Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946. He was named for his father, William Jefferson Blythe, who had been killed in an automobile accident three months before Bill's birth. At the age of 2, he was sent to live with his grandparents, who also resided in Hope, while his mother, Virginia Blythe, studied nursing in New Orleans. When he was 4, his mother married Roger Clinton, a car salesman, and they moved together as a family to Hot Springs, Arkansas. The boy later took his stepfather's last name.
Young Bill attended school in Little Rock. He was an honors student, played the saxophone, and was popular with his classmates. But life at home was not always pleasant. The elder Clinton was an alcoholic, and when he had too much to drink, he could be abusive. One day, when Bill was about 14, he stood up to his stepfather. Although his stepfather kept drinking, the abuse stopped. As Bill grew older, he came to understand his stepfather's problem and so was able to forgive him before he died.
Clinton thought of becoming a doctor or a reporter or even a musician. But after a fateful meeting with President John F. Kennedy, while still in high school, he made up his mind to enter politics. The meeting came about in 1963, when he was a delegate to the American Legion Boys' Nation, a youth program in which students learn about government. Clinton was part of a group that was invited to the White House to meet the president. Kennedy, who only months later was to be assassinated, shook hands with the young Clinton and made a lasting impression on him.
After graduating from Hot Springs High School in 1964, Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In his spare time he worked in the office of Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Upon his graduation from Georgetown with a degree in international affairs in 1968, he won a two-year Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University in England. He returned to the United States in 1970 to study law at Yale University. In 1972 he took time off to work for the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, who was defeated by Richard M. Nixon. The following year Clinton received his law degree.
Clinton served briefly as a staff lawyer for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, before joining the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School in 1974. The same year he tried, unsuccessfully, to launch his own political career, running for Congress against a popular four-term Republican. Although Clinton lost, he received more votes than any other Democratic candidate in the district had in 25 years. One reason Clinton did so well was that many voters had turned against the Republicans that year because of the Watergate scandal that forced President Nixon's resignation.
In 1975, Clinton married Hillary Rodham, whom he had met while attending Yale Law School. Mrs. Clinton established her own very successful law practice in Little Rock. The Clintons have one child, a daughter named Chelsea.
Clinton's second try for political office was more successful, winning him election as attorney general of Arkansas in 1976.
Two years later, Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas. Then 32, he was the nation's youngest governor. Arkansas voters, however, unhappy with tax increases that Clinton had imposed on gasoline to pay for improving the state's highways, rejected his bid for re-election in 1980. But in 1982, when he ran for governor again, he won easily and went on to win re-election three more times.
In announcing his intention to seek the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton called for a jobs plan to lift the country out of its economic recession, tax cuts for the middle class, and a form of national health insurance. During the campaign, Clinton was pursued by questions about his character. He was attacked by some for evading military service and appearing to cover it up. Nevertheless, he won enough delegates to assure his swift nomination at the Democratic convention in New York City. For his vice-presidential running mate, Clinton chose Senator Albert (Al) Gore of Tennessee.
Capitalizing on the poor state of the nation's economy, Clinton won 370 electoral votes to 168 for his Republican opponent, President George Bush. H. Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, ran as an independent and made a strong showing.
Soon after taking office, Clinton called for nearly $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts. Although Republicans and some conservative Democrats opposed his plans to raise taxes, Congress finally gave the new president much of what he had asked for. Clinton also won congressional approval for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico.
However, one of Clinton's top priorities--health reform--met with stiff opposition. Critics complained that his proposal would cost too much and lead to government interference in the health care system. Clinton had to abandon the idea.
Meanwhile, the smear machine of the "vast right wing conspirators" forced Clinton to devote considerable time to dealing with allegations of misconduct prior to his election as president. One controversy stemmed from investments that he and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had made in the Whitewater Development Corporation, an Arkansas real estate development firm. The other concerned charges of sexual harassment made by a former Arkansas government employee, Paula Jones.
These phony scandals contributed to the Democratic Party's defeat in the 1994 midterm elections and helped the Republicans gain control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. But later Republican efforts to balance the budget while cutting back spending and reducing taxes led to a shutdown of the federal government. This angered the American people, many of whom sided with President Clinton, who had opposed the Republican plan. He eventually won this struggle, and that success paved the way for his re-election in 1996.
In international matters, Clinton helped bring about an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) concerning self-rule for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And in the Balkans, he sent 20,000 American troops to serve as part of an international peacekeeping force.
Clinton easily won re-election in 1996, with 379 electoral votes. But he received only 49 percent of the popular vote running against the Republican nominee, former U.S. senator Robert (Bob) Dole of Kansas, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot.
On the domestic front, the president's popularity benefited from sustained economic prosperity. His first major accomplishment was reaching an agreement with the Republican-controlled Congress on a plan to achieve a balanced budget. Despite tax cuts worth $95 billion, the plan also trimmed $263 billion from federal expenditures. Meanwhile, the number of people receiving welfare dropped, in part because of the welfare reform law Clinton pushed through Congress in 1996.
Seeking to ease racial tensions, Clinton in 1997 launched a year-long campaign of town hall meetings and conferences. He called for reconciliation between the races, defended affirmative action, and pointed out that by the end of the next half-century there would no longer be a majority race in America.
Allegations of misconduct continued to plague the president. In addition to the ongoing investigation into Whitewater and the Paula Jones case, his re-election brought new charges that he and Vice President Gore had engaged in questionable fund-raising activities during the 1996 election campaign. Republicans called for appointment of a special prosecutor. Clinton insisted that he and Gore had acted "within the letter of the law" and urged Congress to enact campaign finance reform laws.
But soon another scandal disrupted Clinton's presidency. This controversy stemmed from charges that he had an improper relationship with a 21-year-old former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and then tried to cover it up. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who had been investigating the Whitewater case, launched an inquiry. His probe focused on whether Clinton had committed perjury by denying the affair with Lewinsky in a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones case, and also whether Clinton had tried to get Lewinsky to lie in her own sworn statement in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Starr issued a report, contending that the president's actions could be grounds for impeachment.
In the 1998 mid-term congressional elections, Democrats won more seats than expected, indicating that a majority of Americans continued to support the president. Nevertheless, on December 19, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Only one other president has been impeached--Andrew Johnson in 1866. After a trial in the Senate, the president was acquitted on both the impeachment and perjury charges. In 2000 the Clintons were cleared of any wrongdoing in the Whitewater matter.
Clinton's scandals at home did not prevent him from playing an active role abroad. At a summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, he persuaded Russian president Boris Yeltsin to accept the expansion of NATO by admitting some former Soviet Bloc countries as members. Following terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Clinton unleashed retaliatory stikes at terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan. He also ordered the bombing of Iraq when Iraq refused to allow the UN to inspect its weapons facilities.
In a peacekeeping role, Clinton helped negotiate a Mideast pact between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Israel agreed to withdraw its troops from land claimed by the Palestinians in return for a promise to stop terrorism against Israel.
Soon after his impeachment trial ended, Clinton set in motion the biggest military operation of his presidency, joining other NATO countries in a massive bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. The aim was to force Yugoslavian president Slobodan Miloevi to stop attacks on ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. After ten weeks of bombing, Miloevi agreed to withdraw his forces from Kosovo, and Clinton claimed victory. The United States did not lose a single soldier in combat.
In the last year of his presidency, Clinton made yet another effort to ease Mideast tensions. But at a summit meeting at Camp David, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat failed to reach an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
After he left the White House, Clinton remained in demand as a speaker and Democratic fund raiser. In 2001 he set up an office in Harlem in New York City. In 2004, Clinton published his autobiography, My Life, which became an immediate bestseller. That same year, he successfully underwent heart bypass surgery just two months before the William J. Clinton Presidential Center opened in Little Rock.
During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country's history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare rolls. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. As part of a plan to celebrate the millennium in 2000, Clinton called for a great national initiative to end racial discrimination.
