For two-hundred-plus years of American history, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, presidents had been meeting with Congress to plot the course of the nation. Hundreds of combinations of lawmakers had participated in those meetings, making the decisions that determined the country’s fate—whether its sons would be called up to fight in another war, how to save its farmers from drought and depression, the healing of the nation’s sick and the education of its children. And until she got there, every one of those decision makers had been a man.
