Hillary Clinton as Campaign Surrogate

This chapter represents the first installment of Hillary Clinton's news biography and examines the news coverage of Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign and her entrance onto the national stage of politics. It recounts the baseline news frames that laid the foundation for judgments of Clinton's authenticity against which future frames would converge and diverge. The chapter also describes her most formative media moments during this period, which linguistically and visually acted as stock frames that authenticated Clinton as a feminist and inauthenticated her as a woman of tradition. Her political image was thus framed as a political intruder violating the protocol of presidential campaigning; an anomalous candidate's wife rejecting the trappings of home and domesticity in favor of feminist principles; and a political lightning rod who exuded personality problems that promised to disrupt her husband's presidential bid and undermine the traditions of first lady.