was available, who could beat Rudy Giuliani, who was running. He had been mayor. He was obviously controversial, he was obviously tough, and all of that,
Maya Shankar
And we hadn't seen anything yet, which is really devastating.
Hillary Clinton
No, we hadn't seen anything. Well, he lost his mind, I think. I don't know what happened to him, but people started calling me, members of Congress and others, and I kept saying, "No, no, no, no, no." And then in the spring of '99, I was, as First Lady, in New York City at a high school to promote women's sports. It was like a Title IX event and there was a new documentary coming out about women in sports. The name of the documentary was Dare to Compete and, of course, the New York papers are filled with people trying to get me to run and my saying no, et cetera. The young woman who introduced me, captain of the basketball team, she introduced me and then she bent over and she whispered in my ear, "Dare to compete, Mrs. Clinton. Dare to compete." I was so astonished by that because I had spent many years urging women to compete in sports, in academics, in science, in politics.
I'd campaigned for dozens of women running for Congress or governor, whatever election it was. And I suddenly thought to myself, "Maybe you're afraid to compete. Maybe you are telling people to do something that you wouldn't do yourself." It was literally at that moment that I took seriously running for the Senate. Working through it and trying to be as honest with myself as I could, I thought, "Okay, I'm going to try this." I had no idea whether it would work or not, because when you're supporting somebody else, and I'd supported not just my husband but hundreds of people, it's always about them and then all of a sudden it's about you. It was a big transition, but it was that young woman at that moment that really, I think, turned my head around.
Maya Shankar
What do you think you were scared of?
Hillary Clinton
I think it was just the unknown. I think it was knowing how hard politics is, because honestly, I'm kind of an expert on that. I thought I'm just going to be walking into the meat grinder. It's been a very eventful eight years. I could go teach or write or do all kinds of interesting things. Why do I want to do that? Why do I want to subject myself to that? Remember, I had been burned in effigy along with other things. I knew I was already, again, because of all the stuff I represented as a... I don't know, baby boomer woman who didn't know her place, I guess. I had been subjected to so many attacks from Rush Limbaugh and all the people like that. Why did I want to do that? Why? And then I kind of thought, "Okay, you have been and you also believe that there's a lot of things we need to do. You've had a front row seat on history, so get out there and try. You never know until you try." So, that's what I ended up doing.
Maya Shankar
Yeah. I think it's easy for people to think of you now and say, "Hillary Clinton came out of the box this way. She always had the courage and bravery to run for these big offices." But you had to go through your own personal evolution, just like every other person out there. If you don't mind sharing, what were some insecurities that you had along the way that you had to work through?
Hillary Clinton
Oh, my gosh. Once you're out there on your own, you're not there to advocate for a program or advocate for a candidate. Were you going to be any good at it? Go from behind the scenes to the front of the stage and how are people going to respond to you? Are they going to believe you, listen to you, agree with you? Is your personality, is it going to be enough? I mean, there's a lot of criticism. Then you get all of the gendered criticism like, "Don't wear that color. Wear this color. Don't wear flat shoes, wear heels or vice versa. Don't let your hair grow. Don't let your hair be short." I mean, everybody feels like they can critique a woman in the public arena. They don't do that to men 99.9% of the time. I had some of the same experience when I practiced law because there were expectations about what a woman lawyer should look like.
I wasn't totally surprised, but the amount of unsolicited advice that you start to receive... People say things like, "Learn to talk," then they always fill in a man's name like, "Learn to talk like Bill Clinton. Learn to talk like Winston Churchill." I remember somebody said all of these expectations that are not at all who you are. What you have to do is just learn to be yourself and just be yourself and do the best you can, then then you'll either be successful or not, but at least you'll be true to yourself.
I have been pretty much the same person as I was a little girl, and I think your insights into how that rattled a lot of people in terms of what was to be expected. But I also think that it still is affecting women across the board in every walk of life. You have to, first of all, be at peace with who you are, then try to translate that into the role you're playing in an effective way, whether it's private or personal or public, and just get the most out of every day.
Maya Shankar
Hey, thanks for listening. See you next week when I'm going to be talking to change expert, Dr. Katy Milkman, about science-based strategies to help you inspire change in your own life.
Dr. Katy Milkman
I was in this seminar and a graph went up, which normally doesn't change your life, but this graph changed my life. The graph just showed a breakdown of how many premature deaths are due to different causes, and 40% of premature deaths turn out to be the result of decisions that we can change.
Maya Shankar
A Slight Change of Plans is created and executive produced by me, Maya Shankar. Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries; including our producer, Mo LaBorde; associate producers, David Zha and Julia Goodman; executive producers, Mia Lobel and Justine Lang; senior editor, Jen Guerra; and sound design and mix engineers, Ben Tolliday and Jason Gambrell. Thanks also to Luis Garra who wrote our theme song and Ginger Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music from Epidemic Sound. And, of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at Dr. Maya Shankar.
Hillary Clinton
If we hadn't talked so much about me, I have a lot of questions for you.
Maya Shankar
I think you're slightly more interesting than me, so I'm glad we spent the time this way. It was such a pleasure.
Hillary Clinton
Good luck to you and I hope I get to meet you in person. Take care.
Maya Shankar
Yes, I hope so too. All right. Take care.
Hillary Clinton
Okay.
Maya Shankar
Bye.
Hillary Clinton
Bye.
The Host
