(1946-)

Who Is Bill Clinton?

Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. In 1978 Clinton became the youngest governor in the country when he was elected governor of Arkansas. Elected U.S. president in 1992 and reelected in 1996, Clinton enacted legislation including the Family and Medical Leave Act and oversaw two terms of economic prosperity. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998 following the revelation of his affair with Monica Lewinsky but was acquitted by the Senate in 1999. Since leaving office, Clinton has worked with the Clinton Foundation and campaigned for his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the 2008 and 2016 presidential elections.

Early Life

Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. Clinton’s father, William Jefferson Blythe, died in a car crash three months before Clinton was born, leaving him in the care of his mother, Virginia Cassidy Blythe.

To provide for her son, Virginia moved to New Orleans, Louisiana to study anesthesiology, while Clinton stayed with his grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy. While opposites in many ways — Eldridge was easygoing and Edith the disciplinarian — both lavished attention on the young boy, instilling in him the importance of a good education. “My grandparents had a lot to do with my early commitment to learning,” Clinton later recalled. “They taught me to count and read. I was reading little books when I was 3.”

Clinton’s mother returned to Arkansas with her nursing degree in 1950. Later that year she married an automobile salesman named Roger Clinton, who soon moved the family back to his hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Clinton then took the last name of his stepfather. Although neither his parents nor his grandparents were religious, Clinton became a devoted Baptist from a very young age. On Sunday mornings, he woke himself up, put on his best dress clothes and walked the mile to Park Place Baptist Church to attend services alone.

Throughout his childhood, Clinton grew increasingly disturbed by his stepfather’s drinking and abusive behavior toward his mother and younger half-brother. At the age of 14, already standing more than 6 feet tall, Clinton finally snapped. He told his stepfather, “If you want them, you’ll have to go through me.” The abuse stopped but the drinking continued, and the tension persisted at home even after Roger and Virginia’s 1962 divorce and subsequent reconciliation.

Education

Clinton attended Hot Springs High School, a segregated all-white school, where he was a stellar student and a star saxophonist for the school band. The principal of Hot Springs High, Johnnie Mae Mackey, placed a special emphasis on producing students devoted to public service, and she developed a strong bond with the smart and politically-inclined Clinton.

Meeting with JFK

In late spring 1963, Clinton attended Boys State, an American Legion program designed to introduce students to government service. He was elected an Arkansas representative to Boys Nation in Washington, D.C., earning him an invitation to meet President John F. Kennedy at the White House Rose Garden. A photograph of the young Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy has become an iconic image symbolizing a passing of the baton between generations of modern Democratic leadership. On the same trip, Clinton met another of his political heroes, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee J. William Fulbright.

Georgetown University

Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University to study international affairs. He immediately thrust himself into university politics, serving as the president of his freshman and sophomore classes, though he lost the election for student body president as a junior. The political hopeful also began working as a clerk for the Foreign Relations Committee under Senator Fulbright, one of Congress’ most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War. Clinton came to share Fulbright’s view that the war was both immoral and contrary to the country’s best interests.

Law School and Military Service

Before graduating from Georgetown in 1968, Clinton won a highly prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study for two years at Oxford University. However, in the spring of 1969, Clinton received his draft notice and was forced to return to Arkansas.

Clinton avoided military service by enrolling in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School, but instead of attending law school that fall, he returned to Oxford (and later claimed he had permission to do so).

Feeling guilty about his decision to avoid the draft, Clinton resubmitted his name to the draft board, but he received a high enough lottery number to assure that he would not have to serve in Vietnam. Clinton returned to the U.S. in 1970 to matriculate at Yale Law School.

Move to Arkansas

After graduating from Yale, the Clintons moved to Arkansas. Clinton began teaching at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville and thrust himself into politics. In 1974, he challenged Republican incumbent John Paul Hammerschmidt for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Clinton lost the race, but it was closer than expected, and the campaign marked him as a rising star of the Arkansas Democratic Party. Two years later, Clinton was elected state attorney general. Two years later, he was elected governor.

Governor of Arkansas

In 1978, at the age of 32, Clinton easily defeated Republican Lynn Lowe in the Arkansas gubernatorial race to become the youngest governor in the country. He served one term before he was defeated by the incumbent; he was voted again to the governorship in 1982 and served for four consecutive terms.

Working closely with his wife, Hillary, in his first term as governor Clinton set out on an ambitious agenda to reform the state’s education and health care systems. However, hampered by his youth and political inexperience, he made several blunders as governor. Clinton mishandled the riots by Cuban refugees interned at Fort Chaffee and instituted a highly unpopular fee hike on auto licenses. At the time, Arkansas governors served only two-year terms, and at the conclusion of Clinton’s term in 1980 a little-known Republican challenger named Frank White shockingly knocked him out of office.

Although the loss devastated Clinton, he refused to let it put an end to his promising political career. After spending some time working at the Arkansas law firm of Wright, Lindsey & Jennings in Little Rock, Clinton once again sought out the governorship in 1982. Freely admitting his past mistakes and beseeching voters to give him a second chance, Clinton swept back into office, this time for four consecutive terms.

As governor, Clinton took a centrist approach, championing a mix of traditionally liberal and conservative causes. Appointing Hillary to head a committee on education reform, he instituted more rigorous educational standards and established competence tests for teachers. Clinton also championed affirmative action, appointing record numbers of African Americans to key government positions.

At the same time, Clinton favored the death penalty and put in place welfare reforms designed to put recipients back to work. Also noteworthy was Clinton’s tactic of running the government like a political campaign, constantly consulting public opinion polls and pitching policies through carefully orchestrated advertising campaigns.

Seeking to increase his national profile, Clinton served as chairman of the National Governors Association from 1986-87. At the end of the decade he became chair of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of moderate Democrats seeking to move the party in a centrist direction.

However, at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Clinton squandered an opportunity to announce himself as an obvious future presidential candidate when he delivered an excruciatingly long and boring nomination speech for Michael Dukakis. In a skillful bit of political damage control, Clinton quickly made fun of his disastrous speech on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

1992 Presidential Election

In 1992 Clinton easily defeated his competitors in the Democratic primaries to become the party’s nominee for the presidency, choosing Tennessee Senator Al Gore as his vice-presidential running mate. The Republican incumbent, President George H.W. Bush, was vulnerable in the election of 1992 because he had broken his celebrated campaign promise not to raise taxes and, especially, because the national economy was mired in recession.

Although Clinton’s campaign was troubled by accusations of draft dodging and rumors of marital infidelity, he managed to turn the narrative by portraying himself as a hard-working, family man. Additionally, he successfully hammered home his economic message, underscored by chief strategist James Carville’s pithy slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Clinton was also aided by the surprisingly successful third-party campaign of billionaire Ross Perot, who siphoned off a significant portion of the Republican vote from President Bush. On November 3, 1992, Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States.

Presidency and Accomplishments

Despite several notable accomplishments in his first years as president, including the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the implementation of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy for LGBT military personnel and the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Clinton’s first years in office left him politically vulnerable. Through a task force headed by First Lady Hillary, Clinton endorsed a massive health care reform act that was designed to provide universal coverage. The bill failed to move through Congress, however, and became a massive political disaster, leading to Republicans regaining control of both houses of Congress in 1994.

In an impressive political comeback, President Clinton again embraced centrist policies and rhetoric to restore his popularity in advance of the 1996 election. In 1994, he signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a law that added 100,000 policemen and instituted harsher punishments for a variety of crimes. In 1996, he signed a law increasing the national minimum wage. He also emerged favorably from a budget dispute with House Republicans that resulted in a pair of government shutdowns in 1995, the second of which lasted three weeks.

Clinton’s greatest accomplishment in his two terms as president was leading the nation to a period of strong economic prosperity. While Clinton was in office, the nation enjoyed the lowest unemployment rates in decades, as well as a surge in median income and a rise in home-ownership rates.

Clinton’s foreign policy achievements included presiding over the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, during which the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat occurred, stabilizing war-torn Bosnia through the Dayton Peace Accords and helping to end Serbia’s ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. However the failure of the American military mission in Somalia and subsequent inaction in the face of genocide in Rwanda, both from Clinton’s first term, stand out as major blemishes on his foreign policy record.

1996 Presidential Election

In 1996 Clinton handily defeated Republican challenger Bob Dole to secure a second term in office.

Affair With Monica Lewinsky

Clinton’s second term in the White House was dominated by the Lewinsky scandal. The president at first denied, and then later admitted, that he had sexual relations with Lewinsky, his White House intern.

A panel-appointed prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, exposed the affair after expanding an initial investigation of Clinton’s Whitewater investments as Arkansas governor. In 1998, Starr produced an explicit report with salacious details, known as the Starr Report, which outlined a case for impeachment.

Twenty years later, the #MeToo movement sparked a reexamination of the Clinton-Lewinsky saga, with many of the president’s former supporters now questioning his handling of the affair. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said that Clinton should have resigned, and Lewinsky wrote that their relations were marked by “inappropriate abuse of authority, station and privilege.” However, Clinton told interviewers in June 2018 that he would not have responded to the situation any differently, and that he felt no need to apologize privately to his former intern.

Impeachment

Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives but not the Senate, which meant that he remained in office through both of his two terms. In December 1998, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for perjury and obstruction of justice for his actions in the Lewinsky affair. However, in February 1999, following a five-week trial, the Senate voted to acquit Clinton on both articles of impeachment.

Post-Presidential Career

In the years since his presidency concluded in 2001, Clinton has remained active on the global stage. Despite facing an enormous backlash from the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton rejuvenated his image and remained popular among Democratic supporters. Assessments of Clinton’s successes and failures reflect the political divides of the moment, and history has yet to reveal the full consequences of many of his policies.

Clinton himself offered his own preliminary evaluation of his presidency in his memoirs: “I judge my presidency primarily in terms of its impact on people’s lives. That is how I kept score: all the millions of people with new jobs, new homes and college aid; the kids with health insurance and after-school programs; the people who left welfare for work; the families helped by the family leave law; the people living in safer neighborhoods — all those people have stories, and they’re better ones now.”

The Clinton Foundation

Through the William J. Clinton Foundation (founded in 1997 and later renamed the Clinton Foundation), he created the Clinton Climate Initiative, dedicated to supporting research to combat climate change; the Clinton Global Initiative, which connects entrepreneurs and world leaders to foster new ideas and action; and the Haiti Fund, dedicated to rebuilding Haiti in the aftermath of its devastating 2010 earthquake.

According to Clinton, the foundation’s mission is “to alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies and protect the environment, by fostering partnerships among governments, businesses, nongovernmental organizations and private citizens.”

Clinton has continued to be a force behind his foundation, which has overseen the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations, governments and individuals to global-minded charitable works. The organization has dealt with issues ranging from providing increased access to HIV/AIDS medications to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Books

Having published his first book, Between Hope and History, prior to the 1996 election, the former president in 2004 followed with a best-selling autobiography, My Life. Clinton has since published three more books, Giving (2007), Back to Work (2011) and The President Is Missing (2018), a political thriller co-authored with James Patterson.

During a promotional tour for The President Is Missing, Clinton raised eyebrows with his analysis of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump and Russian agents, saying that a Democratic president in an identical situation would already be facing impeachment.

Recent Years

Clinton played an active role in Hillary’s failed 2008 presidential bid and, afterward, in Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign.

Clinton showed his support for the Democratic 2012 election candidates, incumbents President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. In his speech at the convention, Clinton said that he wanted Obama to be the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party, calling him a president who’s “cool on the outside, but who burns for America on the inside.” The speech garnered wide success for Clinton in the form of positive news reports and social-network posts by fans.

In November 2013, Clinton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to civilians. Recipients of the medal are chosen for their “meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” according to the White House website.

The former president has made other special appearances including administering the oath of office in 2014 to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and eulogizing boxing legend Muhammad Ali in 2016.

Campaigning for Hillary

Having previously served as secretary of state under the Obama administration, Hillary eventually launched a new campaign to be elected commander-in-chief. In July 2016, she became the official Democratic nominee for the American presidency, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to win a major political party’s presidential nomination.

During the Democratic National Convention, Clinton, who had previously campaigned on behalf of his wife, spoke at length about the history of their dating and marriage, her civil rights work, her work on behalf of children, her commitment to diversity and the disenfranchised, her professional dedication as a public servant and her overall tenacity. “For this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face, and she is still the best darn change maker I have ever known,” he said in his speech.

After one of the most contentious presidential races in U.S. history, during which the Clinton Foundation came under attack as a “pay-for-play” service for the rich and powerful, Republican Donald Trump earned the majority of electoral votes and defeated Hillary on November 8, 2016. Trump’s stunning victory defied pre-election polls and was considered a resounding rejection of establishment politics by blue-collar and working-class Americans.

The day following the election, Clinton, daughter Chelsea and her husband, along with vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine and his wife, stood behind Hillary as she delivered an emotional concession speech.

“Our campaign was never about one person, or even one election,” Hillary told her supporters. “It was about the country we love and building an America that is hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power.”

Personal Life

In 1971 Clinton met a bright young Wellesley College graduate named Hillary Rodham, who shared his political ambitions. The pair graduated from Yale in 1973 and married two years later in 1975. They had their only child, a daughter named Chelsea, in 1980.

On September 26, 2014, Clinton became a grandfather when daughter Chelsea gave birth to Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky. His second grandchild, Aidan Clinton Mezvinsky, was born on June 18, 2016, and his third grandchild, Jasper Clinton Mezvinsky, was born on July 22, 2019.

Health

During his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton’s doctors gave him a clean bill of health but said he needed to lose weight and that he suffered from mild hearing loss and chronic laryngitis. When Clinton was president, he was fitted for a hearing aid, had a potentially cancerous skin lesion removed from his back and went on medication to lower his cholesterol.

In 2004, Clinton underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery and, six months later, had scar tissue removed from his lungs. He subsequently adopted a vegan diet, which helped him lose a significant amount of weight.

During his wife Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign, some media outlets questioned Clinton’s physical and mental health. However, Clinton and his doctors deny he has any health issues and say he is in good condition.

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QUICK FACTS

• Name: Bill Clinton
• Birth Year: 1946
• Birth date: August 19, 1946
• Birth State: Arkansas
• Birth City: Hope
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States, and the second to be impeached. He oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion.
• Industries
• U.S. Politics
• Astrological Sign: Leo
• Schools
• University of Oxford
• Hot Springs High School
• Georgetown University
• Yale University Law School

Fact Check

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Bill Clinton Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/bill-clinton
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: April 1, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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QUOTES

• I judge my presidency primarily in terms of its impact on people’s lives. That is how I kept score: all the millions of people with new jobs, new homes and college aid; the kids with health insurance and after-school programs; the people who left welfare for work; the families helped by the family leave law; the people living in safer neighborhoods—all those people have stories, and they’re better ones now.
• America cannot and must not disentangle itself from the world. If we want the world to embody our shared values, then we must assume a shared responsibility.
• Being president is like running a cemetery: you’ve got a lot of people under you and nobody’s listening.
• My grandparents had a lot to do with my early commitment to learning. They taught me to count and read. I was reading little books when I was 3.
• Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution. We, the American people, we are the solution.
• America demands and deserves big things from us, and nothing big ever came from being small.
• I did not have sexual relations with that woman … Miss Lewinsky.
• Whether I’m a good man is, of course, for God to judge. I know that I am not as good as my strongest supporters believe or as I hope to become, nor as bad as my harshest critics assert.
• I always tried to keep things moving in the right direction, to give more people a chance to live their dreams, to life people’s spirits, and to bring them together.
• I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact it was wrong.
• It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.
• I’m someone who had a deep emotional attachment to ‘Starsky and Hutch.’
• When you leave the White House you wonder if you’ll ever draw a crowd again.