William Jefferson Clinton

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.
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 familyplanning
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 Whitewater 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 reportedly
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-ofjustice
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.

—. 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.