BILL CLINTON
William Jefferson Blythe III August 19, 1946) is an
American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001.
Clinton was Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992, and Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Ideologically Clinton was a New Democrat, and many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy.
Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas, and is an alumnus of
Georgetown University, where he was a member of
Kappa Kappa Psi and the
Phi Beta Kappa Society and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. Clinton is
married to Hillary Clinton,
who served as
United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, who was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and who is the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 2016.
Both Clintons earned law
degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as chairman of the
National Governors Association.
Clinton was elected
President in 1992, defeating incumbent
George H. W. Bush. At age 46, Clinton was the third-youngest president, and the first from the
Baby Boomer generation. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history, and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. After failing to pass national health care reform, the Democratic House was ousted when the Republican Party won control of the Congress in 1994, for the first time in 40 years.
Two years later, in 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second term. Clinton passed welfare reform and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children.
In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice during a lawsuit against him, both related to a scandal involving White House (and later Department of Defense) employee Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was acquitted by the U.S. Senate in 1999, and served his complete term of office. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clinton's presidency. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U.S. military intervention in the Bosnia and Kosovo wars, signed the Iraq Liberation Act in opposition to Saddam Hussein, and participated in the 2000 Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.
Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any
U.S. President since World War II. Since then, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. Clinton created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes, such as the prevention of AIDS and global warming. In
2004, Clinton published his autobiography
My Life. Clinton has remained active in politics by campaigning for Democratic candidates, including his wife's campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016, and
Barack Obama's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
In 2009, Clinton was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, and after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U.S. Presidents.
College And Law School Of Years
Georgetown University
With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.) degree in 1968.
In 1964 and 1965, Clinton won elections for class president. From 1964 to 1967, he was an intern and then a clerk in the office of Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. While in college, he became a brother of co-ed service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry, but he never became a Freemason. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity.
Rhodes Scholar
Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to
University College, Oxford where he studied
Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though because he had switched programs and had left early for Yale University, he did not receive a degree there. He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas.
Vietnam War opposition and draft controvers
While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam event.
Clinton received Vietnam War draft deferments during 1968 and 1969 while he was in England. Planning to attend law school in the U.S, and aware that he might lose his draft deferment, he tried unsuccessfully to obtain positions in the National Guard or Air Force, and then made arrangements to join the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program at the University of Arkansas.
He subsequently decided not to join the ROTC, saying in a letter to the officer in charge of the program he had planned to join that he opposed the war, but did not think it was honorable to use ROTC, National Guard, or Reserve service to avoid serving in Vietnam. He further stated that because he opposed the war, he would not volunteer to serve in uniform, but would subject himself to the draft, and would serve if selected only as a way "to maintain my political viability within the system". Clinton registered for the draft and received a high number (311), meaning that those whose birthdays had been drawn as numbers 1 to 310 would have to be drafted before him, making it unlikely that he would be drafted. (In fact, the highest number drafted was 195.)
Colonel Eugene Holmes, the Army officer who had been involved with Clinton's ROTC application, suspected that Clinton attempted to manipulate the situation to avoid the draft and avoid serving in uniform. He issued a notarized statement during the 1992 presidential campaign:
"I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fulbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program ... I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification."
During the 1992 campaign it was revealed that Clinton's uncle had attempted to secure him a position in the Navy Reserve, which would have kept him from going to Vietnam. This effort was unsuccessful and Clinton said in 1992 that he had been unaware of it until then. Although legal, Clinton's actions with respect to the draft and deciding whether to serve in the military were criticized by conservatives and some Vietnam veterans during his first presidential campaign, some of whom charged that he had used Fulbright's influence to avoid military service. Clinton's 1992 campaign manager, James Carville, successfully argued that Clinton's letter in which he declined to join the ROTC should be made public, insisting that voters, many of whom had also opposed the Vietnam War, would understand and appreciate his position.
Law School
After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973. In the Yale Law Library in 1971 he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him. They began dating and soon were inseparable. After only about a month, Clinton postponed his plans to be a coordinator for the George McGovern campaign for the 1972 United States presidential election in order to move in with her in California. They married on October 11, 1975, and their only child, Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980.
Clinton did eventually move to Texas with Rodham to take a job leading George McGovern's effort there in 1972. He spent considerable time in Dallas, at the campaign's local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue, where he had an office. Clinton worked with future two-term mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, future governor of Texas, Ann Richards, and then unknown television director (and future filmmaker) Steven Spielberg.
Honors And Recognization
Statue In Pristina
Secretary of Defense Cohen presents President Clinton the DoD Medal for Distinguished Public Service.
Various colleges and universities have awarded Clinton honorary degrees, including Doctorate of Law degrees and Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. He is an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. Schools have been named for Clinton, and statues have been built to pay him homage. U.S. states where he has been honored include Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and New York. He was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary of Defense William Cohen in 2001. The Clinton Presidential Center was opened in Little Rock, Arkansas in his honor on December 5, 2001.
He has been honored in various other ways, in countries that include the Czech Republic, Papua New Guinea,Germany, and Kosovo. The Republic of Kosovo, in gratitude for his help during the Kosovo War, renamed a major street in the capital city of Pristina as Bill Clinton Boulevard and added a monumental Clinton statue.
Clinton was selected as Time's "
Man of the Year" in 1992, and again in 1998, along with Ken Starr. From a poll conducted of the American people in December 1999, Clinton was among eighteen included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century.
He was honored with a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, a J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, a TED Prize (named for the confluence of technology, entertainment and design), and was named as an Honorary GLAAD Media Award recipient for his work as an advocate for the LGBT community.
In 2011, President Michel Martelly of Haiti awarded Clinton with the National Order of Honour and Merit to the rank of Grand Cross "for his various initiatives in Haiti and especially his high contribution to the reconstruction of the country after the earthquake of January 12, 2010". Clinton declared at the ceremony that "in the United States of America, I really don't believe former American presidents need awards anymore, but I am very honored by this one,
I love Haiti, and I believe in its promise"."Haiti – Social: Bill Clinton receives the National Order of Honor and Merit to the rank Grand Cross gold plated". Haiti Libre. Retrieved March 14, 2016.
U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Clinton the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 20, 2013."Obama awards Medal of Freedom to Clinton, Oprah, others". USA Today. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
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