Profile Presidency: Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton (1946-), the 42nd U.S. president, served in office from 1993 to 2001. Prior to
that, the Arkansas native and Democrat was governor of his home state. During Clintons
time in the White House, America enjoyed an era of peace and prosperity, marked by low
unemployment, declining crime rates and a budget surplus. Clinton appointed a number of
women and minorities to top government posts, including Janet Reno, the first female U.S.
attorney general, and Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state. In 1998, the
House of Representatives impeached Clinton on charges related to a sexual relationship he
had with a White House intern. He was acquitted by the Senate. Following his presidency,
Clinton remained active in public life.
Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He
was the only child of Virginia Cassidy Blythe (1923-94) and traveling salesman William
Jefferson Blythe Jr. (1918-46), who died in a car accident three months before his sons birth.
In 1950, Virginia Blythe married car dealer Roger Clinton Sr. (1908-67) and the family later
moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. As a teen, Bill Clinton officially adopted his stepfathers
surname. His only sibling, Roger Clinton Jr., was born in 1956.

In 1964, Clinton graduated from Hot Springs High School, where he was a musician and
student leader. (In 1963, as part of the American Legion Boys Nation program, he went
to Washington, D.C., and shook hands with President John Kennedy at the White House, an
event he later said inspired him to pursue a career in public service.) Clinton went on to earn
a degree from Georgetown University in 1968. Afterward, he attended Oxford University on
a Rhodes scholarship. In 1973, he received a degree from Yale Law School.

At Yale, Clinton started dating fellow law student Hillary Rodham (1947-). After graduating,
the couple moved to Clintons home state, where he worked as a law professor at the
University of Arkansas. In 1974, Clinton, a Democrat, ran for a seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives but lost to his Republican opponent.

On October 11, 1975, Clinton and Rodham were married in a small ceremony at their house
in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The following year, Bill Clinton was elected attorney general of
Arkansas. In 1978, he was elected governor of the state. The Clintons only child, Chelsea,
was born in February 1980. That fall, Clinton lost his bid for re-election as governor.
Afterward, he joined a Little Rock law firm.

In 1982, he won the governorship again, and would remain in that office through 1992. While
serving as Arkansas first lady, Hillary Clinton also worked as an attorney.

After winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, Clinton, along with vice-
presidential nominee Al Gore (1948-), a U.S. senator from Tennessee, went on to defeat the
incumbent, President George H.W. Bush (1924-), by a margin of 370-168 electoral votes and
with 43 percent of the popular vote to Bushs 37.5 percent of the vote. A third-party
candidate, Ross Perot (1930-), captured almost 19 percent of the popular vote.

Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993 at age 46, making him the third-youngest president
in history up to that time. During his first term, Clinton enacted a variety of pieces of
domestic legislation, including the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Violence Against
Women Act, along with key bills pertaining to crime and gun violence, education, the
environment and welfare reform. He put forth measures to reduce the federal budget deficit
and also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated trade barriers
between the United States, Canada and Mexico. He attempted to enact universal health
insurance for all Americans, and appointed first lady Hillary Clinton to head the committee
charged with creating the plan. However, the committees plan was opposed by conservatives
and the health care industry, among others, and Congress ultimately failed to act on it.

Clinton appointed a number of women and minorities to key government posts, including
Janet Reno (1938-), who became the first female U.S. attorney general in 1993, and
Madeleine Albright (1937-) , who was sworn in as the first female U.S. secretary of state in
1997. He appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-) to the Supreme Court in 1993. She was the
second female justice in the courts history. Clintons other Supreme Court nominee, Stephen
Breyer (1938-), joined the court in 1994.On the foreign policy front, the Clinton
administration helped bring about the 1994 reinstatement of Haitis democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1953-). In 1995, the administration brokered the Dayton
Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia.

Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 and defeated U.S. Senator Bob Dole (1923-) of Kansas by
a margin of 379-159 electoral votes and with 49.2 percent of the popular vote to Doles 40.7
percent of the vote. (Third-party candidate Ross Perot garnered 8.4 percent of the popular
vote.) Clintons victory marked the first time since Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) that a
Democrat was elected to a second presidential term

During Clintons second term, the U.S. economy was healthy, unemployment was low and
the nation experienced a major technology boom and the rise of the Internet. In 1998, the
United States achieved its first federal budget surplus in three decades (the final two years of
Clintons presidency also resulted in budget surpluses). In 2000, the president signed
legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations with China.

Additionally, the Clinton administration helped broker a peace accord in Northern Ireland in
1998. That same year, America launched air attacks against Iraq s nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons programs. In 1999, the United States led a NATO effort to end ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo.

In the midst of these events, Clintons second term was marred by scandal. On December 19,
1998, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached him for perjury and obstruction of justice
in connection with a sexual relationship he had with White House intern Monica Lewinsky
(1973-) between late 1995 and early 1997. On February 12, 1999, the U.S. Senate acquitted
the president of the charges and he remained in office. Clinton was the second American
president to be impeached. The first, Andrew Johnson (1808-75), was impeached in 1868 and
also later acquitted.