William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and as he was born in the period after World War II, he is known as the first Baby Boomer

 president.His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is currently the United States Secretary of State. She was previously a United States Senator from New York, and also candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Both are graduates of Yale Law School.
Clinton was described as a New Democrat and was largely known for the Third Way philosophy of governance that came to epitomize his two terms as president. His policies, on issues such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and welfare reform, have been described as centrist. Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget and a reported federal surplus. Based on Congressional accounting rules, at the end of his presidency Clinton reported a surplus of $559 billion. On the heels of a failed attempt at health care reform with a Democratic Congress, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton was re-elected and became the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term as president. Later he was impeached for obstruction of justice, but was subsequently acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
Clinton left office with an approval rating at 66%, the highest end of office rating of any 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 promote and address international causes such as treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming.
In 2004, he released his autobiography, My Life, and more recently has been involved in his wife Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign and in that of President Barack Obama. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti.
42nd President of the United States
In office
January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001
Vice President Al Gore
Preceded by George H. W. Bush
Succeeded by George W. Bush
40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas
In office
January 11, 1983 – December 12, 1992
Lieutenant Winston Bryant (1983-1991)
Jim Guy Tucker (1991-1992)
Preceded by Frank D. White
Succeeded by Jim Guy Tucker
In office
January 9, 1979 – January 19, 1981
Lieutenant Joe Purcell
Preceded by Joe Purcell (acting)
Succeeded by Frank D. White
50th Arkansas Attorney General
In office
January 3, 1977 – January 9, 1979
Preceded by Jim Guy Tucker
Succeeded by Steve Clark
Born August 19, 1946 (1946-08-19) (age 62)
Hope, Arkansas
Nationality American
Political party Democratic
Spouse Hillary Rodham Clinton
Children Chelsea Clinton
Alma mater Georgetown University
University College, Oxford
Yale Law School
Occupation Lawyer
Religion Protestant Christianity (Southern Baptist)
Signature
Website William J. Clinton Presidential Library
Early life
William Jefferson Blythe, III, in 1950 at age four. Known at the time as Billy, he did not formally adopt his stepfather’s name until age fourteen.
Bill Clinton Boyhood Home in Hope, ArkansasBill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born. Following his birth, in order to study nursing, his mother Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923-1994), traveled to New Orleans, leaving Bill in Hope with grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and operated a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States were racially segregated, Bill’s grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all racial groups. In 1950, Bill’s mother returned from nursing school and shortly thereafter married Roger Clinton, who together with his brother owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950.
Although he assumed use of his stepfather’s surname, it was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned fourteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton, as a gesture toward his stepfather. Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and, at times, his half-brother, Roger, Jr. Clinton intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.
Education
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. He 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. ”
Clinton attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., receiving a degree in 1968, during which he ran for President of the Student Council.In 1963, two influential moments in Clinton’s life contributed to his decision to become a public figure. One was his visit to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy, as a Boys Nation senator. The other was listening to Martin Luther King’s 1963 I Have a Dream speech (he memorized Dr. King’s words).
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.F.S.) degree in 1968. He spent the summer of 1967, the summer before his senior year, working as an intern for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. While in college he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of Youth Order of DeMolay, but he never actually became a Freemason. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi’s National Honorary Band Fraternity, Inc.
Upon graduation he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests, including organizing an October 1969 Moratorium event.[15] In later life he admitted to smoking cannabis at the university, but claimed that he “never inhaled”.
After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and obtained a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973. While at Yale, he began dating law student Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him. They married on 11 October 1975, and their only child, Chelsea, was born on 27 February 1980.
Early political career
Leader of McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign in Texas
During Yale, Clinton took a job with the McGovern campaign and was assigned to lead McGovern’s effort in Texas. He spent considerable time in Dallas, Texas, at the McGovern campaign’s local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue where he had an office. There, Clinton worked with Ron Kirk, who was later elected mayor of Dallas twice, future governor of Texas Ann Richards, and then unknown television director (and future filmmaker) Steven Spielberg.
Governor of Arkansas
After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a professor at the University of Arkansas. A year later, he ran for the House of Representatives in 1974. The incumbent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, defeated Clinton by a 52% to 48% margin. Without opposition in the general election, Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976.
Clinton, as the newly elected Governor of Arkansas meeting with President Jimmy Carter in 1978.Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978, making him the youngest governor in the country at age thirty-two. 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% 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.
Clinton joined friend’s Bruce Lindsey’s law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings, though he spent most of the next two years working on his re-election campaign. Clinton was again elected governor and kept his job for ten years. He helped Arkansas transform its economy and significantly improve the state’s educational system. He became a leading figure among the New Democrats. The New Democrats, organized within the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) were a branch of the Democratic Party that called for welfare reform and smaller government, a policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans. He served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987, bringing him to an audience beyond Arkansas.
Clinton made economic growth, job creation and educational improvement high priorities. For senior citizens, he removed the sales tax from medicine and increased the home property tax exemption.
In the early 1980s, Clinton made reform of the Arkansas education system a top priority. The Arkansas Education Standards Committee, chaired by Clinton’s wife, attorney and Legal Services Corporation chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, succeeded in reforming the education system, transforming it from the worst in the nation, into one of the best. This has been considered by many the greatest achievement of the Clinton governorship. Clinton and the committee were responsible for state educational improvement programs, notably more spending for schools, rising opportunities for gifted children, an increase in vocational education, raising of teachers’ salaries, inclusion of a wider variety of courses, and mandatory teacher testing for aspiring educators.
The Clinton’s personal and business affairs during the 1980s included transactions which became the basis of the Whitewater investigation, which dogged his later presidential administration. After extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were made against the Clintons related to the years in Arkansas.
Democratic presidential primaries of 1988
Governor and Mrs. Clinton attend the Dinner Honoring the Nation’s Governors in the White House with President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan, 1987. Though Governor Clinton had little to do with national politics at the time, Hillary Rodham had, several years previously, clashed over Legal Services Corporation funding with President Reagan as the organization’s chair, a position she was appointed to by President Carter.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).[16] For the nomination, Clinton endorsed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. However, he gave the opening night address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, which was nationally televised, but it was criticized for length. 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.
Democratic presidential primaries of 1992
Due to his youthful appearance he was often called the “Boy Governor”. In the first contest, the Iowa caucus, he finished a very 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,[16] following the Super Bowl, Clinton and his wife Hillary went on 60 Minutes to refute 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. On election night, Clinton labeled himself “The Comeback Kid”. He ended leading New Hampshire by a large percentage.
Winning the big prizes of Florida and Texas and many of the Southern primaries 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 of his native South.
With no major Southern state remaining, Clinton targeted the New York primary, which contained a large number of delegates. He scored a resounding victory in New York City and won, shedding his image as a regional candidate. 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.
Presidential election
Clinton won the 1992 presidential election (43.0% of the vote) against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush (37.4% of the vote) and billionaire populist Ross Perot, who ran as an independent (18.9% 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. Because Bush’s approval ratings were in the 80% range during the Gulf War, he was described as unbeatable. However, when Bush compromised with Democrats in an attempt 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.[23] By election time, the economy was souring and Bush saw his approval rating plummet to slightly over 40%. 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. 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. Many Democrats who supported Ronald Reagan and Bush in previous elections switched their allegiance to Clinton.
His 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. It was the first time this had occurred since the Jimmy Carter presidency in the late 1970s.
However, 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 maintained questions were moot because all transactions with the state were deducted prior to determining Hillary’s firm pay. Further concern arose when Bill Clinton announced that, with Hillary, voters would be getting two presidents “for the price of one”.

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