|
|
| |
 | Spouses & Children |  | |
| | |
 | |  |
|
| |
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
|
| |
|
| |
| Notes | | |
| | |
| | |
|
| |
Text:
I INTRODUCTION
Clinton, Bill (1946- ), 42nd president of the United States (1993-2001), who was one of the most popular American presidents of the 20th century and the second president to be impeached (see Impeachment). Clinton was the first president born after World War II (1939-1945) and the third youngest person to become president, after Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. He was also the first Democrat in 12 years to hold the presidency and the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to two terms.
In 1978, at the age of 32, Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas, becoming the youngest citizen of the United States to win a gubernatorial election. He governed the state for more than 10 years, concentrating on education and social reforms. Clinton headed the 1992 Democratic campaign ticket and defeated President George Bush to become the 42nd President of the United States. He is pictured here delivering his inaugural address on January 20, 1993, in Washington, D.C.
A moderate Democrat and longtime governor of Arkansas, Clinton promised to change not only the direction the country had taken under the two previous Republican presidents but also the policies of his own Democratic Party. However, Clinton’s presidency was marked by unusually bitter strife with Republicans in Congress. In his second term, Clinton became the second president to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives, after admitting to an improper relationship with a White House intern. The Senate, however, defeated the impeachment articles and did not remove him from office.
During Clinton’s presidency, the country enjoyed the longest period of economic growth in its history. A graceful speaker, Clinton had a remarkable ability to connect with people, which enabled him to bounce back from defeats, scandals, and even impeachment. He left office with the highest voter approval rating of all modern presidents.
II EARLY LIFE
A Childhood
Clinton Home Born in 1946, United States President Bill Clinton spent his early childhood in this home in Hope, Arkansas. He lived in the house with his mother, Virginia Cassidy Blythe, and her parents.Sygma/Mike Stewart
Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. His given name was William Jefferson Blythe IV. He never knew his father, William Jefferson Blythe III, a traveling salesman who died in a car accident several months before Bill was born. After Bill became president, he and his mother learned that his father had been married at least three other times and that Bill had a half brother and half sister whom he had never met. Bill took the name William Jefferson Clinton after his mother remarried.
As a small child, Bill lived with his mother, Virginia Cassidy Blythe, and her parents in Hope, Arkansas. When Bill, or Billy, as he was known, was one year old, his mother went to New Orleans, Louisiana, to study to be a nurse-anesthetist, and for the next two years he was reared mainly by his maternal grandparents.
When Bill was four years old, his mother married Roger Clinton, later the owner of a car dealership in Hope. Two years later, the family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Life at home for Bill and his mother was not always easy. Roger was an alcoholic and a gambler, often losing the family’s money, including Virginia’s earnings as a nurse-anesthetist. He cursed and sometimes beat his wife and verbally abused Bill and Bill’s younger brother, Roger, Jr., who was born in 1956. Bill was especially close to his mother and sometimes stood up to his stepfather to protect her. As a college student, Bill reconciled with his stepfather, who died of cancer in 1967.
B Schooling
In 1963 Bill Clinton was elected as one of two delegates to represent Arkansas at the American Legion Boys Nation. While in Washington, D.C., the 17-year-old Clinton met President John F. Kennedy, whom he admired greatly. Nearly 30 years later Clinton followed in Kennedy’s footsteps when he was elected the 42nd president of the United States.AP/Wide World Photos/Huynh Cong
Clinton attended a Roman Catholic school for two years in Hot Springs before attending public schools. He was a popular student and maintained top grades. He held several student offices, played the tenor saxophone, and was a member of the all-state band. In 1963, after his junior year in high school, Clinton was elected as one of two delegates from Arkansas to Boys Nation, a government study program for young people sponsored by the American Legion, a veterans organization. There he debated in favor of civil rights legislation and met President John F. Kennedy at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.
C College
Clinton graduated from high school in 1964 and enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he majored in international affairs. He was elected president of his class during his freshman and sophomore years. As a junior and senior he earned money for school expenses by working as an intern for the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which was chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright, an Arkansas Democrat. Clinton greatly admired Fulbright, who was a leading critic of United States involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Clinton was also deeply moved by African Americans’ fight for equality in the 1960s. In April 1968, a few weeks before Clinton graduated, the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., set off rioting in several American cities, including Washington, D.C. Clinton volunteered to work with the Red Cross and took clothing and food to people whose homes had been burned in the riots.
During his senior year, Clinton won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford in England, and he spent two years in Oxford’s graduate program after graduating from Georgetown. In 1970 Clinton enrolled at Yale University Law School, where he studied for a law degree. He paid his way with a scholarship and by working two or three jobs at the same time. At Yale he met fellow law student Hillary Diane Rodham, who was from the Chicago area (see Hillary Rodham Clinton). They began dating, and in 1972 Clinton and Rodham worked in Texas for the presidential campaign of Democrat George S. McGovern. Clinton worked as a campaign coordinator for McGovern in Texas and Arkansas, and Rodham helped organize a voter-registration drive for the Democratic National Committee.
D Marriage
Hillary Rodham Clinton Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton in 1975. They meet at Yale University Law School.The White House
Clinton graduated from law school in 1973 and went to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to teach at the University of Arkansas Law School. Rodham worked with a congressional team investigating Watergate, a political scandal that involved members of the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. She joined Clinton on the law school faculty in 1974, and they were married on October 11, 1975. Their daughter, Chelsea Victoria Clinton, was born on February 27, 1980.
III EARLY PUBLIC CAREER
Clinton had worked on a number of political campaigns in the late 1960s, including those of several Arkansas Democratic politicians and a U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut. In 1974, midway through his first year of teaching at the University of Arkansas, Clinton entered his first political race, campaigning for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. The incumbent Republican congressman, John Paul Hammerschmidt, was a popular candidate and was considered unbeatable. Clinton defeated three candidates for the Democratic Party nomination and ran an energetic campaign against Hammerschmidt. Although Hammerschmidt defeated Clinton with 52 percent of the vote, the election was his closest in 26 years in Congress.
Clinton’s close race with Hammerschmidt earned him statewide attention and helped him during his campaign to be attorney general of Arkansas in 1976. He defeated two Democrats for the nomination and had no Republican opposition. Clinton took public office for the first time in January 1977. As attorney general, he fought rate increases by public utilities and opposed the construction of a large coal-burning power plant. He promoted tougher laws to protect the environment and consumers.
When Arkansas governor David Pryor ran for the U.S. Senate in 1978, Clinton ran for governor. He promised to improve the state’s schools and highways and to improve economic conditions so that more jobs would be created. At that time, the average income of people in Arkansas ranked 49th among the 50 states. Clinton won easily, receiving 60 percent of the vote against four opponents in the Democratic primary election and 63 percent against the Republican candidate, Lynn Lowe, in the general election. When he took office in January 1979 at age 32, he was one of the youngest governors in the nation’s history.
A Governor of Arkansas
A1 First Term
Clinton’s first term as governor included efforts to improve Arkansas’s economy. One of his biggest successes as governor was his highway program, but it was politically costly. Clinton thought good highways were a key to developing the state, and the state’s roads were among the worst in the country. To upgrade the highways, he asked the legislature to pass a package of tax increases. The largest increases were on licensing fees on automobiles and on large trucks that damaged the highways with heavy loads. Clinton was forced to make compromises in his plan because many businesses and the trucking industry opposed his program. The compromise plan passed but was unpopular because it levied more taxes on individual car owners. The plan was also opposed by the trucking and poultry industries because it did not raise the weight limit for trucks on Arkansas highways.
Clinton undertook other legislative initiatives that generated opposition. His criticism of the practice of clear-cutting trees in national forests alienated the lumber and paper-making companies, which were the largest employers in the state. Physicians opposed his efforts to increase health care in poor, rural areas. Bankers disliked Clinton’s proposal to withhold state funds from banks that did not lend enough money for businesses that created jobs in their communities. The state’s largest utility tangled with Clinton over the cost-sharing arrangements for distributing power from nuclear plants in Mississippi.
Another factor affecting the governor was the presence of Cuban refugees in Arkansas. In 1980 Cuba temporarily removed its exit restrictions and permitted about 120,000 people to go to the United States. In May 1980 President Jimmy Carter temporarily housed about 18,000 Cuban refugees at an old United States Army post near Fort Smith, Arkansas. By the end of May, the confined refugees were disgruntled with delays in their resettlement, and some 300 escaped from the fort. On June 1 approximately 1,000 Cuban refugees broke through the gate of the post and were met in the nearby town of Barling by about 500 armed townspeople. State officers subdued the refugees, but the incident proved disastrous for Clinton, who had previously campaigned on his friendship with Carter.
Clinton ran for reelection in 1980 against Frank D. White, a Little Rock businessman who had switched to the Republican Party to run against Clinton. White received support from many of those alienated by Clinton—including the trucking and wood-products industries, the poultry industry, banks, and utilities. In addition, White used television advertisements that showed the Cubans rioting and claimed that they would be released into Arkansas communities and would take jobs away from Arkansas workers. Clinton’s popularity plummeted further, and White won the election with about 52 percent of the vote.
A2 Second Through Fifth Terms
After his defeat, Clinton joined a large corporate law firm in Little Rock. Against the advice of most of his friends and advisers, who urged him to wait before running for office again, Clinton quickly began planning his campaign for the 1982 gubernatorial election. Clinton won the Democratic nomination, although it required a runoff election because of the closeness of the race. In the general election, Clinton faced White, who was running for reelection, and the two candidates swapped bitter charges. White repeated his accusations from the 1980 campaign, and Clinton accused White of unfairly letting utilities raise the rates people paid for electricity and telephone service. Clinton promised he would make it harder for utilities to obtain rate increases. Clinton campaigned for the votes of blacks, and he received more than 95 percent of their votes. Clinton ultimately defeated White with nearly 55 percent of the vote.
Clinton had found lessons in his 1980 defeat about how to govern. He learned to choose his fights carefully, to resist the urge to change everything at once, and to prepare people before proposing major changes. These lessons helped Clinton win reelection in 1984, 1986, and 1990, with the last reelection coming after the gubernatorial term was changed from two years to four years.
At the start of his second term, Clinton decided to spend all his energies trying to improve education, which he thought was the state’s biggest problem. Clinton believed that the state’s poor education system neither prepared children for good jobs nor made Arkansas attractive to industries that offered such jobs. He appointed his wife as the head of a committee charged with proposing higher standards for Arkansas schools. She conducted hearings in each of the state’s 75 counties, and she and her husband made numerous speeches across the state, saying more should be demanded from schools and students.
In the fall of 1983, Clinton called the legislature into a special session to approve many changes in the school system. Clinton won approval of most parts of his sweeping reform program: Taxes were increased to pay teachers more money, offer more courses in the high schools, and provide college scholarships. State money for education was distributed differently to help the poorest schools. Eighth graders were required to pass a test of basic knowledge before going to high school, and all school teachers and administrators had to take a basic-knowledge test to keep their jobs. The Clinton administration also adopted tough new standards proposed by Hillary Clinton’s committee. These standards raised the requirements for graduation from high school and forced high schools to offer more science, mathematics, foreign language, art, and music classes. They also reduced the size of kindergarten and elementary school classes. School districts that did not meet these requirements within three years would be merged into districts that did meet the standards.
The requirement that called for the testing of teachers angered many schoolteachers and generated a national debate. But the program, along with the taxes, proved popular with Arkansas voters. During this time, Arkansas students improved their scores on college-entrance tests. In the early 1980s a high percentage of Arkansas students dropped out of school before graduating, and fewer high school graduates went to college than in any other state. But by 1990, the dropout rate had fallen well below the national average, and the percentage of young people who went to college matched the national average.
Clinton also concentrated on economic development, promoting new businesses and job growth. He introduced an economic package to change banking laws, provide money to start new technology-oriented businesses, arrange loans for people to start new businesses, and reduce the taxes of large Arkansas companies that expanded their production and created new jobs. The legislature approved nearly the entire package. Although the rate at which new jobs were created in Arkansas in the late 1980s was among the highest in the nation, most of these jobs did not pay high wages, and the average family income remained low.
Clinton had difficulty trying to persuade the legislature to raise more taxes to carry out further reforms in education. The business groups he had once angered—the state’s largest electric utility, the wood-products industry, trucking companies, the poultry industry, and other farm groups—combined to block Clinton’s proposed tax hike. They also defeated legislation that would have imposed higher ethical standards on public officials and lobbyists.
After his election to a fifth term in 1990, Clinton was more successful in getting his legislative program enacted. Based on his overall success at the legislative session in 1991, Clinton announced that, despite a campaign promise in 1990 to complete a four-year term, he intended to run for president because he had accomplished his goals for the state more quickly than he had imagined.
Clinton had assumed national leadership roles during his years as governor. In 1985 and 1986 he served as chairman of the Southern Growth Policies Board, a group that planned strategies for economic development in 12 Southern states and Puerto Rico. He became vice chairman of the National Governors Association in 1985 and was the organization’s chairman in 1986 and 1987. As chairman, Clinton became a spokesman for the nation’s governors. In 1988 he led a movement to change the nation’s system of providing welfare to poor people. In 1990 and 1991 Clinton headed the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate Democrats and businesspeople who work to influence national policies.
B The Presidential Campaign of 1992
Bill Clinton and Al Gore Presidential candidate Bill Clinton, right, and running mate Al Gore enjoy a rally in Carthage, Tennessee, Gore’s hometown, in 1992. The team won the election that fall, and Clinton became the third youngest president, following John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE/UPI
Clinton had prepared to run for president in 1988, but he backed out at the last minute, saying the campaign and the presidency would be too hard on his family, especially his eight-year-old daughter, Chelsea. He was then asked to give the presidential nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention for Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, who eventually lost the election to Republican George H. W. Bush.
SIDEBAR
A Three-Way Race
The 1992 elections in the United States swept the Democratic Party into control in both houses of Congress and in the White House for the first time in twelve years. With presidential candidate Bill Clinton’s moderate platform, the Democrats won back many voters who had supported Presidents Ronald Reagan or George Bush in the previous three presidential elections. The support for the independent candidate H. Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, exposed some voters’ dissatisfaction with both the Democratic and the Republican Parties. This article from the 1993 Collier’s Year Book detailed the strategies behind all three presidential campaigns and examined how American voters reacted to each candidate’s message.
In October 1991 Clinton announced that he would run for president in the 1992 election. Although President Bush was very popular at the time, Clinton thought Bush was vulnerable because the economy had been depressed for much of his presidency. Moreover, Clinton had established nationwide connections from his education crusade and the National Governors Association, and this network enabled him to raise campaign money more easily than other Democratic candidates. In early 1992, Clinton faced five Democratic contenders: former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas; former California governor Jerry Brown; Governor L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia; Senator Robert Kerrey of Nebraska; and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa.
Clinton’s campaign focused on domestic issues, particularly the economy. He ran as a “New Democrat,” a term coined by the Democratic Leadership Council to describe a new type of moderate Democrat. Clinton believed that the big-government, high-spending policies of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party did not appeal to most voters. He thought that the party should find other ways to solve social and economic problems. For example, he proposed reforming the existing welfare system and finding additional ways to aid the poor, such as a special form of tax credits for low-income families. Clinton also wanted to expand trade with the rest of the world through trade agreements and lower tariffs.
During the campaign, Clinton promised to reform the health-care system, enact a tax cut for the middle class, institute a national service program, reduce the federal budget deficit, and make major investments in the nation’s infrastructure (highways, bridges, airports, libraries, and hospitals). Internationally, he pledged to use American military power to stop the advance of Serbs against Muslims and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina (often referred to simply as Bosnia). His campaign encountered some trouble when allegations of Clinton’s marital infidelity surfaced. Clinton also came under attack for not serving in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War (1954-1975) and for protesting the war. However, he was able to overcome these obstacles and win the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, held in New York City in mid-July. Clinton picked Senator Al Gore of Tennessee as his vice-presidential running mate. Gore’s military service in the Vietnam War made the ticket more appealing to conservative voters.
During the presidential campaign, Clinton ran against the incumbent Bush and Ross Perot, who ran as an independent candidate. Clinton blamed Bush for the downturn in the nation’s economy and accused him of not caring about working people. He promised to reduce the taxes of middle-class families and to follow policies that would improve the economy. Bush said that Clinton would raise taxes if he became president and that Clinton lacked foreign-policy experience. He portrayed Clinton as a traditional big-spending liberal in the guise of a “New Democrat.” But Bush was hurt in the campaign because as president he had signed legislation raising taxes despite promising not to do so during the 1988 campaign.
Clinton won the election with 43 percent of the popular vote compared with 37 percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot. In the electoral college, in which each state has a certain number of electoral votes depending on the size of its population, Clinton won 370 votes to Bush’s 168. In the congressional elections, the Democrats—who held a majority in both houses of Congress—gained one seat in the Senate, lost nine seats in the House of Representatives, but ultimately maintained their majority in both houses. On January 20, 1993, Clinton was sworn in as president.
IV PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Throughout most of his presidency, Clinton maintained a strong core of support from those who had elected him, principally African Americans, women, and blue-collar workers in the Northeast and Midwest. Among all American presidents, he was one of the most forceful champions of civil rights for minorities and equality for women. He appointed record numbers of minorities and women as federal court judges, Cabinet members, and other government officials.
HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
Bill Clinton's First Inaugural Address
United States President Bill Clinton delivered his first inaugural address on January 20, 1993. Clinton was the first president from the Democratic Party to be elected since 1976. In his speech, Clinton emphasizes that the United States must work in order to keep up with and benefit from continuing social and economic change. In his opening phrase “we force the spring,” Clinton summarizes his call for national renewal and rebirth. Among the specific issues he touches on are community service, economic inequality in the United States, and the globalization of trade and foreign policy.
During his first year in office, Clinton quickly focused on improving the economy. He believed that the key was reducing government spending and the huge deficits that occurred in the federal budget each year because government spending exceeded its revenues. Because the government borrowed money to offset its deficit spending, it reduced the amount of money available for private investment. Therefore businesses could obtain capital only at high rates of interest, which discouraged investment and expansion.
In 1993 Clinton submitted to Congress a budget that reduced federal spending and increased taxes. With every Republican in Congress voting against it, the budget passed in both houses without one vote to spare. Clinton’s budget victory reversed the trend of rising deficits, and it stimulated the economy. However, Clinton’s major policy initiative of his first term—providing health care insurance for all Americans—collapsed after a bitter fight in 1994. This failure, along with the tax increase and budget battles with Republicans, hurt Clinton and the Democrats in the congressional elections of 1994. In those elections the Republicans won a majority in both houses of Congress. It was one of the most dramatic upheavals in Congress in the 20th century.
SIDEBAR
Clinton's Reelection: How it Happened
In this article, American journalist Tom Baxter followed the course of the 1996 United States presidential primaries and the election campaigns of President Clinton and his Republican challenger, Bob Dole. Baxter credited Clinton’s reelection to a number of factors, including the vigorous economy and Clinton’s focus on core domestic issues such as education and Medicare. This account is from the 1997 Collier’s Year Book.
After the 1994 election, a conservative Republican majority took control of Congress. The new makeup of Congress dramatically changed Clinton’s strategy. Unable to push his own programs, he turned his attention to preventing the Republicans’ conservative agenda from becoming law by vetoing Republican budgets that cut spending on programs he supported. In 1995 the Republican-controlled Congress twice shut down the federal government for short periods because it had not approved a budget.
In his first term, Clinton was able to reach a compromise with the Republicans on one major initiative, welfare reform. Angering many in his own party, he signed a bill in 1996 reforming the old system of welfare payments and instituting a welfare-to-work program.
HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
Bill Clinton's Second Inaugural Address
United States President Bill Clinton delivered his second inaugural address on January 20, 1997. In his speech Clinton urged the nation to create a “land of new promise” by, among other things, fostering a spirit of community and responsibility, improving education, and promoting racial understanding. In the middle of a period of economic growth, Clinton highlighted improvements in the domestic economy, which had been the focus of his 1992 presidential campaign. Faced with a Congress controlled by the Republican Party, Clinton, a Democrat, also called for increased cooperation between the two parties.
In 1996 Clinton ran for reelection against Republican senator Robert Dole, the majority leader of the Senate, and Ross Perot, who ran as the candidate of the newly formed Reform Party. During the campaign, Clinton stressed his desire to control the federal budget deficit and to work for campaign-finance reform. At the nominating convention, held in Chicago in August, Clinton announced more plans, including additional funding for environmental programs and tax credits for college tuition. Voters were happy with the robust economy, and Clinton claimed credit for decreased numbers of people on welfare rolls. He also pointed to dwindling crime as a result of legislation he helped pass that included gun-control measures.
In November Clinton defeated Dole with 49 percent of the popular vote, compared with Dole’s 41 percent. Perot was not as successful as he had been in 1992; he won only 8 percent of the vote. Clinton soundly defeated Dole in the electoral college, receiving 379 votes to Dole’s 159. But the election did not alter Clinton’s problems with Congress. While Democrats gained seats in the House of Representatives, they lost more seats in the Senate, and Republicans continued their control of both houses of Congress.
HISTORIC SPEECHES
United States Recognition of Vietnam
In July 1995, twenty-two years after the last American troops withdrew from Vietnam, President Bill Clinton extended full diplomatic recognition to that country. The following excerpts are from Clinton’s remarks on that occasion.
After Clinton’s resounding victory, the Congress was at first less confrontational. In 1997 Clinton and Congress worked out compromises on reductions in taxes paid by most Americans and on spending cuts and other reforms aimed at producing a balanced budget.
From his first months in office until his last day, Clinton’s presidency was plagued by charges of wrongdoing. The longest-running investigation began with Whitewater, a small real-estate project in Arkansas in which Clinton and his wife had invested during the late 1970s. The independent counsel investigating Whitewater learned in 1997 that Clinton had had a sexual affair with a young female intern at the White House. In 1998 the House impeached the president. The House charged him with perjury, for not being truthful before a federal grand jury, and obstruction of justice, for trying to influence the testimony of others. In 1999 the Senate tried Clinton but defeated the articles of impeachment and did not remove him from office.
HISTORIC SPEECHES
Clinton in China
In a 1998 state visit to the People’s Republic of China, United States president Bill Clinton attempted to reconcile the conflict between ideology and realpolitik (politics based on practical and economic factors) in U.S. foreign policy. The president spoke at Beijing University in China’s capital in response to critics who faulted his attempts to build better relations with a Communist government. Clinton’s speech recalled the moral fervor of presidents such as Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, who were strong advocates of human rights. At a press conference in Hong Kong, Clinton summarized the outcome of his historic trip. Herbert S. Parmet
Although the affair and impeachment sullied Clinton’s presidency, he was able to turn the investigation against the Republicans. Many voters thought the Republicans were being unfair and hypocritical in pressing the investigation and impeachment. Republicans made the president’s conduct a central issue in the congressional elections in the fall of 1998, but voters defeated major critics of the president in the Senate and left the Republicans with a razor-thin margin in the House.
Because the Cold War had ended in the late 1980s, Clinton faced no threat to the nation’s security like those of preceding presidents. Still, he had to make difficult decisions about whether to intervene in bloody conflicts in places such as Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He twice deployed American military forces to halt fighting between ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia and negotiated peace between the warring factions in Bosnia. Clinton also played a critical role in making both peace and war in the Middle East and in fashioning peace in Northern Ireland.
But Clinton’s real emphasis in foreign policy was on what could be called economic globalism. He believed that the country’s security and prosperity depended upon removing barriers to trade with other nations and upon stabilizing nations with economic troubles. Despite opposition from members of his own party, Clinton pushed two major trade agreements through Congress in his first term: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in 1993, and, the following year, a global trade agreement that created the World Trade Organization.
In the end, Clinton’s most significant achievement as president was eliminating the federal budget deficit. When he left office, the nation was running a surplus instead of a deficit. Clinton claimed the lower interest rates that came from reducing the deficit and the low inflation produced by free trade amounted to a tax cut of hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans. His economic policies helped produce the longest period of sustained economic growth in the nation’s history.
Clinton changed the nation’s politics by moving the Democratic Party more to the center of the political spectrum. At the same time, his tawdry conduct and his tendency to evade the truth cost him the personal respect of the American people, even when they approved of his leadership. In addition, he never fulfilled his campaign promises to overhaul the country’s health-care system and reform campaign-finance laws. While Clinton was considered one of the nation’s most brilliant political leaders, the inexperience he showed in his early presidency and the scandals, investigations, and impeachment kept him from fulfilling his vision for the country.
A Domestic Affairs
A1 Appointments
In his first term, Clinton appointed more women and minorities to Cabinet positions—the heads of major departments of the federal government—than any previous president. He said he wanted a Cabinet that “looks like America.” The Cabinet appointees included women such as Attorney General Janet Reno, the first woman to hold that office; Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O’Leary; and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. Other appointees included African Americans such as Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy and Hispanics such as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros. In addition, in his first two years in office, Clinton appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. Stephen Breyer replaced Harry Andrew Blackmun, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman on the Supreme Court when she replaced Byron Raymond White. The appointments strengthened the liberal faction on the Supreme Court.
At the beginning of his second term, Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to appointing women to Cabinet positions by nominating Madeleine Albright the first female secretary of state. In addition, he worked to make his Cabinet bipartisan, appointing Republican senator William Cohen secretary of defense. Other second-term Clinton appointees included Secretary of Commerce William Daley, Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, and Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. Herman and Slater were the first African Americans to hold their respective positions.
A2 Economic Policy
A2a Federal Budgets
Alan Greenspan As chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan convinced newly elected U.S. president Bill Clinton that reducing the federal deficit should be his highest economic priority. Clinton proposed a budget that cut spending and raised taxes to try to cut the deficit. In 1998 the United States experienced its first budget surplus since 1969.
During his first term, Clinton focused on the country’s domestic issues, especially the economy. Before taking office in 1993, he received a report that the federal budget deficit would be $290 billion that year and more in succeeding years, much greater than had been forecast. His economic advisers and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, persuaded him that reducing the deficit should be the highest priority. Clinton prepared a budget that called for reducing the deficit by $500 billion over five years, about $255 billion by cutting spending and $241 billion by raising taxes. The suggested tax raise would mostly affect very wealthy people.
Republican leaders said the tax increase would wreck the economy, and every Republican in both houses of Congress voted against the budget. In the most critical vote of Clinton’s presidency, Vice President Gore broke a tie to pass the bill in the Senate, 51 to 50. Clinton persuaded enough Democrats in the House to vote for the bill that it was approved without a vote to spare, 218 to 216. Although Clinton was criticized for abandoning his middle-class tax cut, the budget package did expand the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which aided low-income families by reducing the amount of federal income tax they owed and by offsetting some of their social security payroll taxes. The EITC put $21 billion into the pockets of 15 million low-income families over the next five years. The deficit-reduction package reassured investors in the bond markets, and long-term interest rates began to go down. The budget deficit declined sharply in the years afterward.
Clinton worked out another deficit-reduction package in 1997 aimed at achieving a balanced budget by 2002, this time with the help of Republicans in Congress. In the 1998 fiscal year, the treasury experienced a surplus of $70 billion, the first surplus since 1969. The surplus was achieved well ahead of expectations because of strong growth in the U.S. economy. The country began to use surplus revenues to pay down the national debt, which had risen to $5.4 trillion by 1997. The U.S. economy continued to grow, and in February 2000 it broke the record for the longest uninterrupted economic expansion in U.S. history, lasting ten years.
Many people credited Clinton’s fiscal policies with the economic turnaround, while others credited the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Board and its chairman. An important factor of the economic success during the Clinton years was the great growth of technology, especially in computers and telecommunications. Technology improved the rate of productivity—the average amount of work done by one worker. Rising productivity prevented inflation from occurring as the economy grew. Unlike growth periods in the previous two decades, low- and middle-income workers experienced improved living standards.
For most of his eight years, Clinton battled Republicans over tax cuts. After winning control of both houses of Congress in 1994, Republicans, led by the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, proposed tax cuts in every session of Congress. Clinton opposed the Republican tax reductions, saying they favored the very rich and would return the country to rising budget deficits.
In August 1997, however, Clinton struck a compromise with Republicans on a tax-relief act that reduced taxes on capital gains and estates and gave taxpayers a credit of $500 per child and tax credits for college tuition and expenses. The law also created a new type of individual retirement account (IRA) called the Roth IRA, which allowed people to invest taxed income for retirement without having to pay taxes on this money upon withdrawal. In addition, the law raised taxes on cigarettes. The next year, Congress approved Clinton’s proposal to make college more affordable by expanding the financial-aid program known as Pell grants and lowering interest rates on student loans.
Clinton also fought Congress every year on the federal budget, most often on how much money would be spent on education, government health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, the environment, and AmeriCorps, the national service program that Clinton had pushed through Congress while Democrats were still in control. In late 1995 the fight over the budget reached a bitter stalemate over cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. When Clinton vetoed spending bills, Congress twice refused to pass temporary spending authorizations and forced the federal government to partially shut down because agencies had no authority to spend money. The Republicans wanted to emphasize their dispute with the president on spending, but the strategy backfired. The shutdowns proved unpopular with voters, who blamed the Republicans.
In April 1996 Clinton and Congress finally agreed on a budget that provided money for government agencies until the end of the fiscal year in October. The budget included spending cuts that the Republicans wanted, decreasing the cost of cultural, labor, and housing programs, but it also preserved many programs that Clinton wanted, particularly educational and environmental ones.
A2b Trade Legislation
Another one of Clinton’s goals was to pass trade legislation that lowered the barriers to trade with other nations. He broke with many of his supporters, including labor unions, over free-trade legislation. Many feared that cutting tariffs (taxes on exports or imports) and relaxing rules on what could be imported would cost American jobs because people would buy cheaper products from other countries. But Clinton argued that the country would be helped, not harmed, by free trade because the country could boost its exports and grow the economy. Clinton also thought that foreign nations could be moved to economic and political reform through free trade.
Clinton’s first trade effort was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would gradually reduce tariffs and create a free-trading bloc of the North American countries—the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Opponents of NAFTA, led by Ross Perot, said it would drive American companies to Mexico, where they could produce goods with cheaper labor and ship them back to the United States. Clinton argued that NAFTA would expand U.S. exports and create new jobs. He persuaded many Democrats to join most Republicans in voting for the measure. In 1993 the Congress voted on the treaty and passed it.
Clinton also met with leaders of the Pacific Rim nations to discuss lowering trade barriers. In November 1993 he hosted a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Seattle, Washington, attended by the leaders of 12 Pacific Rim nations. In 1994 he orchestrated an agreement in Indonesia with Pacific Rim nations to gradually remove trade barriers and open their markets.
Members of Clinton’s administration also participated in the final round of trade negotiations sponsored by members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international trade organization. This round of negotiations had been going on since 1986. In a rare lame-duck session, after the 1994 elections but before the new Congress began, Clinton summoned Congress to ratify the trade agreement, which it did. As part of the GATT agreement, a new international trade body, the World Trade Organization (WTO), replaced GATT in 1995. The WTO had stronger authority to enforce trade agreements, and it covered a wider range of trade than GATT did.
During his second term, Clinton had a notable defeat regarding trade legislation. In November 1997 Congress postponed voting on a bill to restore a presidential trade authority that had lapsed in 1994. The bill would have given the president the authority to negotiate trade agreements that Congress would not have been able to change but only approve or reject. This presidential authority is known as fast-track negotiating because it streamlines the treaty process. Clinton was unable to generate sufficient support for the legislation, even among members of the Democratic Party.
Clinton also faced a trade setback in December 1999, when the WTO met in Seattle, Washington, to initiate a new round of trade negotiations. Clinton hoped new agreements on issues such as agriculture and intellectual property could be introduced at the meeting, but the talks failed. Anti-WTO protesters in the streets of Seattle disrupted the meetings, and the international delegates inside the meetings could not reach a consensus. Among other contentious issues, delegates from smaller, poorer countries resisted Clinton’s efforts to discuss labor and environmental standards.
That same year, Clinton signed a landmark trade agreement with China, after more than a decade of negotiations. The agreement would lower many trade barriers between the countries, making it easier to export U.S. products such as automobiles, banking services, and motion pictures. However, the agreement could not take effect until China was accepted into the WTO and was granted permanent “normal trade relations” status by the U.S. Congress. Under the pact, the United States would support China’s membership in the WTO. However, many Democrats as well as Republicans resisted granting permanent status to China because they were concerned about human rights in the country and the impact of Chinese imports on U.S. industries and jobs. But in 2000 Congress voted to grant permanent normal trade relations with China.
In all, the Clinton administration negotiated about 300 trade agreements with other countries. Clinton’s last treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, said the lowered tariffs, which reduced prices to consumers and kept inflation low, amounted to “the largest tax cut in the history of the world.”
A3 Social Policy
With the Democratic Party’s sizable majority in both houses of Congress when Clinton took office in 1993, he promised in his inaugural speech “an end to the era of deadlock and drift.” In little more than two weeks, he signed his first major piece of legislation, the Family and Medical Leave Act. This act required companies with more than 50 workers to allow workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to cope with family concerns such as childbirth and illness. Also during his first year, Congress passed Clinton’s national service program known as AmeriCorps. Under the program, participants perform community service in return for money to finance college or to pay back student loans. Congress also passed the so-called Brady bill, which imposed a waiting period on prospective gun owners buying handguns. In 1994 Clinton also supported a successful anticrime bill that banned the sale of assault weapons and gave states money to hire police officers and fund crime-prevention programs.
Clinton was the first president to advocate equal rights for homosexuals. During his first campaign, he promised to lift the ban against homosexuals serving in the armed forces. He moved ahead on his plan as he took office, but the proposal ignited protests from military leaders and members of Congress. It also made conservatives more suspicious and resentful of the president. Clinton and military leaders reached a compromise: Homosexuals would be allowed to serve if they did not reveal their sexual orientation and refraine
|
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
|
| |
|
| |
| SmartMatches | | |
| | |
| | |
|
| |
Individuals from other files that are believed to be the same person:
Click the  icon to see a SmartMatch in side-by-side windows.
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
|
| |
|
|
|
