Clinton has spent her life redefining herself

NEW YORK -- Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to say she was born in the middle of the country at the middle of the century, in a Chicago suburb that defined a childhood out of "Father Knows Best" or "Ozzie and Harriet."

Years later, a group of her old Park Ridge teachers and classmates got together with her to reminisce, with a historian to moderate. During the round of introductions, Clinton's second-grade teacher turned to her and deadpanned: "And who are you?"

"Oh yes," said the first lady of the United States. "This is the question we're all trying to answer."

Clinton has charted a decade and a half now on the national stage. And yet she remains somehow paradoxical, impenetrable, unknowable.

Her life has been marked by polar forces: She is the daughter of a left-leaning mother and an archconservative father. She campaigned for Barry Goldwater and then for Eugene McCarthy. She married a force of nature, then struggled to define her own image.

She has wrestled with a somewhat stilted public speaking voice, a scripted style, belied by what friends say is a whimsical affinity for costume jewelry at the holidays and a signature laugh she lets loose occasionally -- boisterous and infectious.

There always has been a holographic quality to Hillary Clinton: Looked at from one angle, she can be the tough trailblazer. From another, she can be the personification of icy, calculating ambition.

But what about that teacher's basic question? Who is she?

There are clues at each stage of her singular American story.

Growing up in Park Ridge, Hillary Diane Rodham was a tomboy and a Girl Scout, encouraged by her mother to fight back when a neighborhood girl pushed her around.

Young Hillary came early to politics, influenced by opposing pressures. This was true at home, where her father's outspoken, opinionated conservatism contrasted with her mother's quiet Democratic leanings.

She grew up Methodist, and her social conscience was forged by a youth minister named Donald Jones. He took her to visit black and Hispanic churches in Chicago and to see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1967, Hillary Rodham was 20 and nearing a sort of political fulcrum in her life. She struggled, not for the last time, with her feelings about a war -- in this case Vietnam.

She served for a time as president of the campus Young Republicans at Wellesley. As a senior, she was president of the student government. On May 31, 1969, she was selected to give the student commencement speech.

The act she had to follow was Republican Sen. Edward Brooke, who spoke against "coercive protest." Rodham later wrote that she waited in vain during the speech for some mention of the pain and soul-searching of the time -- Vietnam, JFK, RFK, MLK.

Rodham took to the dais. "Every protest, every dissent," she said, challenging Brooke by name, "is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age."

She had just begun forging one of her own. The speech was a sensation. She was featured in Life magazine.

Bill Clinton ran for the presidency and won in 1992, of course, and Hillary struggled to reconcile her own profile -- career-minded, politically astute -- with traditional American impressions about first ladies.

There was a misstep early in the White House years -- her disastrous attempt, at the direction of her husband, to overhaul the health care system. Republicans smelled blood, railed against "Hillarycare," and swept into control of both houses of Congress in 1994.

Then came Monica Lewinski. Hillary Clinton became the deceived wife. Americans who once identified her in polls as domineering now saw her as strong.

As she tells it in her 2003 autobiography, "Living History," she faced the two toughest decisions of her life in her 50s. One was to stay married to Bill. The other was to run for U.S. Senate.

In 2006 she captured two-thirds of the vote and won all but four of New York's 62 counties. Two and a half months later, she appeared in an online video announcing she would run for the presidency of the United States.

Hillary Clinton's campaign has deployed husband Bill on the campaign trail, though political pundits note his speeches are limited to a fraction of the length of hers and sometimes he's kept entirely off stage. To people who know her, there is little doubt whose campaign it is.