Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (born
William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an
American politician who served as the
42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as
Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992, and as the
state's Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the
Democratic Party, ideologically Clinton was a
New Democrat, and many of his policies reflected a
centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.
Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas, and is an alumnus of
Georgetown University, where he was a member of
Kappa Kappa Psi and
Phi Beta Kappa and earned a
Rhodes Scholarship to attend the
University of Oxford. He is married to
Hillary Clinton, who served as
United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 and who was a
Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons earned
law degrees from
Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As
Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the
National Governors Association.
Clinton was elected president in
1992, defeating incumbent
George H. W. Bush. Aged 46, he was the
third-youngest president and the first from the
baby boomer
generation. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime
economic expansion in American history, and signed into law the
North American Free Trade Agreement. After failing to pass
national health care reform, the Democratic House was ousted when the
Republican Party won control of the
Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. Two years later, Clinton became the first Democrat since
Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected president twice. He passed
welfare reform and the
State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. In 1998, he was
impeached for
perjury before a
grand jury and
obstruction of justice during a lawsuit against him, both related to a
scandal involving White House (and later
Department of Defense) employee
Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the
U.S. Senate and served his complete term of office. The
Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clinton's presidency.
Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office
approval rating
of any U.S. president since World War II. Since then, he has been
involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. Clinton created the
William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes such as the prevention of AIDS and
global warming. In 2004, he published his autobiography
My Life. He has remained active in politics by campaigning for Democratic candidates, most notably for
his wife's campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, and then
Barack Obama's presidential campaigns in
2008 and
2012. In 2009, he was named United Nations
Special Envoy to
Haiti, and after the
2010 Haiti earthquake he teamed with
George W. Bush to form the
Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in
public opinion polls of U.S. presidents.
Early life and career
William Jefferson Blythe III, in 1950 at age four
Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in
Hope, Arkansas.
[2][3] His father,
William Jefferson Blythe, Jr. (1918–1946), was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Clinton was born.
[4] His mother,
Virginia Dell
(née Cassidy; 1923–1994), traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon
after he was born. She left Clinton in Hope with her parents Eldridge
and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small
grocery store.
[3] At a time when the Southern United States was
segregated racially, Clinton's grandparents sold goods on
credit to people of all races.
[3] In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married
Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned an
automobile dealership in
Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his brother and
Earl T. Ricks.
[3] The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950.
Although he immediately assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Clinton turned fifteen
[5] that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather.
[3] Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a
gambler and an alcoholic who regularly
abused his mother and half-brother,
Roger Clinton, Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.
[3][6]
In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and
Hot Springs High School – where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician.
[3] Clinton was in the chorus and played the
tenor saxophone,
winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. He briefly
considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his
autobiography
My Life:
Sometime in my sixteenth year, I decided I wanted to be in public
life as an elected official. I loved music and thought I could be very
good, but I knew I would never be John Coltrane or Stan Getz. I was interested in medicine and thought I could be a fine doctor, but I knew I would never be Michael DeBakey. But I knew I could be great in public service.[3]
Clinton's interest in law also began in Hot Springs High, when in his
Latin class he took up the challenge to argue the defense of the
ancient Roman Senator
Catiline in a mock trial.
[7]
After a vigorous defense that made use of his "budding rhetorical and
political skills", he told the Latin teacher Elizabeth Buck that it
"made him realize that someday he would study law."
[8]
Clinton has named two influential moments in his life that
contributed to his decision to become a public figure, both occurring in
1963. One was his visit as a
Boys Nation senator to the
White House to meet President
John F. Kennedy.
[3][6] The other was listening to
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963
I Have a Dream speech, which impressed him enough that he later memorized it.
[9]
College and law school years
Georgetown University
With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at
Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a
Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.) degree in 1968. In 1964 and 1965 he won elections for
class president.
[10] From 1964 to 1967 he was an intern and then a clerk in the office of Arkansas Senator
J. William Fulbright.
[3] While in college, he became a brother of co-ed service fraternity
Alpha Phi Omega[11] and was elected to
Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of the Order of
DeMolay,
[12] a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry, but he never became a
Freemason. He is a member of
Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity.
[13]
Rhodes Scholar
Upon graduation, he won a
Rhodes Scholarship to
University College, Oxford where he studied
Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though because he had switched programs and had left early for Yale University, he did not receive a degree there.
[6][14][15] He developed an interest in
rugby union, playing at Oxford
[16] and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas.
[citation needed]
Vietnam War opposition and draft controversy
While at Oxford he also participated in
Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969
Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam event.
[3]
Clinton received
Vietnam War draft deferments during 1968 and 1969 while he was in England.
[17]
Planning to attend law school in the U.S, and aware that he might lose
his draft deferment, he tried unsuccessfully to obtain positions in the
National Guard or
Air Force, and then made arrangements to join the
Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program at the
University of Arkansas.
[18]
He subsequently decided not to join the ROTC, saying in a letter to
the officer in charge of the program he had planned to join that he
opposed the war, but did not think it was honorable to use ROTC,
National Guard, or Reserve service to avoid serving in Vietnam. He
further stated that because he opposed the war, he would not volunteer
to serve in uniform, but would subject himself to the draft, and would
serve if selected only as a way "to maintain my political viability
within the system."
[19]
Clinton registered for the draft and received a high number (311),
meaning that those whose birthdays had been drawn as numbers 1 to 310
would have to be drafted before him, which was unlikely. Clinton's
political opponents charge that he used Fulbright's influence to avoid
military service.
[20] Colonel
Eugene Holmes, the Army officer who had been involved with Clinton's
ROTC application, suspected that Clinton attempted to manipulate the
situation to avoid the draft and avoid serving in uniform. He issued a
notarized statement during the 1992 presidential campaign:
I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator
Fulbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be
admitted to the ROTC
program … I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the
possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board
to delay his induction and get a new draft classification.[21]
During the 1992 campaign it was revealed that Clinton's uncle had attempted to secure him a position in the
Navy Reserve,
which would have kept him from going to Vietnam. This effort was
unsuccessful and Clinton said in 1992 that he had been unaware of it
until then.
[22]
Although legal, Clinton's actions with respect to the draft and
deciding whether to serve in the military were criticized by
conservatives and some Vietnam veterans during his first presidential
campaign.
[23] Clinton's 1992 campaign manager,
James Carville,
successfully argued that Clinton's letter in which he declined to join
the ROTC should be made public, insisting that voters, many of whom had
also opposed the Vietnam War, would understand and appreciate his
position.
[24]
Law school
After Oxford, Clinton attended
Yale Law School and earned a
Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973.
[3][6] In the
Yale Law Library in 1971 he met fellow law student
Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him.
[3][25] They began dating and soon were inseparable. After only about a month, Clinton postponed his plans to be a coordinator for the
George McGovern campaign for the
1972 United States presidential election in order to move in with her in California.
[26] They married on October 11, 1975, and their only child,
Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980.
[25]
Clinton did eventually move to Texas with Rodham to take a job leading
George McGovern's effort there in 1972. He spent considerable time in
Dallas, at the campaign's local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue, where he had an office. Clinton worked with future two-term
mayor of Dallas,
Ron Kirk, future
governor of Texas,
Ann Richards, and then unknown television director (and future filmmaker)
Steven Spielberg.
[citation needed]
Early political career, 1976–92
Governor of Arkansas (1979–81, 1983–92)
After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a law professor at the
University of Arkansas. In 1974 he ran for the
House of Representatives. Running in a conservative district against incumbent Republican
John Paul Hammerschmidt, Clinton's campaign was bolstered by the anti-Republican and anti-incumbent mood resulting from the
Watergate scandal.
Hammerschmidt, who had received 77 percent of the vote in 1972,
defeated Clinton by only a 52 percent to 48 percent margin. In 1976
Clinton ran for
Arkansas Attorney General. With only minor opposition in the primary and no opposition at all in the general election,
[27] Clinton was elected.
[6]
Clinton was elected
Governor of Arkansas in 1978, having defeated the Republican candidate
Lynn Lowe, a farmer from
Texarkana.
He became the youngest governor in the country at 32. Due to his
youthful appearance, Clinton was often called the "Boy Governor".
[28][29][30]
He worked on educational reform and Arkansas's roads, with wife Hillary
leading a successful committee on urban health care reform. However,
his term included an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens' anger
over the escape of Cuban refugees (from the
Mariel boatlift) detained in
Fort Chaffee in 1980.
Monroe Schwarzlose of
Kingsland in
Cleveland County,
polled 31 percent of the vote against Clinton in the Democratic
gubernatorial primary of 1980. Some suggested Schwarzlose's unexpected
voter turnout foreshadowed Clinton's defeat in the general election that
year by
Republican challenger
Frank D. White. As Clinton once joked, he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history.
[6]
Clinton joined friend
Bruce Lindsey's Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings.
[31]
In 1982, he was again elected governor and kept the office for ten
years; beginning with the 1986 election, Arkansas had changed its
gubernatorial term of office from two to four years. During his term he
helped transform Arkansas's economy and improved the state's educational
system.
[32] For
senior citizens, he removed the
sales tax from medications and increased the home property-tax exemption.
[33] He became a leading figure among the
New Democrats, a group of
Democrats who advocated welfare reform, smaller government, and other policies not supported by liberals. Formally organized as the
Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the New Democrats argued that in light of President
Ronald Reagan's
landslide victory in 1984, the Democratic Party needed to adopt a more centrist political stance in order to succeed at the national level.
[33][34] Clinton delivered the
Democratic response to President Reagan's
1985 State of the Union Address and served as Chair of the
National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987, bringing him to an audience beyond Arkansas.
[6]
In the early 1980s, Clinton made reform of the Arkansas education system a top priority. Chaired by Clinton's wife
Hillary Rodham Clinton, also an attorney and chair of the
Legal Services Corporation,
the Arkansas Education Standards Committee transformed Arkansas's
education system from the worst in the United States to one of the best.
Proposed reforms included more spending for schools (supported by a
sales-tax increase), better opportunities for gifted children,
vocational education, higher teachers' salaries, more course variety,
and compulsory teacher competency exams. The reforms passed in September
1983 after Clinton called a special
legislative session—the longest in Arkansas history.
[32] Many have considered this the greatest achievement of the Clinton governorship.
[6][33] He defeated four Republican candidates for governor: Lowe (1978), White (1982 and 1986),
Jonesboro businessmen
Woody Freeman (1984), and
Sheffield Nelson of Little Rock (1990).
[27]
The Clintons' personal and business affairs in the 1980s included transactions that became the basis of the
Whitewater controversy investigation that later dogged his presidential administration.
[35]
After extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were
made against the Clintons related to the years in Arkansas.
[6][36]
According to some sources, Clinton was in his early years a death penalty opponent who switched positions.
[37][38]
During Clinton's term, Arkansas performed its first executions since
1964 (the death penalty had been re-enacted on March 23, 1973).
[39] As Governor, he oversaw four executions: one by
electric chair and three by
lethal injection.
Later, as president, Clinton was the first President to pardon a
death-row inmate since the federal death penalty was reintroduced in
1988.
[40]
1988 Democratic presidential primaries
In 1987, there was media speculation Clinton would enter the race after then-
New York Governor Mario Cuomo declined to run and Democratic front-runner
Gary Hart
withdrew owing to revelations of marital infidelity. Clinton decided to
remain as Arkansas governor (following consideration for the potential
candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton for governor, initially favored –
but ultimately vetoed – by the First Lady).
[41] For the nomination, Clinton endorsed
Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. He gave the nationally televised opening night address at the
1988 Democratic National Convention, but his speech, which was 33 minutes long and twice as long as it was expected to be, was criticized for being too long
[42] and poorly delivered.
[43] Presenting himself as a moderate and a member of the New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, he headed the moderate
Democratic Leadership Council in 1990 and 1991.
[33][44]
Presidency (1993–2001)
Countries visited by President Clinton during his terms in office.
During his presidency,
Clinton advocated for a wide variety of legislation and programs, much of which was enacted into law or was implemented by the executive branch. His policies, particularly the
North American Free Trade Agreement and
welfare reform, have been attributed to a
centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.
[45][46] On budgetary matters his policy of
fiscal conservatism helped to reduce deficits.
[47][48] Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history.
[49][50][51] The
Congressional Budget Office reported budget surpluses of $69 billion in 1998, $126 billion in 1999, and $236 billion in 2000,
[52] during the last three years of Clinton's presidency.
[53] The U.S. treasury reported a debt of $5.413 trillion in 1997, and a debt of $5.656 trillion in 1999.
[54] At the end of his presidency, Clinton moved to New York and helped his wife win election to the U.S. Senate there.
1992 presidential campaign
In the first primary contest, the
Iowa caucus, Clinton finished a distant third to Iowa Senator
Tom Harkin. During the campaign for the
New Hampshire primary, reports of an extramarital affair with
Gennifer Flowers surfaced. As Clinton fell far behind former
Massachusetts Senator
Paul Tsongas in the New Hampshire polls,
[6] following
Super Bowl XXVI, Clinton and his wife Hillary went on
60 Minutes
to rebuff the charges. Their television appearance was a calculated
risk, but Clinton regained several delegates. He finished second to
Tsongas in the
New Hampshire primary,
but after trailing badly in the polls and coming within single digits
of winning, the media viewed it as a victory. News outlets labeled him
"The Comeback Kid" for earning a firm second-place finish.
[55]
Winning the big prizes of Florida and Texas and many of the
Southern primaries on
Super Tuesday gave Clinton a sizable delegate lead. However, former California Governor
Jerry Brown was scoring victories and Clinton had yet to win a significant contest outside his native South.
[6][44]
With no major Southern state remaining, Clinton targeted New York,
which had many delegates. He scored a resounding victory in New York
City, shedding his image as a regional candidate.
[44] Having been transformed into the consensus candidate, he secured the Democratic Party nomination, finishing with a victory in
Jerry Brown's home state of California.
[6]
During the campaign, questions of
conflict of interest regarding state business and the politically powerful
Rose Law Firm,
at which Hillary Rodham Clinton was a partner, arose. Clinton argued
the questions were moot because all transactions with the state had been
deducted before determining Hillary's firm pay.
[3][56]
Further concern arose when Bill Clinton announced that, with Hillary,
voters would be getting two presidents "for the price of one".
[57]
While campaigning for U.S. President, the then Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to see that
Ricky Ray Rector
would be executed. After killing a police officer and a civilian,
Rector shot himself in the head, leading to what his lawyers said was a
state where he could still talk but did not understand the idea of
death. According to Arkansas state and Federal law, a seriously mentally
impaired inmate cannot be executed. The courts disagreed with the
allegation of grave mental impairment and allowed the execution.
Clinton's return to Arkansas for the execution was framed in a
The New York Times article as a possible political move to counter "soft on crime" accusations.
[37][58]
Because Bush's
approval ratings were around 80 percent during the
Gulf War,
he was described as unbeatable. However, when Bush compromised with
Democrats to try to lower Federal deficits, he reneged on his
promise not to raise taxes, hurting his approval rating. Clinton repeatedly condemned Bush for making a promise he failed to keep.
[44] By election time, the economy was souring and Bush saw his approval rating plummet to just slightly over 40 percent.
[44][59]
Finally, conservatives were previously united by anti-communism, but
with the end of the Cold War, the party lacked a uniting issue. When
Pat Buchanan and
Pat Robertson addressed Christian themes at the
Republican National Convention – with Bush criticizing Democrats for omitting God from their platform – many moderates were alienated.
[60]
Clinton then pointed to his moderate, "New Democrat" record as governor
of Arkansas, though some on the more liberal side of the party remained
suspicious.
[61] Many Democrats who had supported
Ronald Reagan and Bush in previous elections switched their support to Clinton.
[62] Clinton and his running mate,
Al Gore, toured the country during the final weeks of the campaign, shoring up support and pledging a "new beginning".
[62]
Clinton won the
1992 presidential election (43.0 percent of the vote) against Republican incumbent
George H. W. Bush (37.4 percent of the vote) and billionaire
populist Ross Perot,
who ran as an independent (18.9 percent of the vote) on a platform
focusing on domestic issues; a significant part of Clinton's success was
Bush's steep decline in public approval.
[62] Clinton's election ended twelve years of Republican rule of the
White House and twenty of the previous twenty-four years. The election gave Democrats full control of the
United States Congress,
[4] the first time one party controlled both the executive and legislative branches since Democrats held the
95th United States Congress during the
Jimmy Carter presidency in the late 1970s.
[63][64]
First term, 1993–97
Clinton was
inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Shortly after taking office, Clinton signed the
Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
on February 5, which required large employers to allow employees to
take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. This
action had bipartisan support,
[65] and proved quite popular with the public.
[66]
Two days after taking office, on January 22, 1993—the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in
Roe v. Wade, Clinton reversed restrictions on domestic and international
family planning programs that had been imposed by Clinton's predecessors, Ronald Regan and George H.W. Bush.
[67]
Clinton said that abortion should be kept "safe, legal, and rare"—a
slogan that had been suggested by University of California, San Diego
political scientist
Samuel L. Popkin and first used by Clinton in December 1991, while campaigning.
[68] During the eight years of the Clinton administration, the U.S. abortion rate declined by about 18.4 percent.
[69]
On February 15, 1993, Clinton made his first address to the nation, announcing his plan to raise taxes to cap the
budget deficit.
[70] Two days later, in a nationally televised address to a
joint session of Congress,
Clinton unveiled his economic plan. The plan focused on reducing the
deficit rather than on cutting taxes for the middle class, which had
been high on his campaign agenda.
[71]
Clinton's advisers pressured him to raise taxes on the theory that a
smaller federal budget deficit would reduce bond interest rates.
[72]
On May 19, 1993, Clinton fired seven employees of the White House Travel Office, causing the
White House travel office controversy even though the Travel Office staff served at the pleasure of the president and could be
dismissed without cause.
The White House responded to the controversy by claiming the firings
were done because of financial improprieties that had been revealed by a
brief FBI investigation.
[73]
Critics contended the firings had been done to allow friends of the
Clintons to take over the travel business and that the involvement of
the FBI was unwarranted.
[74]
"Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine
of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be
cured by what is right with America."
Inaugural address, January 20, 1993.[75]
Clinton signed the
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993
in August of that year, which passed Congress without a Republican
vote. It cut taxes for fifteen million low-income families, made tax
cuts available to 90 percent of small businesses,
[76]
and raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of taxpayers.
Additionally, through the implementation of spending restraints, it
mandated the budget be balanced over a number of years.
[77]
Clinton made a major speech to Congress regarding
a health care reform plan
on September 22, 1993, aimed at achieving universal coverage through a
national health care plan. This was one of the most prominent items on
Clinton's legislative agenda, and resulted from a task force headed by
Hillary Clinton.
Though at first well received in political circles, it was eventually
doomed by well-organized opposition from conservatives, the
American Medical Association, and the health insurance industry. However,
John F. Harris, a biographer of Clinton's, states the program failed because of a lack of coordination within the
White House.
[36]
Despite the Democratic majority in Congress, the effort to create a
national health care system ultimately died when compromise legislation
by
George J. Mitchell failed to gain a majority of support in August 1994. It was the first major legislative defeat of Clinton's administration.
[33][36]
In November 1993,
David Hale, the source of criminal allegations against Bill Clinton in the
Whitewater controversy,
alleged that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, pressured him to
provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the partner of the
Clintons in the Whitewater land deal.
[78] A
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
investigation did result in convictions against the McDougals for their
role in the Whitewater project, but the Clintons themselves were never
charged, and Clinton maintains innocence in the affair.
Clinton signed the
Brady Bill into law on November 30, 1993, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases. He also expanded the
Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low-income workers.
[36]
In December of that year, allegations by Arkansas state troopers
Larry Patterson and Roger Perry were first reported by
David Brock in
the American Spectator. Later known as
Troopergate,
the allegations by these men were that they arranged sexual liaisons
for Bill Clinton back when he was governor of Arkansas. The story
mentioned a woman named
Paula, a reference to
Paula Jones.
Brock later apologized to Clinton, saying the article was politically
motivated "bad journalism" and that "the troopers were greedy and had
slimy motives."
[79]
That month, Clinton implemented a Department of Defense directive known as "
Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which allowed
gay men and women
to serve in the armed services provided they kept their sexuality a
secret, and forbade the military from inquiring about an individual's
sexual orientation.
[80]
The policy was developed as a compromise after Clinton's proposal to
allow gays to serve openly in the military met staunch opposition from
prominent Congressional Republicans and Democrats, including Senators
John McCain (R-AZ) and
Sam Nunn (D-GA). According to
David Mixner,
Clinton's support for the compromise led to a heated dispute with Vice
President Al Gore, who felt that "the President should lift the ban …
even though [his executive order] was sure to be overridden by the
Congress".
[81]
Some gay-rights advocates criticized Clinton for not going far enough
and accused him of making his campaign promise to get votes and
contributions.
[82] Their position was that Clinton should have integrated the military by executive order, noting that President
Harry Truman
used executive order to racially desegregate the armed forces.
Clinton's defenders argue that an executive order might have prompted
the Senate to write the exclusion of gays into law, potentially making
it harder to integrate the military in the future.
[33]
Later in his presidency, in 1999, Clinton criticized the way the policy
was implemented, saying he did not think any serious person could say
it was not "out of whack".
[83] The policy remained controversial, and was finally
repealed in 2011, removing open sexual preference as a reason for dismissal from the armed forces.
[84]
On January 1, 1994, Clinton signed the
North American Free Trade Agreement into law.
[85]
Throughout his first year in office, Clinton consistently supported
ratification of the treaty by the U.S. Senate. Clinton and most of his
allies in the Democratic Leadership Committee strongly supported free
trade measures; there remained, however, strong disagreement within the
party. Opposition came chiefly from anti-trade Republicans,
protectionist Democrats and supporters of
Ross Perot.
The bill passed the house with 234 votes against 200 opposed (132
Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor; 156 Democrats, 43
Republicans, and 1 independent against). The treaty was then ratified by
the Senate and signed into law by the President.
[85]
The
Omnibus Crime Bill which Clinton signed into law in 1994
[86]
made many changes to U.S. crime and law enforcement legislation
including the expansion of the death penalty to include crimes not
resulting in death, such as running a large-scale drug enterprise.
During Clinton's re-election campaign he said, "My 1994 crime bill
expanded the death penalty for drug kingpins, murderers of federal law
enforcement officers, and nearly 60 additional categories of violent
felons."
[87]
"When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of
what is called the Worldwide Web … Now even my cat has its own page."
Bill Clinton's announcement of Next Generation Internet initiative, 1996.[88]
The Clinton administration also launched the first official
White House website,
whitehouse.gov, on October 21, 1994.
[89][90] It was followed by three more versions, resulting in the final edition launched in 2000.
[91][92]
The White House website was part of a wider movement of the Clinton
administration toward web-based communication. According to Robert
Longley, "Clinton and Gore were responsible for pressing almost all
federal agencies, the U.S. court system and the U.S. military onto the
Internet, thus opening up America's government to more of America's
citizens than ever before. On July 17, 1996, Clinton issued Executive
Order 13011 – Federal Information Technology, ordering the heads of all
federal agencies to utilize information technology fully to make the
information of the agency easily accessible to the public."
[93]
After two years of Democratic Party control, the Democrats lost control of Congress in the
mid-term elections in 1994, for the first time in forty years.
[94]
Ken Gormley, Dean of the School of Law at Duquesne University in Pittsburg, authored a book titled
The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr.
In his book, Gormley reveals President Clinton narrowly escaped
assassination in the Philippines in 1996. During his visit to the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) forum in Manila, Clinton was saved minutes before his motorcade
was scheduled to drive over a bridge charged with a timed improvised
explosive device (IED).
[95] According to officials, the IED was large enough to "blow up the entire presidential motorcade".
[96] Details of the plot were revealed to Gormley by
Lewis Merletti, former member of the Presidential Protection Detail and Director of the
Secret Service.
The President was on his way to meet with a senior member of the
Philippine government when disaster was averted. Intelligence officers
intercepted a radio transmission indicating that there was a wedding
cake under a bridge.
[95] This alerted Merletti and others as Clinton's motorcade was scheduled to drive over a major bridge in downtown Manila.
[96] Once more, the word "wedding" was the code name used by a terrorist group for a past assassination attempt.
[96]
Merletti wanted to reroute the motorcade, but the alternate route would
add forty-five minutes to the drive time. Clinton was very angry, as he
was already late for the meeting; however, following the advice of the
secret service saved his life. Two other bombs had been discovered in
Manila earlier in the week so the threat level that day was high.
[97] Security personnel at the Manila International Airport uncovered several grenades and a timing device in a travel bag.
[98] Officials also discovered a bomb near a major U.S. naval base.
[98]
The President was scheduled to visit both of these locations later in
the week. An intense investigation took place into the events in Manila
and it was discovered that the group behind the bridge bomb was a Saudi
terrorist group in Afghanistan known as
al-Qaeda and the plot was masterminded by
Osama bin Laden.
[96]
Until recently, this thwarted assassination attempt was never made
public and remained top secret. Only top members of the U.S.
intelligence community were aware of these events.
[96]
Bill Clinton made health care reform one of his highest priorities; the
First Lady chaired the Task Force on National Health Care Reform.
The
White House FBI files controversy of June 1996 arose concerning improper access by the White House to
FBI
security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, head of the White
House Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received
from the FBI, background report files without asking permission of the
subject individuals; many of these were employees of former Republican
administrations.
[99] In March 2000, Independent Counsel
Robert Ray
determined that there was no credible evidence of any crime. Ray's
report further stated, "there was no substantial and credible evidence
that any senior White House official was involved" in seeking the files.
[100]
On September 21, 1996, Clinton signed into law the
Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the legal union
of one man and one woman, allowing individual states to refuse to
recognize gay marriages performed in other states.
[101] Paul Yandura,
speaking for the White House gay and lesbian liaison office, said that
Clinton's signing of DOMA "was a political decision that they made at
the time of a re-election." In defense of his actions, Clinton has said
that DOMA was an attempt to "head off an attempt to send a
constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states", a
possibility he described as highly likely in the context of a "very
reactionary Congress."
[102] Administration spokesman
Richard Socarides said, "… the alternatives we knew were going to be far worse, and it was time to move on and get the president re-elected."
[103]
Clinton himself stated that DOMA was something "which the Republicans
put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I
think it's obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the
Republican Congress from presenting that."
[104] Others were more critical. The veteran gay rights and gay marriage activist
Evan Wolfson has called these claims "historic revisionism".
[103] In a July 2, 2011 editorial
The New York Times
opined, "The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 as an
election-year wedge issue, signed by President Bill Clinton in one of
his worst policy moments.".
[105] In June 2013, the United States Supreme Court, in
United States v. Windsor, struck down DOMA.
[106]
Despite DOMA, Clinton was the first President to select openly gay persons for Administration positions,
[107] and is generally credited as the first President to publicly champion gay rights.
[108]
During his Presidency, Clinton controversially issued two substantial
executive orders on behalf of gay rights, the first lifting the ban on
security clearances for LGBT federal employees
[109] and the second outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal civilian workforce.
[110] Under President Clinton's leadership, federal funding for HIV/AIDS research, prevention and treatment more than doubled.
[111] And Clinton also pushed for passing hate crimes laws for gays and for the private sector
Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which, buoyed by his lobbying, failed to pass the Senate by a single vote in 1996.
[112]
Advocacy for these issues, paired with the politically unpopular nature
of the gay rights movement at the time, led to enthusiastic support for
Clinton's election and reelection by the
Human Rights Campaign.
[108] Clinton came out for gay marriage in July 2009
[113] and urged the Supreme Court to overturn DOMA in 2013.
[114] He was later honored by
GLAAD for his prior pro-gay stances and his reversal on DOMA.
[115]
As part of a 1996 initiative to curb
illegal immigration, Clinton signed the
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) on September 30, 1996. Appointed by Clinton,
[116] the
U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people a year to about 550,000.
[117][118]
The
1996 United States campaign finance controversy
was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to
influence the domestic policies of the United States, before and during
the Clinton administration, and involved the fundraising practices of
the administration itself. The Chinese government denied all
accusations.
[119]
1996 presidential election
President Bill Clinton (center), first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (right) and their daughter
Chelsea (left) wave to watchers at a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, January 20, 1997.
In the
1996 presidential election, Clinton was re-elected, receiving 49.2 percent of the popular vote over Republican
Bob Dole (40.7 percent of the popular vote) and
Reform candidate
Ross Perot (8.4 percent of the popular vote), becoming the first Democratic incumbent since
Lyndon Johnson to be elected to a second term and the first Democrat since
Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected President more than once.
[120] The Republicans lost a few seats in the House and gained a few in the Senate, but retained control of both houses of the
105th United States Congress. Clinton received 379, or over 70 percent of the
Electoral College votes, with Dole receiving 159 electoral votes.
Second term, 1997–2001
In the January 1997 State of the Union address, Clinton proposed a
new initiative to provide coverage to up to five million children.
Senators
Ted Kennedy – a Democrat – and
Orrin Hatch – a Republican – teamed up with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her staff in 1997, and succeeded in passing legislation forming the
State Children's Health Insurance Program
(SCHIP), the largest (successful) health care reform in the years of
the Clinton Presidency. That year, Hillary Clinton shepherded through
Congress the
Adoption and Safe Families Act and two years later she succeeded in helping pass the
Foster Care Independence Act. He negotiated the passage of the
Balanced Budget Act of 1997
by the Republican Congress. In October 1997, he announced he was
getting hearing aids, due to hearing loss attributed to his age, and his
time spent as a musician in his youth.
[121] In 1999 Clinton signed into law the
Financial Services Modernization Act also known as the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the part of the
Glass–Steagall Act that had prohibited a bank from offering a full range of
investment,
commercial banking, and
insurance services since its enactment in 1933.
[122]
Impeachment and acquittal
Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999
After the 1998 elections, the House
impeached Clinton, alleging
perjury and
obstruction of justice related to the
Lewinsky scandal.
[36] Clinton was only the second U.S. President to be impeached, after
Andrew Johnson.
Impeachment proceedings were based on allegations that Clinton had
illegally lied about and covered up his relationship with 22-year-old
White House (and later
Department of Defense) employee
Monica Lewinsky.
[123] After the
Starr Report
was submitted to the House providing what it termed "substantial and
credible information that President Clinton Committed Acts that May
Constitute Grounds for an Impeachment",
[124] the House began impeachment hearings against Clinton before the
mid-term elections. To hold impeachment proceedings, the Republican leadership called a
lame-duck session in December 1998.
While the
House Judiciary Committee
hearings ended in a straight party-line vote, there was lively debate
on the House floor. The two charges passed in the House (largely with
Republican support, but with a handful of Democratic votes as well) were
for
perjury and
obstruction of justice. The perjury charge arose from Clinton's testimony before a
grand jury that had been convened to investigate
perjury he may have committed in his sworn deposition during
Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit.
[125] The obstruction charge was based on his actions to conceal his relationship with Lewinsky before and after that deposition.
The Senate later acquitted Clinton on both charges.
[126]
The Senate refused to meet to hold an impeachment trial before the end
of the old term, so the trial was held over until the next Congress.
Clinton was represented by Washington law firm
Williams & Connolly.
[127] The Senate finished a twenty-one-day trial on February 12, 1999, with the vote of 55 Not Guilty/45 Guilty on the perjury charge
[126] and 50 Not Guilty/50 Guilty on the obstruction of justice charge.
[128]
Both votes fell short of the Constitutional two-thirds majority
requirement to convict and remove an officeholder. The final vote was
generally along party lines, with no Democrats voting guilty, and only a
handful of Republicans voting not guilty.
[126]
Pardons and commutations
Clinton
controversially issued 141 pardons and 36 commutations on his last day in office on January 20, 2001.
[36][129] Most of the controversy surrounded
Marc Rich and allegations that Hillary Clinton's brother,
Hugh Rodham, accepted payments in return for influencing the president's decision-making regarding the pardons.
[130] Some of Clinton's pardons remain a point of controversy.
[131]
Military and foreign events
Many military events occurred during Clinton's presidency. The
Battle of Mogadishu occurred in
Somalia in 1993. During the operation,
two U.S. helicopters were shot down by
rocket-propelled grenade attacks to their
tail rotors,
trapping soldiers behind enemy lines. This resulted in an urban battle
that killed 18 American soldiers, wounded 73 others, and one was taken
prisoner. There were many more Somali casualties. Some of the American
bodies were dragged through the streets – a spectacle broadcast on
television news programs. In response, U.S. forces were withdrawn from
Somalia and later conflicts were approached with fewer soldiers on the
ground. In 1995, U.S. and
NATO aircraft
attacked Bosnian Serb targets
to halt attacks on U.N. safe zones and to pressure them into a peace
accord. Clinton deployed U.S. peacekeepers to Bosnia in late 1995, to
uphold the subsequent
Dayton Agreement.
General John P. Jumper, U.S. Air Forces in Europe commander, escorts
President William Jefferson Clinton upon his arrival to Ramstein Air
Base, Germany, May 5, 1999. The president visited several European air
bases to thank the troops (not shown) for their support of NATO
Operations Allied Force and Shining Hope, 1999.
In February 1996, the Clinton administration agreed to pay
Iran US$131.8 million in settlement to discontinue a case brought by Iran in 1989 against the U.S. in the
International Court of Justice after the shooting down of
Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy
guided missile cruiser.
[132]
Capturing
Osama bin Laden had been an objective of the U.S. government during the presidency of Bill Clinton (and continued to be until
bin Laden's death in 2011).
[133] Despite claims by
Mansoor Ijaz
and Sudanese officials that the Sudanese government had offered to
arrest and extradite bin Laden and that that U.S. authorities rejected
each offer
[134] the
9/11 Commission Report stated that "we have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim."
[135]
In response to a 1996 State Department warning about bin Laden and the
1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa by
al-Qaeda
(which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans), Clinton ordered
several military missions to capture or kill bin Laden, both of which
were unsuccessful.
[136] In August 1998, Clinton
ordered cruise missile strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, targeting the
Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory
in Sudan, which was suspected of assisting bin Laden in making chemical
weapons, and bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
[137]
To stop the
ethnic cleansing and
genocide[138][139] of
Albanians by anti-guerilla military units in the former
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's province of
Kosovo, Clinton authorized the use of U.S. Armed Forces in a
NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, named
Operation Allied Force. General
Wesley Clark was
Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and oversaw the mission. With
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, the bombing campaign ended on June 10, 1999. The resolution placed Kosovo under UN administration and authorized a
peacekeeping force to be deployed to the region.
[140] NATO announced that its forces had suffered zero combat deaths,
[141] and two deaths from an
Apache helicopter crash.
[142] Opinions in the popular press criticized pre-war genocide statements by the Clinton administration as greatly exaggerated.
[143][144] In 2001, the
U.N.-supervised Supreme Court of Kosovo
ruled that genocide did not take place, but recognized "a systematic
campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe
maltreatments."
[145]
The term "ethnic cleansing" was used as an alternative to "genocide" to
denote not just ethnically motivated murder but also displacement,
though critics charge there is no difference.
[146] Slobodan Milošević, the president of Yugoslavia at the time of the atrocities, was
eventually brought to trial before the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in
the Hague on charges of
crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes.
[147] Milošević died in 2006, before the completion of the trial.
[147][148]
In Clinton's
1998 State of the Union Address, he warned Congress that Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein was possibly pursuing nuclear weapons:
Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons,
and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to
acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade,
and much of his nation's wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people,
but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the
missiles to deliver them. The United Nations weapons inspectors have
done a truly remarkable job, finding and destroying more of Iraq's
arsenal than was destroyed during the entire gulf war. Now, Saddam
Hussein wants to stop them from completing their mission. I know I speak
for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to
Saddam Hussein, "You cannot defy the will of the world", and when I say
to him, "You have used weapons of mass destruction before; we are
determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.[149]
Bill Clinton and
Jiang Zemin holding a joint press conference at the White House, October 29, 1997
Seeking to weaken Saddam Hussein's grip of power, Clinton signed the
Iraq Liberation Act of 1998
into law on October 31, 1998, which instituted a policy of "regime
change" against Iraq, though it explicitly stated it did not provide for
direct intervention on the part of American military forces.
[150][151] The administration then launched a four-day bombing campaign named
Operation Desert Fox,
lasting from December 16 to 19, 1998. At the end of this operation
Clinton announced that "So long as Saddam remains in power, he will
remain a threat to his people, his region, and the world. With our
allies, we must pursue a strategy to contain him and to constrain his
weapons of mass destruction program, while working toward the day Iraq
has a government willing to live at peace with its people and with its
neighbors."
[152]
American and British aircraft in the Iraq no-fly zones attacked hostile
Iraqi air defenses 166 times in 1999 and 78 times in 2000.
[153][154]
Clinton's November 2000 visit to
Vietnam was the first by a U.S. president since the end of the
Vietnam War.
[155] On October 10, 2000, Clinton signed into law the
U.S.–China Relations Act of 2000, which granted
permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) trade status to People's Republic of China.
[156] The president asserted that free trade would gradually open China to democratic reform.
[157] Clinton also oversaw a boom of the U.S. economy. Under Clinton, the United States had a projected federal
budget surplus for the first time since 1969.
[158]
After initial successes such as the
Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, Clinton attempted to address the
Arab–Israeli conflict. Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat together at
Camp David for the
2000 Camp David Summit.
[36]
Following the peace talk failures, Clinton stated Arafat "missed the
opportunity" to facilitate a "just and lasting peace." In his
autobiography, Clinton blames Arafat for the collapse of the summit.
[3][159] The situation broke down completely with the start of the
Second Intifada.
[36]
Judicial appointments
Clinton appointed two justices to the
Supreme Court:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993
[160] and
Stephen Breyer in 1994.
[161]
Along with his two Supreme Court appointments, Clinton appointed 66 judges to the
United States courts of appeals and 305 judges to the
United States district courts.
His 373 judicial appointments are the second most in American history
behind those of Ronald Reagan. Clinton also experienced a number of
judicial appointment controversies, as 69 nominees to
federal judgeships did not receive a vote in the
Republican-controlled
Senate Judiciary Committee. In all, 84 percent of his nominees were confirmed.
[162]
Among the judges appointed by Clinton to the courts of appeals was
Sonia Sotomayor, who was nominated by Clinton in 1997 to the
Second Circuit and confirmed in 1998, following a delay of more than a year caused by Republican opposition.
[163][164]
Clinton was the first president in history to appoint more women and
minority judges than white male judges to the federal courts.
[165]
In his eight years in office, 11.6% of Clinton's court of appeals
nominees and 17.4% of his district court nominees were black; 32.8% of
his court of appeals nominees and 28.5% of his district court nominees
were women.
[166] Clinton appointed the first African American judges to the
Fourth Circuit (
Roger L. Gregory) and the
Seventh Circuit (
Ann C. Williams).
[166] Clinton also appointed the nation's first openly
gay or lesbian federal judge when he named
Deborah A. Batts to the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Batts was confirmed by the Senate in a
voice vote in 1994.
[167]
Public opinion
Clinton's job approval rating fluctuated in the 40s and 50s
throughout his first term. In his second term, his rating consistently
ranged from the high-50s to the high-60s.
[168] After his impeachment proceedings in 1998 and 1999, Clinton's rating reached its highest point.
[169] According to a
CBS News/
New York Times poll, Clinton left office with an approval rating of 68 percent, which matched those of
Ronald Reagan and
Franklin D. Roosevelt as the highest ratings for departing presidents in the modern era.
[170] Clinton's average
Gallup poll
approval rating for his last quarter in office was 61%, the highest
final quarter rating any president has received for fifty years.
[171] Forty-seven percent of the respondents identified themselves as being Clinton supporters.
[171]
As he was leaving office, a CNN/
USA Today/Gallup
poll revealed that 45 percent of Americans said they would miss him;
55 percent thought he "would have something worthwhile to contribute and
should remain active in public life"; 68 percent thought he would be
remembered more for his "involvement in personal scandal" than for "his
accomplishments"; and 58 percent answered "No" to the question "Do you
generally think Bill Clinton is honest and trustworthy?"
[171]
The same percentage said he would be remembered as either "outstanding"
or "above average" as a president, while 22 percent said he would be
remembered as "below average" or "poor."
[171] ABC News
characterized public consensus on Clinton as, "You can't trust him,
he's got weak morals and ethics – and he's done a heck of a good job."
[172]
In May 2006, a CNN poll comparing Clinton's job performance with that
of his successor, George W. Bush, found that a strong majority of
respondents said Clinton outperformed Bush in six different areas
questioned.
[173] Gallup polls in 2007 and 2011 showed that Clinton was regarded by 13% of Americans as the greatest president in U.S. history.
[174][175]
In 2014, 18% of respondents in a
Quinnipiac University Polling Institute
poll of American voters regarded Clinton as the best president since
World War II, making him the third most popular among postwar
presidents, behind
John F. Kennedy and
Ronald Reagan.
[176] The same poll showed that just 3% of American voters regarded Clinton as the worst president since World War II.
[176]
A 2015 poll by
The Washington Post asked 162 scholars of the
American Political Science Association
to rank all the U.S. presidents in order of greatness. According to
their findings, Clinton ranked eighth overall, with a rating of 70
percent.
[177]
Public image
As the first
baby boomer president, Clinton was the first president in more than half a century not to have been alive during World War II.
[178] Authors Martin Walker and Bob Woodward state Clinton's innovative use of
sound bite-ready
dialogue, personal charisma, and public perception-oriented campaigning
was a major factor in his high public approval ratings.
[179][180] When Clinton played the saxophone on
The Arsenio Hall Show, he was described by some religious conservatives as "the MTV president."
[181] Opponents sometimes referred to him as "Slick Willie", a nickname which was first applied to him in 1980 by
Pine Bluff Commercial journalist
Paul Greenberg;
[182] Greenberg believed that Clinton was abandoning the progressive policies of previous Arkansas Governors such as
Winthrop Rockefeller,
Dale Bumpers and
David Pryor.
[182] The claim "Slick Willie" would last throughout his presidency.
[183] Standing at a height of
6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), Clinton is tied with five others as the
fourth-tallest president in the nation's history.
[184][185] His folksy manner led him to be
nicknamed Bubba, especially in the
South.
[186] Since 2000, he has frequently been referred to as "The Big Dog" or "Big Dog."
[187][188] His prominent role in campaigning for
President Obama during the
2012 presidential election and his widely-publicized speech at the
2012 Democratic National Convention, where he officially nominated Obama and criticized Republican nominee
Mitt Romney and Republican policies in detail, earned him the nickname "Explainer-in-Chief."
[189][190]
Clinton drew strong support from the
African American community and made improving race relations a major theme of his presidency.
[191] In 1998,
Nobel laureate
Toni Morrison
called Clinton "the first Black president", saying, "Clinton displays
almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor,
working-class, saxophone-playing,
McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas".
[192]
Noting that Clinton's sex life was scrutinized more than his career
accomplishments, Morrison compared this to the stereotyping and
double standards that blacks typically endure.
[192]
Shortly after he took office, conservative newspaper owner
Richard Mellon Scaife organized a fundraising campaign to smear Clinton's image in the media.
[193] Leading the
Arkansas Project,
Scaife and other associates sought to find sources in Clinton's home
state of Arkansas who would be willing to dish out negative allegations
against the President.
[193]
In 1994,
Paula Jones
brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, claiming he made
unwanted advances in 1991, which he denied. In April 1998, the case was
initially dismissed by Judge
Susan Webber Wright as lacking legal merit.
[194]
But Jones appealed Webber Wright's ruling, and her suit gained traction
following Clinton's admission to having an affair with Monica Lewinsky
in August 1998.
[195]
In 1998, lawyers for Paula Jones released court documents contending a
pattern of sexual harassment by Clinton when he was governor of
Arkansas.
Robert S. Bennett,
Clinton's main lawyer for the case, called the filing "a pack of lies"
and "an organized campaign to smear the President of the United States"
funded by Clinton's political enemies.
[196] Clinton later agreed to an out-of-court settlement, paying $850,000.
[197] Bennett said that the President only made the settlement so he could end the lawsuit for good and move on with his life.
[198] During the deposition for the Jones lawsuit, which was held at the White House,
[199] Clinton
denied having sexual relations with
Monica Lewinsky – a denial that became the basis for an impeachment charge of perjury.
[200]
In 1992,
Gennifer Flowers stated that she had a relationship with Clinton that began in 1980.
[201] Flowers at first denied that she had an affair with Clinton, but later changed her story.
[202][203] After Clinton at first denied having a relationship with Flowers on
60 Minutes, he later admitted that he had a sexual encounter with Flowers.
[204]
In 1998,
Kathleen Willey
alleged that Clinton groped her in a hallway in 1993. An independent
counsel determined Willey gave "false information" to the FBI,
inconsistent with sworn testimony related to the Jones allegation.
[205] On March 19, 1998, Julie Hiatt Steele, a friend of Willey, released an
affidavit,
accusing the former White House aide of asking her to lie to
corroborate Ms. Willey's account of being sexually groped by President
Clinton in the Oval Office.
[206]
An attempt by Kenneth Starr to prosecute Steele for making false
statements and obstructing justice ended in a mistrial and Starr
declined to seek a retrial after Steele sought an investigation against
the former Independent Counsel for prosecutorial misconduct.
[207] Linda Tripp's grand jury testimony also differed from Willey's claims regarding inappropriate sexual advances.
[208]
Also in 1998,
Juanita Broaddrick alleged Clinton had raped her though she did not remember the exact date, which may have been 1978.
[209] In another 1998 event,
Elizabeth Ward Gracen recanted a six-year-old denial and stated she had a one-night stand with Clinton in 1982.
[210] Gracen later apologized to Hillary Clinton.
[211] Throughout the year, however, Gracen eluded a
subpoena from Kenneth Starr to testify her claim in court.
[212]
Post-presidency (2001–present)
Clinton at a Democratic "
Get out the vote" rally in Los Angeles on November 2, 2000
Bill Clinton continues to be active in public life, giving speeches, fundraising, and founding charitable organizations.
[213] Clinton has spoken in
prime time at every
Democratic National Convention since 1988.
[214]
Activities up until 2008 campaign
In 2002, Clinton warned that pre-emptive military action against Iraq would have unwelcome consequences,
[215][216] and later claimed to have opposed the Iraq War from the start (though some dispute this).
[217] In 2005, Clinton criticized the Bush administration for its handling of emissions control, while speaking at the
United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal.
[218]
The
William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in
Little Rock, Arkansas was dedicated in 2004.
[219] Clinton released a best-selling autobiography,
My Life in 2004.
[220] In 2007, he released
Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, which also became a
The New York Times Best Seller and garnered positive reviews.
[221]
Clinton with former President George H. W. Bush in January 2005
In the aftermath of the
2004 Asian tsunami,
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Clinton to head a relief effort.
[222] After
Hurricane Katrina,
Clinton joined with fellow former President George H. W. Bush to
establish the Bush-Clinton Tsunami Fund in January 2005, and the
Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund in October of that year.
[223] As part of the tsunami effort, these two ex-presidents appeared in a
Super Bowl XXXIX pre-game show,
[224] and traveled to the affected areas.
[225] They also spoke together at the funeral of
Boris Yeltsin in 2007.
[226]
Based on his philanthropic worldview,
[227] Clinton created the
William J. Clinton Foundation
to address issues of global importance. This foundation includes the
Clinton Foundation HIV and AIDS Initiative (CHAI), which strives to
combat that disease, and has worked with the Australian government
toward that end. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), begun by the
Clinton Foundation in 2005, attempts to address world problems such as
global
public health, poverty alleviation and religious and
ethnic conflict.
[228] In 2005, Clinton announced through his foundation an agreement with manufacturers to stop selling sugared drinks in schools.
[229] Clinton's foundation joined with the
Large Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2006 to improve cooperation among those cities, and he met with foreign leaders to promote this initiative.
[230] The foundation has received donations from a number of governments all over the world, including Asia and the Middle East.
[231] In 2008, Foundation director
Inder Singh announced deals to reduce the price of anti-malaria drugs by 30 percent in developing nations.
[232] Clinton also spoke in favor of
California Proposition 87 on
alternative energy, which was voted down.
[233]
Presidential election 2008
During the
2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, Clinton vigorously advocated on behalf of his wife,
Hillary Clinton. Through speaking engagements and fundraisers, he was able to raise $10 million toward her campaign.
[234]
Some worried that as an ex-president, he was too active on the trail,
too negative to Clinton rival Barack Obama, and alienating his
supporters at home and abroad.
[235]
Many were especially critical of him following his remarks in the South
Carolina primary, which Obama won. Later in the 2008 primaries, there
was some infighting between Bill and Hillary's staffs, especially in
Pennsylvania.
[236] Considering Bill's remarks, many thought that he could not rally Hillary supporters behind Obama after Obama won the primary.
[237]
Such remarks lead to apprehension that the party would be split to the
detriment of Obama's election. Fears were allayed August 27, 2008, when
Clinton enthusiastically endorsed Obama at the
2008 Democratic National Convention, saying that all his experience as president assures him that Obama is "ready to lead."
[238]
After Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was over, Bill Clinton
continued to raise funds to help pay off her campaign debt.
[239][240]
After the 2008 election
Clinton with President Barack Obama and Senior Advisor
Valerie Jarrett in July 2010
In 2009, Clinton travelled to
North Korea on behalf of
two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea.
Euna Lee and
Laura Ling had been imprisoned for illegally entering the country from China.
[241] Jimmy Carter had made a similar visit in 1994.
[241] After Clinton met with North Korean leader
Kim Jong-il, Kim issued a pardon.
[242][243]
Since then, Clinton has been assigned a number of other diplomatic missions. He was named United Nations
Special Envoy to
Haiti in 2009.
[244] In response to the
2010 Haiti earthquake, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Clinton and
George W. Bush would coordinate efforts to raise funds for Haiti's recovery.
[245]
Clinton continues to visit Haiti to witness the inauguration of refugee
villages, and to raise funds for victims of the earthquake.
[246] In 2010, Clinton announced support of, and delivered the keynote address for, the inauguration of
NTR, Ireland's first environmental foundation.
[247][248] At the
2012 Democratic National Convention, Clinton gave a widely praised speech nominating Barack Obama.
[249]
Post-presidential health concerns
In September 2004, Clinton received a quadruple bypass surgery.
[250] In March 2005, he underwent surgery for a partially collapsed lung.
[251] On February 11, 2010, he was rushed to
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after complaining of chest pains, and had two
coronary stents implanted in his heart.
[250][252] After this experience, Clinton adopted the plant-based whole foods (
vegan) diet recommended by doctors
Dean Ornish and
Caldwell Esselstyn.
[253]
Clinton has reportedly begun practicing
Buddhist meditation in order to help him relax.
[254]
Income and personal finances
The Clintons accrued several million dollars in legal bills during
his presidency; they were paid off four years after he left office.
[255] Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have received millions of dollars in book authorship fees.
[256] In May 2015,
The Hill
reported that Bill and Hillary Clinton have made more than $25 million
in speaking fees since the start of 2014, and that Hillary Clinton also
made $5 million or more from her book,
Hard Choices, during the same time period.
[257] In July 2014, the
Daily Mail
reported that together, the couple "has earned more than $160 million
in the decade after Bill's second presidential term came to an end."
[258] Also in July 2014, the
Wall Street Journal
reported that at the end of 2012, the Clintons were worth between $5
million and $25.5 million, and that in 2012 (the last year they were
required to disclose the information) the Clintons made between $16 and
$17 million, mostly from speaking fees earned by the former president.
[259] Clinton earned more than $104 million from paid speeches between 2001 and 2012.
[260] In June 2014,
ABC News and
The Washington Post reported that Bill Clinton has made more than $100 million giving paid speeches since leaving public office, and in 2008, the
New York Times reported that the Clintons' income tax returns
[261]
show they have made $109 million in the 8 years from January 1, 2000 to
December 31, 2007, including almost $92 million from his speaking and
book-writing.
[256][262][263][264]
Hillary Clinton said that she and Bill came out of the White House
financially "broke" and in debt, especially due to large legal fees
incurred during their years in the White House. "We had no money when we
got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources
for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea's education." She added, "Bill
has worked really hard…we had to pay off all our debts…he had to make
double the money because of, obviously, taxes; and then pay off the
debts, and get us houses, and take care of family members."
[263]
Clinton has given dozens of paid speeches each year, mostly to
corporations and philanthropic groups in North America and Europe, often
earning $100,000 to $300,000 per speech.
[265] According to his wife's Senate ethics reports, he earned more than $30 million in speaking from 2001 to 2005.
[266] In 2007, it is estimated he amassed around $40 million from speaking.
[267]
Honors and recognition
Various colleges and universities have awarded Clinton
honorary degrees, including
Doctorate of Law degrees
[268][269] and
Doctor of Humane Letters degrees.
[270] He is an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, which he attended as a
Rhodes Scholar.
[271] Schools have been named for Clinton,
[272][273][274] and statues have been built to pay him homage.
[275][276][277] U.S. states where he has been honored include Missouri,
[278] Arkansas,
[279] Kentucky,
[280] and New York.
[281] He was presented with the
Medal for Distinguished Public Service by
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in 2001.
[282] The
Clinton Presidential Center was opened in
Little Rock, Arkansas in his honor on December 5, 2001.
[283]
He has been honored in various other ways, in countries that include the Czech Republic,
[284] Papua New Guinea,
[285] Germany,
[286] and Kosovo.
[275] The
Republic of Kosovo, in gratitude for his help during the
Kosovo War, renamed a major street in the capital city of
Pristina as
Bill Clinton Boulevard and added a monumental Clinton statue.
[287][288][289]
Clinton was selected as
Time 's "
Man of the Year" in 1992,
[290] and again in 1998, along with
Ken Starr.
[291] From a poll conducted of the American people in December 1999, Clinton was among eighteen included in
Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century.
[292] He was honored with a
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, a
J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding,
[293] a
TED Prize (named for the confluence of technology, entertainment and design),
[294] and was named as an Honorary
GLAAD Media Award recipient for his work as an advocate for the
LGBT community.
[295] U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Clinton the
Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 20, 2013
