President Bill Clinton’s administration was marked by a series of remarkable successes as well as embarrassing scandals. When he took over the
presidency in 1993, the national deficit (the amount the federal government needs to borrow to make up the difference between what it spends
and how much it collects in taxes) was the largest in U.S. history. During
his two terms in office, the U.S. economy grew and prospered, the budget was balanced, and by 1999 there was a national surplus. Among
many other successes, Clinton initiated major welfare reform and free
trade agreements, helped in the peace process in Northern Ireland, and
led an international intervention in Serbia. Though personal scandals
and impeachment loomed heavily over his second term, his approval ratings with the American public remained extraordinarily high.
Background
Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, and grew up in Arkansas.
His father, William Blythe, was killed in a car accident before his son was
born. His mother later married Roger Clinton, who legally adopted him.
By the age of sixteen, Clinton had already decided on a career in politics.
After graduating with an international affairs degree from Georgetown
University in 1968, Clinton won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship and
studied at Oxford University in England for two years. While he was in
England, the United States’s participation in the Vietnam War
(1954–75) was at its height. Clinton opposed the war and participated
in numerous protests against it. He submitted to the draft upon his return to the United States but only after he had learned that he would not
be called to serve in the armed forces. He would later be criticized for
trying to avoid going to Vietnam. He earned a law degree from Yale
University in 1973.
Clinton rose through the ranks of Democratic Party and Arkansas
politics. In 1976, he ran the presidential campaign in Arkansas of former
Georgia governor Jimmy Carter (1924–), and he was elected state attorney general. He married Hillary Rodham (1947–) in 1975.
A young governor
In 1978, at age thirty-two, Clinton became one of the youngest governors in the United States. After one term, he failed to win reelection.
While practicing law in Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton went to work
planning his political comeback. In 1982, after a heated campaign, he reclaimed the governor’s office. He was reelected in 1984 by a wide margin. Successful education reforms, among other accomplishments, built
his reputation, and, among his political associates, his name began to
arise as a possible presidential candidate.
The election
When Clinton announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination
in August 1991, he joined a crowded group of fellow Democrats. He led
a strong campaign and promised active measures to improve the drooping economy, believing, unlike his Republican opponent, incumbent
president George H. W. Bush (1924–; served 1989–93), that the federal
government could play a constructive role in fixing the nation’s social
problems and stimulating economic growth. Clinton chose U.S. senator
Al Gore Jr. (1948–) of Tennessee as his running mate. Clinton and
Gore, both southern Democrats, projected the youthful vigor of the
baby boom generation (the generation of people born between 1946
and 1964). They considered themselves to be “New Democrats,” moderate Democrats who hoped to move the party back to the center (away
from political extremes).
During the first few months of his campaign, an Arkansas woman
claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Clinton while he was
governor. Clinton did not deny the affair, and the small scandal did not
seem to affect public opinion of him much. He won the 1992 presidential election with the help of a highly divided Republican Party. He became one of the youngest U.S. presidents in history.
A rough start
One of the first issues Clinton attempted to tackle was health-care reform. He appointed his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to head the task
force on health care. Her proposal to make health care affordable to all
Americans failed to pass in Congress. Clinton was also unable to fulfill
his campaign promise to lift the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the
military.
Six months after Clinton took office, his friend and deputy counsel
at the White House, Vincent W. Foster Jr. (c. 1945–1993), committed
suicide. At the time, Foster had been handling charges that the Clintons
had been involved in a suspicious land deal, the Whitewater venture,
while Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Investigations into the
Whitewater dealings of the Clintons turned up nothing concrete against
them, but led to constant inquiries into every aspect of their public and personal lives. The biggest blow in Clinton’s first term in office was the resounding
Republican success in the 1994 midterm elections, in which the
Republicans gained control of the House and Senate. The Democratic
defeat was widely viewed as a vote on Clinton’s performance as president.
Comeback kid
Along with the highly visible defeats, there were some major successes.
Clinton convinced Congress to approve the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA; an agreement among the United States, Canada,
and Mexico to phase out tariffs, or taxes on imports, and generally encourage free trade between the three countries). The economy was getting stronger; some categories of crime were in
decline; welfare reform had been tackled; the
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, imposing a waiting period on handgun purchases,
was passed; and his national-service program
(AmeriCorps) was created.
In the months after the disastrous 1994
elections, it had seemed unlikely that Clinton
could secure a second term. Earning his
nickname, the “Comeback Kid,” he successfully campaigned around his positive New
Democratic agenda and won reelection over former U.S. senator Bob Dole (1923–) of Kansas.
Allegations of wrongdoing
As Clinton’s second term began, the U.S. economy soared. In 1997, he reached a balanced
budget agreement with Congress that was so
successful, by 1999 the major domestic political
issue was how to use the ever-increasing budget
surplus. But the robust economy was soon overshadowed by allegations of wrongdoing.
In 1998, former Arkansas state employee
Paula Jones (1966–) filed a lawsuit charging
Clinton with sexual harassment. At the same
time, the investigations led by special prosecutor
Kenneth W. Starr (1946–) branched out from the original Whitewater investigation to look into
Vincent Foster ’s suicide, Paula Jones’s allegations,
and new charges of improper conduct with a
young White House intern, Monica S. Lewinsky
(1973–). These matters increasingly consumed
the press coverage of the president to the near exclusion of most matters of public policy.
In August, Starr presented a report to
Congress alleging that Clinton had perjured
(gave false testimony under oath) himself in the
Jones and Lewinsky matters. In December 1998,
the House of Representatives voted, largely along
party lines, to impeach (charge him with misconduct in office) the president. The dramatic
Senate trial was held in January and February of
1999. In order to remove the president from office, two-thirds of the senators would have had to
vote “guilty”; Clinton survived the critical votes
and remained in office. Throughout the process,
opinion polls repeatedly indicated that the public did not want Clinton removed from office. In
fact, his approval ratings reached 70 percent during the impeachment trials.
Last years in office
During Clinton’s administration the United States was called upon to
serve as a mediator between the warring sides or to lead a military intervention in countries including Bosnia, Somalia, and Haiti. In March
1999, the Clinton administration spearheaded a series of NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, a political alliance of European nations and
the United States and Canada) bombing raids on targets in Serbia, stopping the Serbian government’s program of mass murders of Muslims and
the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the Serbian province of Kosovo.
In the Middle East, he helped mediate a historic agreement between Israel
and its Arab neighbors, including Jordan and the Palestinians, though
these peace negotiations collapsed in 2000. In Northern Ireland, the
Clinton administration mediated talks between the various factions, helping to negotiate a cease-fire and peace agreement. In October 1999, Starr stepped down as Whitewater special prosecutor. His successor did not pursue a perjury indictment to follow
Clinton’s departure from the White House, but Clinton, in exchange,
admitted to having made a false statement in the now-settled Jones suit.
He paid a fine of $25,000, and his license to practice law in Arkansas was
suspended for five years.
It is common for presidents leaving office to exercise their constitutional right to issue presidential pardons for select people charged with
federal crimes. In his last days, Clinton issued 140 such pardons. A few
of these pardons were highly questionable, even to his loyal supporters,
creating a final controversy in his colorful tenure as president.
Post-presidential years
Clinton, one of the youngest presidents to leave office, remained active
in politics and world affairs after exiting the White House. He was a
driving force in the Democratic Party, working both publicly and behind
the scenes. He established a large foundation to help the poor worldwide, particularly in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He and
former president George H. W. Bush established a foundation in 2006
to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Clinton wrote his autobiography, My Life, published in 2004, with an advance from his publisher reported to be over $10 million. Clinton underwent quadruple heart
bypass surgery in September of 2004. It did not slow him down for long.
By 2006, he was tirelessly campaigning for his wife in her race for U.S.
president. As of March 2008, she was in a battle against U.S. senator
Barack Obama (1961–) of Illinois for the Democratic nomination; the
winner would face the Republican nominee, U.S. senator John McCain
(1936–) of Arizona, in November.