CLINTON, WILLIAM JEFFERSON

With his election as the forty-second president of the United States on November 3, 1992, William Jefferson Clinton became the first Democrat in the White House since jimmy carter left office in 1981. Clinton began his presidency pledging to reduce the federal government's budget deficit; streamline bureaucracy; increase public investment in education, job training, and the environment; and initiate widespread domestic reforms in health care, welfare, and taxation. Although the United States achieved significant economic growth under Clinton, his presidency was eventually marred by personal and legal problems, including the second impeachment of a president in the history of the country.

Although Clinton made progress toward reducing the budget deficit during his presidency, some of his other reforms, such as his proposal for universal health care coverage, met with opposition in the 103d Congress of 1993–94. Nevertheless, Clinton made an impact on U.S. law. On many issues, from abortion to environmental protection, he steered the nation in a different direction from that of his Republican

predecessors, Presidents ronald reagan and george h. w. bush.

Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe III, died in a car accident before the future president was born, and his mother, Virginia Cassidy Blythe, married Roger Clinton four years after Blythe's death. When Clinton was seven years old, the family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he spent the rest of his childhood.

Clinton graduated fourth in his class at Hot Springs High School in 1964. Already intent on entering politics, he enrolled at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. He completed a bachelor's degree in international studies in 1968 and won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, in England. After two years at Oxford, he entered Yale University Law School on a scholarship in 1970. He married Hillary Rodham on October 11, 1975.

"If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person. It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you."
—Bill Clinton

After a brief stint as a staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee, Clinton was hired in 1973 as a member of the faculty of the University of Arkansas School of Law, in Fayetteville. The following year, he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Arkansas's Third Congressional District. He lost by only four percentage points in a Republican stronghold. After successfully running Carter's Arkansas presidential campaign in 1976, Clinton won the office of state attorney general that same year.

In 1978, at the age of 32, Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas. He was the youngest governor ever to enter office in Arkansas, and the youngest governor in the nation since 1938, when Harold C. Stassen was elected governor of Minnesota at the same age. Shortly after entering office, Clinton raised the gasoline tax and automobile-licensing fees in order to finance highway improvements. These tax increases proved unpopular, and he lost the governorship in the 1980 election.

Clinton spent the next two years working in private legal practice, then won re-election as governor in 1982 and held the post until his election as president. He implemented educational reforms in Arkansas during the 1980s, increasing educational funding through a higher sales tax and introducing such measures as competency tests for teachers and compulsory school attendance through age 17 for students.

In 1992, Clinton entered a crowded field of candidates jostling for the Democratic nomination for president. His competitors included Jerry Brown, a former governor of California; Paul E. Tsongas, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts; and Thomas R. Harkin, a U.S. senator from Iowa. Despite rumors of an affair with a singer named Gennifer Flowers, Clinton won his party's nomination. He chose albert gore Jr., a U.S. senator from Tennessee, as his running mate. In the general election, he defeated President George H. W. Bush and an independent candidate, H. Ross Perot. Clinton tallied 43 percent of the popular vote, against 38 percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot.

Clinton was sworn in as president on January 20, 1993. At 46 years of age, he was the youngest president since john f. kennedy. Entering office at a time of economic recession, he immediately set to work on domestic agenda calling for economic stimulus, long-term public investments, and a deficit-reduction plan. Key aspects of this plan involved health care reform, reduction of tariffs, tax increases for the wealthy, tax cuts for the poor, spending increases for job training, and programs to increase the efficiency of the federal government.

Clinton experienced only partial success in implementing his proposals in Congress, even though his party enjoyed majority status in both the House and the Senate during the 103d Congress. He won passage of and earned income tax credit for working poor people; cut federal spending and bureaucracy; and passed the National and Community Service Trust Act (107 Stat. 785 [1993]), which provides students with tuition assistance in exchange for work on special service projects.

The north american free trade agreement (NAFTA) (32 I.L.M. 605), signed by Clinton on December 8, 1993, was hailed as landmark legislation. Although NAFTA negotiations had begun under President George H. W. Bush, Clinton made the controversial trade agreement a test of his presidency and used his influence to secure its passage through Congress in the North American Free Trade Implementation Act (107 Stat. 2057 [1993]). The agreement removes tariffs on products traded between the United States, Mexico, and Canada over a 15-year period. The Clinton administration also secured major changes in the general agreement on tariffs and trade (GATT).

Clinton did not win passage of his entire economic stimulus package, nor was he able to generate significant welfare reform. But the most noted failure of the early Clinton administration proposals was its sweeping plan to reform health care. Organized by hillary rodham clinton and presented to Congress in the fall of 1993, the 240,000-word document was one of the most detailed legislative proposals ever presented to Congress. The Health Care Security Act, as it was later called, would have provided health insurance to all citizens. Although the act was defeated in Congress, it spurred modest reforms that helped to bring down the health care inflation rate in future years.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton had pledged to lift a ban on homosexuals in the military. His efforts to fulfill this promise during his first year in office quickly met with disapproval from military leaders, members of Congress, and the general public. After lengthy debate of the issue in Congress, Clinton moderated his initial position with a new policy that was dubbed "don't ask, don't tell." Under this policy, homosexuals are free to serve in the military as long as they do not display their homosexuality or engage in homosexual conduct. Many homosexual rights advocates voiced their disappointment with Clinton's compromise on the issue.

Other significant legislation signed by Clinton included the Family and Medical Leave Act (29 U.S.C.A. §§ 2601 et seq. [1993]), which allows employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year for family illness, childbirth, or adoption. The National Voter Registration Act (42 U.S.C.A. §§ 1973gg et seq. [1993]), also called the motor-voter law, permits citizens to register to vote by mail or while obtaining a driver's license. Similar bills had been vetoed by President Bush.

Another bill signed by Clinton, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 248 [1994]), strengthens protection of family-planning clinics that perform abortions by making it a federal crime to obstruct clinic entrances and harass clinic patients and personnel.

Clinton signed into law a major piece of anticrime legislation on September 13, 1994 (108 Stat. 1796). The $30.2 billion measure was a complex mixture of government spending and changes in criminal law. It provided for social programs, prisons, and the hiring of 100,000 police officers nationwide; the extension of the death penalty to more crimes; and the banning of 19 different assault-style firearms.

Clinton was the first Democratic president since lyndon b. johnson to make an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Clinton appointed ruth bader ginsburg in 1993 and stephen breyer in 1994. Both justices were approved by the U.S. Senate with little controversy. With their moderate positions, these justices were likely to help prevent threatened reversals of previous Court decisions on abortion and civil rights.

Clinton appeared less confident in the area of foreign policy. Early in his term, critics characterized his handling of U.S. policy toward conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda as indecisive. Clinton appeared to gain confidence with time, however, and claimed a number of foreign policy victories later in his administration. He successfully sent U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994 to restore democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. The Clinton administration also secured significant disarmament agreements with Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, former states of the Soviet Union that possessed nuclear weapons; restored normal diplomatic relations with Vietnam; helped to broker peace negotiations in the Middle East and Northern Ireland; and slowed North Korea's development of nuclear weapons.

In March 1992, questions arose concerning a failed Arkansas business deal that the Clintons had been involved in during the 1980s. The deal centered on the Whitewater Development Corporation, a proposed real estate development near Little Rock. Among the charges later directed at Clinton was that he had benefited from criminal actions of James McDougal, an Arkansas savings-and-loan owner. In particular, it was alleged that McDougal had illegally diverted money to Clinton's gubernatorial campaign fund—money that McDougal had been able to raise partly through the help of then-Governor Clinton. James and Susan McDougal, along with former Arkansas governor Jim Guy Tucker, were convicted of fraud in 1996 for their roles in several transactions, including the Whitewater affair.

The Whitewater scandal was the most damaging to Clinton in the first term of his presidency, drawing comparisons to the watergate scandal under President richard m. nixon and the iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. The continuing investigation into White-water

by independent counsel kenneth w. starr also led to first impeachment trial in the U.S. House of Representatives since President andrew johnson in 1868.

The roots of Clinton's impeachment began in 1994, when Starr began his investigation and Clinton faced a series of accusations regarding sexual misconduct. In 1994, Paula C. Jones filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, alleging that Clinton had made unwanted sexual advances in a hotel room in 1991, when he was governor of Arkansas and she was a state employee. Clinton was the first sitting president since 1962 to face a civil lawsuit. Meanwhile, as early as 1995, Clinton began having an adulterous relationship with White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky that lasted into 1997. In December 1997, Jones's lawyers named Lewinsky as a potential witness in the sexual harassment lawsuit. Lewinsky filed an affidavit in the Jones case, denying that she had had sexual relations with the president, although in a series of events that were disclosed later, Lewinsky had returned several gifts that Clinton had report-edly given her during the affair. On January 12, 1997, Linda Tripp, a co-worker of Lewinsky's who had recorded telephone conversations in which Lewinsky had described the affair, turned tapes over to Starr. About a year later, on January 17, 1998, Clinton denied in a testimony before the grand jury in the Jones case that he had had an "extramarital sexual affair," "sexual relations," or a "sexual relationship" with Lewinsky. Starr then investigated whether Clinton had lied under oath and/or whether he had encouraged others to lie. After Starr granted her immunity for her testimony, Lewinsky appeared before a grand jury in August 1998, describing at least 11 sexual encounters, although none involved sexual intercourse. Clinton admitted to some encounters with Lewinsky that had involved oral sex, but he claimed that because he had not engaged in intercourse, his denials about sexual relations did not constitute perjury.

Starr submitted a report to the House of Representatives on September 8, 1998, outlining 11 grounds for impeaching Clinton, including charges of perjury and obstructing justice. On October 5, 1998, the House Judiciary Committee voted 21-16, along party lines, to recommend that the House begin formal impeachment proceedings. The House concurred with the committee's recommendation, and in December 1998, Clinton faced four articles of impeachment. On December 19, the House approved two of the articles charging Clinton with perjury in his grand jury testimony and with obstruction of justice. The trial then moved to the Senate, where Chief Justice william h. rehnquist presided as the senators listened in silence to presentations by Clinton's defense team and representatives from the House. After about a month of deliberations, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office. On both counts, the vote failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority.

Although the impeachment undoubtedly scarred Clinton's legacy, his economic success was virtually unparalleled in recent U.S. history. Although Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years (Clinton admitted that he was partly responsible for his party's losses) the national deficit was reduced by several billion dollars during the last few years of the Clinton presidency. The country also experienced sustained levels of economic growth that were unmatched since the early 1960s.

Notwithstanding his successes, controversies surrounding Clinton continued even as he left office in 2001. On January 20, 2001, on his final morning in office, Clinton granted more than 170 presidential pardons and commutations, including those for two fugitive financiers who allegedly had traded illegally with Iran in the 1980s and defrauded the U.S. government of about $48 million in taxes. In March 2001, Attorney General john ashcroft announced that he had launched an investigation into the pardons, dubbed "Pardongate" by the media. Clinton's actions in office also affected his status as a lawyer, as both the Arkansas Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court suspended his law license for the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges stemming from the Lewinsky and Paula Jones affairs.

Clinton has remained in the public consciousness, although his legacy in U.S. history is difficult to assess thus far. In 2001, he received a $12 million advance to publish his memoirs. In March 2003, the CBS television network announced that Clinton had agreed to appear with former senator robert dole, whom Clinton had defeated in the 1996 presidential election, in a regular piece on the news program 60 Minutes, where the former politicians debate current political issues. Clinton maintains an office in New York City, and construction of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, will be completed in the fall of 2004. Conservatives typically dismiss Clinton's economic and domestic achievements, pointing out his indiscretions throughout his two terms in office. Liberal supporters do not dismiss his imprudence, but they point out that he both presided over the country's emergence from economic recession and provided millions of Americans with opportunities that they would not have had without his programs.

further readings

Clinton, Bill. 1996. State of the Union address, January 23. Transcript available at 1996 WL 23253 (White House) and at the Democratic National Committee Web site <www.democrats.org/contact/president/union.html>.

——. 1995. Clinton Administration Accomplishments. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Executive Office of the President. Office of Management and Budget. 1993. A Vision of Change for America. February 17.

Johnson, Haynes Bonner. 2001. The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years. New York: Harcourt.

cross-references

Armed Services; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Voting; Presidential Powers; Veto.

Bill Clinton
1946-

Pesident of the united states (1993-2000)

Lost Opportunities

Historians, political scientists, and psychologists will write at length about Bill Clinton and his presidency. First elected in 1992 with only 43 percent of the popular vote, and reelected in 1996, Clinton dominated the U.S. political landscape for most of the 1990s. He was the first president to be born after the end of World War II (1945) and he symbolized the rise to political maturity of the baby boomers. He began his presidency with the intention of resolving several high-profile, but seemingly intractable, political issues including national health insurance, balancing the budget, civil rights, and education. Like all presidents, Clinton soon learned that progress on any of these issues required spending political capital, and that significant progress on all of them was impossible. As the first president elected after the end of the Cold War, he enjoyed the benefits of an end to the hair-trigger military standoff with the U.S.S.R., but along with that came a host of new and unanticipated foreign-policy problems unleashed by the untidy demise of the Soviet Empire. Finally, his presidency has been forever tainted by his own personal behavior, including dishonesty about his draft status during the Vietnam War (ended 1975), whether he smoked marijuana as a young man, extramarital affairs, and the lies and half-truths that led to his impeachment. Although he was not convicted by the Senate, the sordid affair cast a moral and political pall over nearly all of his second term. His presidency was not without successes—for example, the balanced budget, peace negotiations and agreements in the Middle East, and the improved situation in Northern Ireland—yet, so much more could have been accomplished.

Southern Roots

William Jefferson Blythe IV was born in Hope, Arkansas, on 19 August 1946. Three months before his birth his father, Bill Blythe, was killed in an automobile accident. In 1947 his mother left the boy in the care of his maternal grandparents while she went to New Orleans and nursing school. For most of the next two years he was raised by his grandparents with only occasional visits with his mother. His mother married Roger Clinton when he was four years old. He took the Clinton name when he was in high school. When he was seven the family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, though he frequently stayed in Hope with his grandparents. A younger brother, Roger, was born when Bill was ten. Clinton was a fine student and a musician with enough skill and talent with the saxophone to earn music, as well as academic, scholarships. When he was a senior in high school he was an Arkansas delegate to Boys Nation held in Washington, D.C., where he met President John E Kennedy. By all accounts this was a defining moment for young Clinton and may have been instrumental in his eventual decision to pursue a career in politics. He attended Georgetown University with the help of scholarships and student loans and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs in 1968. Georgetown was an ideal place for a young man interested in politics. Its Washington, D.C., location allows students to be close to national politics. While a student there Clinton interned in the Senate office of one of his home-state senators, James William Fulbright (D). After graduation, Clinton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. After two years abroad, Clinton returned to the United States and began legal studies at Yale University. While there, he met Hillary Rodham, also a promising law student. He graduated with his law degree in 1973. He briefly taught law, as did Rodham, at the University of Arkansas. They were married in 1975 and became parents of a daughter, Chelsea, in 1980. His first run for public office was an unsuccessful try at the Arkansas Third District congressional seat in 1974. Two years later he was elected Attorney General and in 1978 he was elected governor when he was only thirty-two years old. He was defeated in his 1980 reelection bid but came back and won the governorship again in 1982, and he held it from that point until his 1992 run for the presidency.

Running for President

Clinton was a long shot to get the Democratic nomination in 1992 to run against President Bush. He did not have a high public profile nationally, and Arkansas is not usually thought of as a strong base for a presidential run. Clinton benefitted as several nationally prominent Democrats decided not to seek the nomination in part because they were intimidated by Bush's incredibly high approval ratings in public opinion polls. Unlike other potential Democratic candidates, Clinton was willing to take the chance. He believed that Bush was unlikely to be able to sustain the unprecedented poll numbers and that he was vulnerable on other issues—most notably, the economy. In the 1980s Clinton had positioned himself to be a new Democrat who could put together an electoral coalition to win the presidency. He believed that though the old Democratic coalition of labor, liberals, and blacks had been successful from the 1930 through the 1960s, now it had become increasingly prone to fracturing on important issues. Clinton believed that new issues, raised and discussed by the Democratic Leadership Council that included Clinton, and the associated think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, were the framework for forming a new coalition. The broad outlines of this line of thinking included a continuing reliance on activist government and social issues such as civil rights, but with a simultaneous embrace of free enterprise on the domestic front and a commitment to a global free market trading system. There would be less welfare, to be replaced with a greater reliance on "workfare" and job-training programs. Unlike the old Democratic coalition, the new coalition would place an emphasis on reducing crime, and additional money would be committed to building prisons and putting more police on the streets. In addition, Clinton supported the use of the death penalty. All of these positions were a stark deviation from traditional Democratic paternalism, and his ability to position himself in the middle of the political spectrum was instrumental in securing the nomination and winning the general election campaign against Bush and H. Ross Perot. Perot's strong run as a third-party candidate in 1992 probably helped Clinton as well. Throughout the campaign, Bush and Perot engaged in a partly private, partly public feud that increased whatever negative impressions the public may have already had about them. Clinton focused on the economy, blaming President Bush for every negative economic reality. His campaign office posted a sign reminding the candidate and campaign workers that "It's the economy, stupid!" In November, Clinton barely won a plurality of the popular vote although he won a substantial victory in the Electoral College.

First Term

President Clinton got off to a difficult start. He had made promises to end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the U.S. military, and the homosexual community presumed that he would remove all restrictions on their military service. Clinton ran into a buzz saw of opposition to removing those restrictions, however, so he settled on a compromise position, ordering that the military not ask about sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians would be permitted to serve in uniform only if they did not tell others of their orientation. This satisfied neither the homosexual community nor those intent on maintaining traditional bans on their military service and earned Clinton the enmity of both sides. By the end of the decade, it had become clear that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was a failure. President Clinton also appointed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to head a task force charged with designing a new health-care insurance system for the United States. Providing adequate and affordable health care was one of the core promises Clinton had made in the 1992 campaign. It was a promise he could not keep as the insurance industry turned up the pressure on Congress and engaged in a public-relations blitz that crippled the effort before the proposals ever emerged from the commission. Clinton spent an enormous amount of political capital in this doomed effort. The suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., his deputy counsel at the White House and former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton, just six months after the new administration took office was to have long-term consequences. Not only was this tragic death of a friend a personal blow, but Foster's suicide became the focus of conspiracy theorists hoping to smear the president. Foster was Clinton's counsel handling charges that the Clintons had been involved in suspect land deals in Arkansas. This next round of investigations led to a web of further inquiries that turned up some shady dealings by a variety of people in and out of the administration, damaged the reputations of others not involved, and ultimately led to the president's impeachment in 1998 and trial in 1999. The biggest blow of all was the resounding Republican success in the 1994 midterm elections. Many political observers believed the congressional elections that year would be a referendum on Clinton and his policies, and the Democratic defeat was widely viewed as Clinton's defeat. There were successes as well, of course. Certainly the agreement in 1993 between Israel and Palestine to begin to carve out a Palestinian presence in occupied territories was a major victory, as was his success in getting Congress to approve the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that same year. The economy was getting stronger, some categories of crime were in decline, welfare reform had been tackled in tandem with the Republican Congress, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act imposing a waiting period on handgun purchases was passed, his national-service program (AmeriCorps) was created, and it was increasingly clear that the budget could be balanced after three decades of deficits.

The 1996 Election

In the months after the disastrous 1994 elections, it seemed unlikely that Clinton could sufficiently recover the political momentum necessary to secure a second term. Yet, he was once again the "Comeback Kid." He learned from his 1980 gubernatorial reelection defeat and his comeback victory two years later; from the Gennifer Flowers extramarital affairs charges that almost destroyed his candidacy before he got the nomination in 1992; and from the Republican success in capturing control of Congress in 1994. His opponents in 1996 were Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole (R-Kansas) and H. Ross Perot (Reform Party). Clinton successfully mobilized his constituencies around the New Democratic agenda; he was able to take credit for a strong economy, welfare reform, and reduced crime. He won the election by a wider margin than in 1992, but it was still only a plurality of the votes cast. He received 49 percent of the popular vote, while Dole garnered 41 percent and Perot trailed with 8 percent.

Second Term

The soaring economy provided the opportunity for Clinton and the congressional Republicans to reach an agreement on the historic balanced budget in 1997. This was so successful that by 1999 the major domestic political issue was how to use the ever-increasing budget surplus. In 1998 former Maine Senator George John Mitchell successfully led negotiations to end the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and, while further negotiations continued at the end of the decade, this agreement and its successors constituted a major foreign-policy success for the administration. Yet, from the beginning of the second term ethical questions took center stage. First, there were allegations of illegal fundraising by the president's campaign, and by Vice President Al Gore personally. Then the investigations led by Special Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr branched out from the original Whitewater investigation to look into Vincent W. Foster Jr.'s suicide, Paula Corbin Jones's allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Clinton when he was Arkansas governor, and new charges of improper conduct with a young intern, Monica S. Lewinsky. As 1998 wore on 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 himself in the Jones and Lewinsky matters. On 19 December 1998 the House of Representatives voted, largely along party lines, to approve two of the possible four articles of impeachment, making Clinton only the second president in American history to be impeached (Andrew Johnson, in 1868, was the other). The dramatic Senate trial was held in January and February of 1999. Two-thirds of the senators had to vote "guilty" in order to remove the president from office. Like his sole impeached predecessor, Clinton survived that critical vote. On the first article, alleging grand jury perjury, the Senate failed to remove him from office by a vote of fifty-five to forty-five margin, with ten Republicans joining the Democrats; on the second article, alleging obstruction of justice, the Senate split fifty-fifty, as five Republicans broke ranks with their colleagues. Throughout the entire process opinion polls repeatedly indicated that while the public had some serious reservations about Clinton's character, they viewed the impeachment as a partisan political ploy and emphatically did not want Clinton removed from office.

Foreign Affairs

Of course, events around the world did not stop just for the impeachment battle. In the spring of 1999 issues of national self-determination in the Balkans again surfaced, this time in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo whose large Albanian population lived uneasily with a powerful Serb minority. In February and March increasing violence against the Albanians by Serbs supported by the Yugoslav army put the Balkans once again at the front of the foreign-affairs agenda. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), comprising the United States and its European allies, decided in March to initiate a bombing campaign to drive the Serbs out of Kosovo. In the process, most of the Albanian Kosovar population became refugees and NATO relentlessly bombed Serbian assets, particularly the military, governmental, and economic infrastructure in the Serbian portions of Yugoslavia. In June an agreement was reached with the Serb political leadership that ended the bombing in exchange for Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, return of the Albanian refugees, and a multinational peacekeeping force in Kosovo led by NATO. While some peace was restored to the region, at the end of the decade it remained uncertain as to what the future would hold for Kosovo and its people.

Impact on American Politics

Clinton will be remembered as the president who was impeached and who, through the entire unsavory episode, was forced to publicly admit to embarrassing indiscretions, lies, and partial truths. Yet, in many ways his two terms in office were successful. The economy boomed, the budget was balanced, welfare reform was initiated, crime was reduced, several historic agreements were reached in foreign affairs, including movement toward peace both in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, major free-trade pacts were negotiated and implemented, and a national service program was instituted. Furthermore, he was instrumental in creating a new Democratic Party coalition that could effectively compete with Republicans on the national stage. Journalist Elizabeth Drew, quoting a friend of Clinton, said, "Bill has always been someone who has lived on the edge, politically and personally."

Sources:

Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).

David Maraniss, First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton (New York: Simon, & Schuster, 1995).

Stanley A. Renshon, High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and the Politics of Ambition (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

Martin Walker, The President We Deserve: Bill Clinton, His Rise. Falls, and Comebacks (New York: Crown, 1996).

Clinton, Bill 1946-

THE 1992 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

CLINTON’S FIRST TERM

CLINTON’S FOREIGN POLICY

SCANDALS, CONTROVERSIES, AND IMPEACHMENT

PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF CLINTON DURING HIS PRESIDENCY

POSTPRESIDENCY ACTIVITIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bill Clinton was the forty-second president of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. He was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr. (1918-1946), was a salesman who died in an auto accident before Clinton was born. When Bill Clinton was fourteen, he legally adopted the surname of his stepfather, Roger C. Clinton Sr. (1908-1967).

While attending Georgetown University, Clinton interned with Senator J. William Fulbright (1905-1995) of Arkansas, a prominent critic of the Vietnam War (1957-1975). Avoiding military service, Clinton was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in 1968 and earned a law degree from Yale University in 1973. While at Yale, Clinton met and later married fellow law student Hillary Rodham.

In addition to opposing the Vietnam War, Clinton worked in the 1972 Democratic presidential campaign and unsuccessfully ran for a congressional seat in Arkansas in 1974. In 1976 Clinton was elected attorney general of Arkansas. He was elected governor of Arkansas in 1978, but was defeated for reelection in 1980. In 1982 Clinton was again elected governor of Arkansas and served in this position until December 12, 1992. During his second stint as governor, Clinton projected a more moderate, populist image to Arkansas voters. His policies emphasized public school reforms, economic development, and tax relief for the elderly.

THE 1992 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Bill Clinton formally announced his candidacy for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination in Little Rock on October 31, 1991. After securing an impressive, second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary and winning southern primaries, Clinton’s victories in the New York and California primaries assured him of the Democratic presidential nomination. Meanwhile, Republican president George H. W. Bush’s reelection campaign was weakened by the lingering effects of the 1990-1991 recession, Bush’s violation of his 1988 promise not to raise taxes, dwindling public concern with foreign policy, and the independent presidential candidacy of Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire.

The Democratic national convention of 1992 highlighted the need for generational change in the White House by nominating baby boomers Bill Clinton for president and Senator Al Gore Jr. of Tennessee for vice president. Clinton won the election with 43 percent of the popular votes. Perot’s receipt of 18.9 percent of the popular votes enabled Clinton to carry most states in the Electoral College.

CLINTON’S FIRST TERM

With a Democratic Congress, Clinton signed into law the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, the AmeriCorps Act of 1993, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. Clinton’s inexperience in dealing with Congress was evident in his withdrawal of Lani Guinier’s nomination as assistant attorney general for civil rights following criticism of her writings on affirmative action. The most controversial and unsuccessful domestic policy initiative of Clinton’s presidency was his proposed Health Security Act, that is, a universal health-care plan. He appointed Hillary Clinton as the chair of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform and announced this task force’s proposal in a speech to Congress on September 22, 1993. Public and congressional opposition to Clinton’s plan increased as its complex, confusing details were criticized as socialized medicine by Republicans, conservative media commentators, and interest groups. The rejection of Clinton’s health-care plan contributed to the Republican landslide in the 1994 congressional elections.

After the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, Clinton repositioned himself as a moderate seeking bipartisan cooperation and compromise. His poll ratings steadily improved in 1995 and 1996 as the public perceived Republicans in Congress, especially Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, as excessively conservative and unreasonable in their policy relationship with Clinton. Clinton, however, waited until after the 1996 Democratic national convention to sign the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which most House Democrats opposed. With a prosperous economy and no major foreign policy crises, Clinton was easily reelected president in 1996.

CLINTON’S FOREIGN POLICY

Bill Clinton perceived the post–cold war era as an opportunity for the United States to improve and expand multilateral efforts to promote democracy, free trade, environmental protection, humanitarian relief, and the resolution of political and military conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Somalia, and Palestine. Clinton ordered brief, unsuccessful U.S. military interventions in Somalia and Haiti. The United States also joined NATO allies in aerial bombings to end Serbia’s “ethnic cleansing” and force an end to the war in Bosnia. Responding to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s (1937-2006) expulsion of UN weapons inspectors and other violations of international law, Clinton publicly supported “regime change” in Iraq but limited his military response to launching cruise missiles.

Clinton wanted to avoid a stronger military response toward Iraq that might alienate European and Middle Eastern allies, the United Nations, and the American public. Following the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City, however, Clinton signed into law tougher antiterrorism legislation. Nonetheless, George W. Bush’s Republican presidential campaign in 2000 criticized Clinton for failing to effectively address Iraqi and other threats to national security.

SCANDALS, CONTROVERSIES, AND IMPEACHMENT

Before his sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky became a public issue in 1998, Clinton had experienced media, congressional, and judicial investigations into his sexual behavior in the lawsuit of Paula Jones, Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the failed Whitewater investment, and his firing of employees in the White House travel office. Some conservative critics also accused Clinton of ordering the murders of Vincent Foster (1945-1993), the deputy White House counsel, and Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown (1941-1996). Foster’s death was officially ruled to be a suicide, and Brown died in a plane crash in Croatia.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr began to investigate Lewinsky’s affair with Clinton because of contradictions between her testimony and Clinton’s in the Jones case. At a January 1998 press conference, Clinton firmly denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky. Clinton continued to receive high job approval ratings, and the Democrats gained five House seats in the 1998 elections. Newt Gingrich soon resigned from the speakership and the House. Nonetheless, the House of Representatives impeached Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, 1998. After a trial in the Senate, the Senate acquitted Clinton on February 12, 1999. Throughout these proceedings, polls indicated that most Americans opposed Clinton’s impeachment, trial, and removal from office.

Bill Clinton devoted the remainder of his term to improving race relations, achieving a budget surplus, and negotiating a new trade agreement with China. In order to benefit Al Gore’s presidential campaign and Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign in New York, he frequently reminded audiences of his administration’s domestic policy successes and the country’s prosperous economy. Wanting to avoid association with Clinton’s scandals, especially in fund-raising for the 1996 election, Gore carefully limited Clinton’s role in his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign. Some political analysts have argued that had Clinton been more involved in the campaign, Gore might have carried Clinton’s home state of Arkansas and his own home state of Tennessee. Winning these two states would have won the election for Gore, regardless of the outcome of the disputed electoral votes in Florida.

As Bill Clinton prepared to leave office in 2001, he attracted controversy when he pardoned Marc Rich. Rich was a billionaire who fled to Switzerland because of charges of tax evasion and violations of oil embargoes against Iran and Libya. Denise Rich, his wife, had previously made large contributions to the Democratic Party and Clinton’s presidential library and foundation.

PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF CLINTON DURING HIS PRESIDENCY

Americans generally expressed an ambivalent, complex perception of Bill Clinton. During his second term, most Americans gave Clinton high job approval ratings, especially on the economy, and opposed his impeachment while simultaneously perceiving him to be dishonest, politically expedient, and detrimental to the moral character of the presidency. Among specific demographic groups, Clinton attracted consistent, loyal support from African Americans, Jews, unmarried women, and young adults, along with consistent, staunch opposition from married white men, white Christian fundamentalists, and gun owners. Criticism of Clinton’s policies and personal character was hardened and intensified by the rise of conservative talk radio programs, the Fox news network, and the Internet.

POSTPRESIDENCY ACTIVITIES

Besides supervising his presidential library and foundation, Bill Clinton regularly traveled nationally and internationally as a well-paid public speaker. Clinton raised funds for his foundation, the Democratic Party, and philanthropy, especially AIDS research and treatment, environmental protection, and relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Asian tsunami. In some of these charitable efforts, Clinton teamed with former president George H. W. Bush. After Senator Hillary Clinton became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 2008, Bill Clinton became more publicly prominent in his relationship with her when he and she performed a parody of the television show, The Sopranos.

SEE ALSO Baby Boomers; Bush, George H. W.; Democratic Party, U.S.; Elections; Hussein, Saddam; North American Free Trade Agreement; Presidency, The; Terrorism; Welfare; Welfare State

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berman, William C. 2001. From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Clinton, Bill. 2004. My Life. New York: Knopf.

Hamilton, Nigel. 2003. Bill Clinton: An American Journey. New York: Random House.

Sean J. Savage

William Jefferson Clinton

William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton (born 1946) won the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1992 and then defeated incumbent George Bush to become the 42nd president of the United States. He was re-elected to a second term in 1996

William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946. He was a fifth-generation Arkansan. His mother, Virginia Kelly, named him William Jefferson Blyth, IV, after his father, who had been killed in a freak accident several months before Bill's birth. When Bill was four years old his mother left him with her parents, Hardey and Mattie Hawkins, while she trained as a nurse-anesthesiologist. His grandparents ran a small store in a predominantly African American neighborhood and, despite the racist practices of the South in the early 1950s, Bill's grandparents taught him that segregation was wrong.

After his mother's marriage to Roger Clinton when Bill was eight, the family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. They lived outside of the town in a house that had no indoor plumbing, which was not unusual for rural Arkansas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Though Bill changed his last name to Clinton when he was 15 in an expression of family solidarity, the Clinton household was a troubled one. Roger Clinton was an alcoholic, and the family was frequently disrupted by incidents of domestic violence. At the age of 15 Bill made it clear to his stepfather that he would protect his mother and half brother, Roger, Jr., from any further assaults.

Clinton considered several careers as a child. At one point he wanted to be a musician (a saxophonist), and at another he wanted to be a doctor, but in 1963, as part of a delegation of the American Legion Boys' Nation, he met then-President John F. Kennedy. As a result of that meeting Clinton decided that he wanted a career in politics.

Education of a Future President

He entered college at Georgetown University in 1964. As a college student Clinton was committed to the movement against the Vietnam War, as well as to the civil rights struggle. In 1966 he worked as a summer intern for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who was at that time the leader of antiwar sentiment in the U.S. Senate. He was still a college student in Washington, D.C., when Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed, and he and a friend used Clinton's car to deliver food and medical supplies to besieged neighborhoods during the unrest that followed King's assassination.

Bill Clinton graduated from Georgetown University in 1968 with a B.S. in International Affairs. It was already clear to those who knew him that he was a natural politician. Clinton was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and spent the next two years as a postgraduate student at Oxford University. It was in 1969, while at Oxford, that Clinton wrote a letter to an army colonel in the University of Arkansas ROTC program concerning his draft eligibility and his opposition to the war in Vietnam. In his letter he expressed concern about his position both in terms of the draft and in terms of his later "political viability." At the age of 23 Clinton was already concerned with his electability.

In 1970 Clinton entered law school at Yale University. In his first year at Yale Clinton served as a campaign coordinator for Joe Duffy, an antiwar candidate for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut. While still a law student, Clinton worked with the writer Taylor Branch as campaign coordinator in Texas for presidential candidate George McGovern.

At Yale Clinton met Hillary Rodham, a fellow law student. After graduation Clinton and Rodham were offered jobs on the staff of the House of Representatives committee that was considering the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Clinton chose to return to Arkansas while Hillary Rodham went to work as a member of the House staff. Clinton went into private practice in Fayetteville, the center of Arkansas politics, and also began teaching at the University of Arkansas Law School.

A Political Career in Arkansas

In 1974 he ran for Congress against John Paul Hammerschmidt, who was a strong Nixon supporter. He lost the election, but it was a very close vote. In a heavily Republican district, running as the incumbent, Hammerschmidt got only 51.5 percent of the vote.

Hillary Rodham moved to Fayetteville in 1974 and also began teaching at the University of Arkansas Law School. On October 11, 1975, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham were married. In 1976 the Clintons moved to Little Rock when Bill was elected attorney general of the State of Arkansas, an office he held from 1977 to 1979.

In 1978 Bill Clinton ran for the office of governor of Arkansas. He was elected, and was the youngest-ever governor of Arkansas; in fact, he was the youngest person to be elected governor of any state since Harold E. Stassen was elected in 1938 at the age of 31. In his first term in office Clinton attempted to make numerous changes, many of which were extremely unpopular, including an attempt to raise automobile licensing fees.

On February 27, 1980, Bill and Hillary Clinton had a daughter they named Chelsea Victoria. In November of that same year Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory against Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton lost his bid for reelection as governor of Arkansas to Republican candidate Frank White. Clinton was a strong Carter supporter, which accounted for some of his difficulties, but Clinton recognized that many of his own policies had cost him reelection. When Clinton campaigned for election in 1982 against White, he explained he had learned the price for hubris and the importance of adaptability and compromise. He was elected with 55 percent of the vote.

Clinton served as governor of Arkansas until 1992. He was considered to be an activist, pushing for school reform and for health care and welfare reform with mixed results. He continued in these years to be active in Democratic national politics. Increasingly, Clinton attracted interest as a new voice in post-segregation southern politics. In 1988 Clinton came to national prominence at the Democratic convention when he gave a lengthy speech nominating Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as the party's presidential candidate. Clinton's speech was considered to be excessively long and was not well received. The audience, in fact, began to shout, "Get off, get off."

In spite of this unsuccessful debut, Clinton continued to be active in national politics. In 1991 he was voted most effective governor by his peers. That same year he was chosen as chair of the Democratic Leadership Conference. Along with such other southerners as Albert Gore of Tennessee, he worked to shift control of the party away from the northeastern liberal wing and to reshape a new party constituency. In October of 1991 Clinton announced that he was entering the 1992 race for president.

1992 Campaign and Election

Clinton had a lot of competition for the Democratic nomination, and many of those candidates claimed to be the alternative who offered a change from the party's past and a chance to beat the incumbent president, George Bush. Even before the New Hampshire primary in early 1992 Clinton had suffered many embarrassments and difficulties. He came from a state that was small and was regarded by many as unsophisticated and economically underdeveloped. Critics felt he had no experience on the federal level and no understanding of foreign policy. Clinton in turn insisted that his strengths lay in the fact that he was not connected to a Washington power base and therefore had a fresh perspective to bring to government.

Clinton's campaign was also plagued by charges of personal scandal that included allegations of sexual liaisons with women other than his wife and questions about his draft status during the Vietnam War. Clinton remained in the race, however, slowly gaining momentum until the 1992 Democratic convention, where he became his party's nominee. He selected Senator Albert Gore as his running mate. Clinton focused his campaign on economic issues, especially stressing his understanding of the plight of the unemployed and the underemployed as well as general concern over access to health care. In November 1992 Clinton was elected president, defeating Republican incumbent George Bush and third-party candidate Ross Perot.

Once in office Clinton addressed economic issues as interest rates and unemployment began to drop. He also appointed Hillary Rodham Clinton as the head of a task force mandated to explore possibilities for large-scale health care reform.

Helped by a Democratic majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Clinton was able to have enacted most of his proposals for the "change" issue that keyed his campaign. Probably the most enduring of the passed legislation was the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) making a single trading bloc of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. As the end of Clinton's term approached a new scandal threatened the President's credibility. The scandal was termed Whitewater for the suspicious Arkansas land deal in which Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved.

In 1996 Clinton was re-elected to a second term as the United States President. He won the election by a landslide, defeating Bob Dole with 49 percent of the popular vote and 379 electoral votes. Bill Clinton continues campaigning for the issues in which he believes. He remains the nation's youngest President since John F. Kennedy in 1960. Clinton has left a mark on not only the nation, but on the world as well.

Further Reading

There are a number of biographies of Bill Clinton, including The Comeback Kid: The Life and Career of Bill Clinton (1992) by Charles F. Allen and Jonathan Portis, Clinton, Young Man in a Hurry (1992) by Jim Moore with Rich Ihde, America: A Place Called Hope? (1993) by Conor O'Clery, and The Clinton Revolution: An Inside Look at the New Administration (1993) by Koichi Suzuki. Additional information may be obtained from the White House web site at http://www.whitehouse.com □

Clinton, Bill, (1946– ), forty‐second president of the United States.Born in Hope, Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton was raised by his mother, Virginia Dwire Clinton, and his stepfather, Roger Clinton, a Hot Springs, Arkansas, car salesman. Clinton's natural father, William Jefferson Blythe III, died in an automobile accident before his son's birth. Graduating from Georgetown University in 1968, Clinton attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar (1968–70) and graduated from Yale Law School in 1973. He returned to Arkansas to run for Congress, but lost to a popular Republican incumbent. In 1976, following his marriage to fellow lawyer Hillary Rodham, he was elected state attorney general. Two years later, at thirty‐two, he won the Arkansas governorship. Defeated for reelection in 1980 after raising gasoline taxes and licensing fees, he made a comeback in 1984, winning a second term. Reelected in 1986 and 1990, he helped found the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization devoted to moving the party closer to the political center.

As the Democrats' most visible advocate of pragmatic, centrist politics, Clinton sought the party's 1992 presidential nomination. Though dogged by charges of sexual impropriety and draft‐dodging in the Vietnam War Era, he won the nomination, choosing Tennessee senator Al Gore (1948– ) as his running mate. Stressing economic recovery amidst a nagging recession and styling himself a “New Democrat” blending fiscal moderation with social concern, Clinton pledged to overhaul the nation's health, welfare, and education systems while also reducing budget deficits. Opposing the Republican incumbent George Bush and independent H. Ross Perot (1930– ), a Texas billionaire, Clinton won with 43 percent of the popular vote.

During his first two years in office, Clinton won approval for a family‐leave law, a motor‐votor registration act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (negotiated by the Bush administration), the Brady gun‐control act, and a deficit‐reducing federal budget. His biggest disappointment came on health care, as Congress rebuffed a sweeping reform plan drafted by a team headed by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Despite limited diplomatic experience, Clinton enjoyed considerable foreign policy succcess. His administration under Secretary of State Warren Christopher helped negotiate peace accords in the Middle East and Northern Ireland and dispatched peacekeeping missions to Haiti and Bosnia. But Clinton's enhanced stature abroad failed to mollify domestic opponents of “Clintonism,” defined by conservatives as a blend of cleverly disguised “tax and spend” liberalism, political opportunism, and private immorality. Religious and cultural conservatives assailed Clinton on issues ranging from abortion to gays in themilitary. Ironically, liberal Democrats also criticized Clinton, accusing him of forsaking the social justice causes vital to racial minorities, organized labor, and the poor. Despite an improving economy, Republicans brandishing a conservative, anti‐Clinton “Contract with America” won both houses of Congress, for the first time in forty years, in the 1994 midterm election.

Despite this setback, the likeable, articulate, and charismatic Clinton retained his personal popularity. A celebrity “Baby Boomer” and popular culture icon riding the crest of a booming economy, he dominated the political center. Sensing the electorate's rightward shift, Clinton embraced welfare reform, a favorite Republican cause, and in 1996 signed a landmark bill slashing welfare spending, limiting benefits, and shifting the major welfare program from Washington to the states. A consummate campaigner and fund‐raiser, Clinton easily defeated his 1996 Republican challenger, Kansas senator Robert Dole (1923– ). (Ross Perot ran again also, but garnered far fewer votes than in 1992.) As Clinton's second term began, few doubted his capacity for political survival.

This capacity was soon sorely tested. In 1994, Republicans had initiated an investigation of the Clintons' alleged involvement in the Whitewater scandal, a 1980s Arkansas real estate swindle. However, Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr (appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno) failed to find evidence of illegality by either Clinton. Starr turned to other alleged presidential wrongdoings, however, and his inquiry gained momentum in 1998 with the disclosure of a sexual liaison between Clinton and a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. As the scandal unfolded, Clinton's initial denials gave way to a stunning public admission that he had not told the whole truth about the matter. Since Clinton had also denied the relationship in sworn testimony in an Arkansas sexual harrassment lawsuit, Starr presented this evidence of perjury to Congress in September 1998. In December, by a partisan vote, the House forwarded to the Senate two articles of impeachment. Clinton, however, mobilized enough Senate support to avoid removal from office. Both Congress and the public divided sharply over the gravity and “impeachability” of the president's offenses. He retained broad popular support, polls revealed, even among those who questioned his integrity.

Prosperity and Clinton's skillful handling of the ceremonial and symbolic aspects of presidential leadership helped him weather the storm, but public expectations of the presidency remained low in his final two years. Focusing on foreign affairs, trade, and strategic issues, Clinton with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1997– ), Defense Secretary William Cohen, and Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky pursued trade agreements with China, Vietnam, and other nations; urged support for the controversial World Trade Organization; sought to revive the stalled Mideast peace process; and promoted a scaled‐down version of the controversial missile‐defense system first proposed by President Ronald Reagan. On the domestic front, he continued to press for a financial restructuring of the nation's Medicaid and Social Security systems, and convened a high‐profile Presidential Initiative on Race chaired by historian John Hope Franklin. The Clinton scandals remained in the public eye, however, thanks to the president's continuing legal problems, including the threat of disbarment; Hillary Clinton's bid for a U.S. Senate seat from New York; and Republican attempts to link Vice President Gore—the Democrats' 2000 presidential candidate—to Clinton's political and ethical failings, particularly campaign finance irregularities in the 1996 election.

Confronting the disjunction between Clinton's public accomplishments and private shortcomings, citizens pondered the issue of character in public life; the boundaries between the public and the private spheres; and the nature of presidential leadership in a post–Cold War era of media‐driven politics, material abundance, and moral uncertainty. These debates seemed likely to represent Bill Clinton's primary contribution to American political history.
See also Democratic Party; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations; Foreign Trade, U.S.; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; Medicare and Medicaid; Strategic Defense Initiative; Welfare, Federal.

Bibliography

Elizabeth Drew , On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency, 1995.
David Maraniss , First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton, 1995.
David Maraniss , The Clinton Enigma, 1998.
Richard Posner , An Affair of the State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton, 1999.
Joe Conason and and Gene Lyons , The Hunting of the President, 2000.
Mark Rozell, ed., The Clinton Scandal and the Future of American Government, 2000.
Haynes Johnson , The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years, 2001.

Raymond O. Arsenault

CLINTON SCANDALS

CLINTON SCANDALS. When President Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, he hoped to legislate a reform agenda. Having received only 43 percent of the popular vote in 1992 and facing difficult policy choices regarding such matters as the deficit, he also carried with him a history that was not easily put to rest. Rumors abounded during the 1992 campaign about his past philandering and his apparent draft dodging, but he over-came those liabilities and won his party's presidential nomination and the election that followed.

But one story that surfaced in 1992 had staying power even after Clinton became president. The story concerned a land deal and a failed savings and loan bank in Arkansas and involved Clinton and his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton. A complicated story known as Whitewater, it seemed to imply shady doings by the two when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas and Hillary Clinton was the bank's lawyer. Although no evidence was ever adduced to convict them of illegal behavior, the Whitewater affair placed their probity and character under serious scrutiny by both Congress and an independent counsel, whose appointment by the Justice Department later had serious consequences for the Clinton presidency.

Spreading the cloud of scandal more deeply over Clinton, Paula Corbin Jones in 1994 filed a civil lawsuit charging Clinton with sexual impropriety when he was still governor of Arkansas. But before her case went trial in late 1997, a money scandal directly related to the high costs of funding Clinton's reelection campaign of 1996 enveloped the administration. The concerns revolved around the flow of illegal money into the campaign coffers of the National Democratic Committee from Indonesian and Chinese sources. In addition questions arose over the constant flow of people into the White House for kaffeeklatsches and sleepovers who paid substantially for their close proximity to the president. Among the participants in this money-driven environment at the White House was an individual with shady political connections.

Not rising to the level of scandal but viewed by some as scandalous was Clinton's decision to take from the State Department and give to the Commerce Department the authority to decide whether shipments of sensitive satellite technology to China should be given a green light. Unlike the Defense Department and the State Department, which questioned such sales, the Commerce Department was prepared to give the shipments the green light. The president of the Loral Corporation, who was the most generous financial contributor to the Democratic Party in 1996 and whose company manufactured sensitive satellite equipment and sold it to China, benefited from Clinton's move.

The historic scandal of Clinton's presidency was his affair with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which threatened to capsize his presidency. By denying a sexual relationship with Lewinsky in the Jones civil trial, Clinton not only gave perjured testimony but possibly obstructed justice as well. As a result the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC), headed by Kenneth Starr, submitted a report to the House of Representatives stating that Clinton may have committed impeachable acts as a result of his testimony and action in the context of the Jones civil trial.

Clinton's behavior as outlined in the Starr report angered and shamed many Americans, but a majority did not favor his impeachment, believing he was doing a good job as president. In the majority opinion, his affair with Lewinsky was purely a private matter and did not impinge on his duties. Thus it did not merit consideration either as a high crime or as a misdemeanor. Conservative Republicans, on the other hand, were eager to see Clinton removed from office. They were convinced that as a result of his behavior he had sullied the office and had embarrassed the country at home and around the world. Such were the views of both sides as the House of Representatives, driven by partisan political considerations and passionately held convictions, voted to impeach President Clinton on several counts. He thus became the first elected president in American history to be so indicted.

Responding to public opinion, which overwhelmingly opposed the action taken by the House, the Senate refused to convict Clinton of the charges. Clearly in this case he also was helped by the strong economy, which protected him during the Senate trial, but he was seriously tarnished by the affair. A majority of Americans no longer respected him as a person, even though they still admired his political skills and generally approved of his public policy initiatives. Clinton's behavior became an issue in the context of the 2000 presidential election, which surely hurt Vice President Al Gore's bid for the White House.

Although Clinton avoided a conviction in the Senate, he had reason to fear that after he left office the OIC would prosecute him for lying to the court in the Jones case. So Clinton made a deal with the OIC and issued a statement admitting his culpability, at which point the prospect of further legal action against him was dropped.

That arrangement notwithstanding, Clinton was unable to shake the stench of scandal even as he departed from office on 20 January 2001. On that day he pardoned Marc Rich, a billionaire fugitive and commodities dealer who owed the American government $48 million in back taxes. Clinton also commuted the sentence of Carlos Vignali, the notorious head of a Los Angeles cocaine ring, who was serving a fifteen-year prison sentence. Clinton's actions produced a storm of protest from Democrats and Republicans alike, who were outraged at what many believed was a clear abuse of the president's pardoning power. Thus if scandal or rumor of scandal accompanied Clinton's move into the White House, those controversial last-minute pardons of Rich and Vignali provided a scandalous backdrop to his departure from the presidency.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berman, William C. From the Center to the Edge: The Politics and Policies of the Clinton Presidency. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

Posner, Richard A. An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

William C.Berman

See alsoClinton v. Jones ; Impeachment Trial of Bill Clinton ; Special Prosecutors ; andvol. 9:Clinton's Rose Garden Statement .

Clinton Administration (1993–2001), United States National Security Policy

█ CARYN E. NEUMANN

President William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton argued that the end of the Cold War did not mean that the United States could abandon its long-standing aim of ensuring national security by promoting democratization around the world. Now the sole surviving superpower, the U.S. in the 1990s would continue to assertively support democracy but not in a manner that might place American troops in great jeopardy. Fearful of becoming stuck in a Vietnam-like quagmire, the Clinton administration would employ force as a tool of coercive diplomacy and punishment but avoid full-scale conflict. The national security system, re-designed by the new president, would also de-emphasize military issues in favor of a greater emphasis upon economics in the formulation of policy.

President Clinton entered the White House in 1993 with little experience or enthusiasm for international affairs. The first president to take office after the end of the Cold War, President Clinton was also the first to come of

age during the Vietnam War and he saw national security through the prism of that conflict. Vietnam shaped the Clinton administration in two ways: it made the president reluctant to commit troops to combat and it damaged his standing with the military because he had not served in the military during the conflict. The relative worldwide calm after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the American triumph in the Persian Gulf War made the marginalization of overseas issues politically possible.

As his first national security measure, Clinton issued a presidential directive to revise and rename the framework governing the work of the National Security Council. The previous Bush administration's National Security Review (NSR) and National Security Directive (NSD) series were abolished in favor of a Presidential Review Directive (PRD). The administration would use PRD to re-evaluate security classifications and the safeguarding of systems to ensure that they were in line with the reality of the current dangers instead of the threat potential that had existed during the Cold War.

The second presidential directive (PRD-2) established a new NSC structure, with a broader emphasis on economic issues than in previous administrations. PRD-2 also established three levels of deliberative committees under the NSC: a principals committee of main NSC meetings, a deputies committee including deputy chiefs of key agencies, and working groups on a variety of issues. Warren Christopher served as Secretary of State, with Anthony Lake heading the NSC until his replacement by his deputy Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger in 1997.

The Clinton administration argued that the end of the Cold War permitted the U.S. to shift to a foreign policy that rested on support for such values as democracy, market economics, humanitarian relief, and genocide suppression. PRD-20 had recommended this overhaul of U.S. policies after concluding that foreign aid programs were often wasteful, incoherent, and inconsistent with U.S. objectives. The most urgent issues that the NSC dealt with in the first years of the Clinton administration were Bosnia (genocide suppression), Haiti (democracy and humanitarian relief), Iraq (strategic arms control), and Somalia (humanitarian relief). Most of the PRDs remain classified, but it is known that the NSC system also dealt with illegal drugs, United Nations peacekeeping, and global environmental affairs.

As Clinton settled into the presidency, he experienced increasing conflict with Congress and a public angered by his policies. A 1993 PRD to permit U.S. forces to operate under the control of a United Nations commander particularly enraged many conservatives and had to be abandoned. The administration responded to its critics by making overseas actions more modest in scope. In Clinton's second term, the administration sought to integrate Eastern and Western Europe without provoking tensions with Russia; to promote more open trade; to improve defenses against such transnational threats as terrorism and narcotics; and to encourage a strong and stable Asian-Pacific community by seeking trade cooperation with China while avoiding confrontation with it on human rights issues.

Critics of administration argue that it appeared to lack a clear consensus on what constituted vital national interests. The obvious reluctance of the president to risk significant numbers of troops to achieve declared political objectives prompted U.S. allies to express concern about reduced American global military involvement and may have encouraged continued troubles with "rogue" nations such as Iraq.

█ FURTHER READING:

BOOKS:

Drew, Elizabeth. On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Herrnson, Paul S., and Dilys M. Hill, eds. The Clinton Presidency: The First Term, 1992–96 New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

ELECTRONIC:

Digital National Security Archive. "Presidential Directives on National Security from Truman to Clinton." 2003. <http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/pdessayx.htm>(April 25, 2003).

White House. "History of the National Security Council, 1947–1997." <http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/history.html>(April 25, 2003).

SEE ALSO

Cold War (1972–1989): The Collapse of the Soviet Union Executive Orders and Presidential Directives
Iraq War: Prelude to War (The International Debate Over the Use and Effectiveness of Weapons Inspections)
Iraqi Freedom, Operation (2003 War Against Iraq)
National Security Advisor, United States
National Security Strategy, United States
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
NSC (National Security Council)
NSC (National Security Council), History

CLINTON'S ROSE GARDEN STATEMENT (11 December 1998)

What began as an illicit sexual affair between President William Jefferson Clinton and a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky would soon erupt into a national firestorm. Amid partisan mudslinging, relentless accusations of malfeasance and mendacity, and an ongoing, tortuous independent investigation, President Clinton was at last forced to retract his protestations of innocence and confess his guilt. Never before had the private life of a sitting American president been the focus of such intense international scrutiny. For many, the scandal represented the regrettable culmination of America's amoral fascination with public confession and all things prurient. Others saw it as part of a Republican smear campaign against a popular president who had unseated the incumbent George H. W. Bush in the election of 1992. Whatever its origin, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal had taken on a life of its own. On 11 December, shortly after the House Judiciary Committee approved the first of three articles of impeachment, President Clinton appeared in the White House Rose Garden to once again express his sense of shame and wrongdoing.

Laura M.Miller,
Vanderbilt University

See also Clinton Scandals ; Impeachment Trial of Bill Clinton .

Good afternoon.

As anyone close to me knows, for months I have been grappling with how best to reconcile myself to the American people, to acknowledge my own wrongdoing and still to maintain my focus on the work of the presidency.

Others are presenting my defense on the facts, the law and the Constitution. Nothing I can say now can add to that.

What I want the American people to know, what I want the Congress to know is that I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds.

I never should have misled the country, the Congress, my friends or my family. Quite simply, I gave in to my shame. I have been condemned by my accusers with harsh words.

And while it's hard to hear yourself called deceitful and manipulative, I remember Ben Franklin's admonition that our critics are our friends, for they do show us our faults.

Mere words cannot fully express the profound remorse I feel for what our country is going through and for what members of both parties in Congress are now forced to deal with. These past months have been a torturous process of coming to terms with what I did. I understand that accountability demands consequences, and I'm prepared to accept them.

Painful as the condemnation of the Congress would be, it would pale in comparison to the consequences of the pain I have caused my family. There is no greater agony.

Like anyone who honestly faces the shame of wrongful conduct, I would give anything to go back and undo what I did.

But one of the painful truths I have to live with is the reality that that is simply not possible. An old and dear friend of mine recently sent me the wisdom of a poet who wrote, "The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line. Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

So nothing, not piety, nor tears, nor wit, nor torment can alter what I have done. I must make my peace with that.

I must also be at peace with the fact that the public consequences of my actions are in the hands of the American people and their representatives in the Congress.

Should they determine that my errors of word and deed require their rebuke and censure, I am ready to accept that.

Meanwhile, I will continue to do all I can to reclaim the trust of the American people and to serve them well.

We must all return to the work, the vital work, of strengthening our nation for the new century. Our country has wonderful opportunities and daunting challenges ahead. I intend to seize those opportunities and meet those challenges with all the energy and ability and strength God has given me.

That is simply all I can do—the work of the American people.

Thank you very much.

SOURCE: Clinton, William J. Rose Garden Statement. Associated Press (11 December 1998).

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT. SeeImpeachment Trial of Bill Clinton .