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Inaugural address, January 20, 1993. Clinton during the signing of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, with Yitzhak Rabin (left) and King Hussein of Jordan (right) After his presidential transition, Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd president of the United States on January 20, 1993. Clinton was physically exhausted at the time, and had an inexperienced staff. His high levels of public support ...
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Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001). He oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion. In 1998 Clinton became the second U.S. president to be impeached; he was acquitted by the Senate in 1999.
What was Bill Clinton’s childhood like?
Bill Clinton’s father was a traveling salesman who died before his son was born. His widow, Virginia Dell Blythe, married Roger Clinton, and her son eventually took his stepfather’s name. Bill Clinton developed political aspirations at an early age; they were solidified (by his own account) in 1963, when he met Pres. John F. Kennedy.
What is Bill Clinton’s family like?
Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton, who served as a U.S. senator (2001–09) and as secretary of state (2009–13) in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama and was the first woman presidential nominee of a major party in the United States. They have one daughter, Chelsea, and three grandchildren.
What is Bill Clinton’s occupation?
Bill Clinton’s father was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before his son was born. His widow, Virginia Dell Blythe, married Roger Clinton, and, despite their unstable union (they divorced and then remarried) and her husband’s alcoholism, her son eventually took his stepfather’s name. Reared in part by his maternal grandmother, Bill Clinton developed political aspirations at an early age; they were solidified (by his own account) in July 1963, when he met and shook hands with Pres. John F. Kennedy.
Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1964 and graduated in 1968 with a degree in international affairs. During his freshman and sophomore years he was elected student president, and during his junior and senior years he worked as an intern for Sen. J. William Fulbright, the Arkansas Democrat who chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Fulbright was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, and Clinton, like many young men of his generation, opposed the war as well. He received a draft deferment for the first year of his studies as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford in 1968 and later attempted to extend the deferment by applying to the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program at the University of Arkansas School of Law. Although he soon changed his plans and returned to Oxford, thus making himself eligible for the draft, he was not chosen. While at Oxford, Clinton wrote a letter to the director of the Arkansas ROTC program thanking the director for “saving” him from the draft and explaining his concern that his opposition to the war could ruin his future “political viability.” During this period Clinton also experimented with marijuana; his later claim that he “didn’t inhale” would become the subject of much ridicule.
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U.S. Presidents Facts
After an eventful two-year term as governor, Clinton failed in his reelection bid in 1980, the year his daughter and only child, Chelsea, was born. After apologizing to voters for unpopular decisions he had made as governor (such as highway-improvement projects funded by increases in the state gasoline tax and automobile licensing fees), he regained the governor’s office in 1982 and was successively reelected three more times by substantial margins. A pragmatic, centrist Democrat, he imposed mandatory competency testing for teachers and students and encouraged investment in the state by granting tax breaks to industries. He became a prominent member of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that sought to recast the party’s agenda away from its traditional liberalism and move it closer to what it perceived as the centre of American political life.
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Clinton declared his candidacy for president while still governor of Arkansas. Just before the New Hampshire presidential primary, his campaign was nearly derailed by widespread press coverage of his alleged 12-year affair with an Arkansas woman, Gennifer Flowers. In a subsequent interview watched by millions of viewers on the television news program 60 Minutes, Clinton and his wife admitted to having marital problems. Clinton’s popularity soon rebounded, and he scored a strong second-place showing in New Hampshire—a performance for which he labeled himself the “Comeback Kid.” On the strength of his middle-of-the-road approach, his apparent sympathy for the concerns of ordinary Americans (his statement “I feel your pain” became a well-known phrase), and his personal warmth, he eventually won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. Facing incumbent Pres. George Bush, Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, argued that 12 years of Republican leadership had led to political and economic stagnation. In November the Clinton-Gore ticket defeated both Bush and independent candidate Ross Perot with 43 percent of the popular vote to 37 percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot; Clinton defeated Bush in the electoral college by a vote of 370 to 168. Clinton thus became the first member of the baby boom generation to occupy the White House.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apr 2, 2014 · 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.
Apr 6, 2024 · Hillary Clinton returned on Saturday to her alma mater, Wellesley College, to celebrate the opening of a new research and study center that bears her name, more than half a century after she ...
- Bill Clinton: Early Life and Education. Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He was the only child of Virginia Cassidy Blythe (1923-94) and traveling salesman William Jefferson Blythe Jr.
- Bill Clinton: Family, Arkansas Political Career and First Presidential Campaign. On October 11, 1975, Clinton and Rodham were married in a small ceremony at their house in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
- Bill Clinton: First Presidential Term: 1993-1997. Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993 at age 46, making him the third-youngest president in history up to that time.
- Bill Clinton: Second Presidential Term: 1997-2001. During Clinton’s second term, the U.S. economy was healthy, unemployment was low and the nation experienced a major technology boom and the rise of the Internet.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( née Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the first lady of the U.S. to president Bill Clinton from ...
1 day ago · Hillary Clinton (born October 26, 1947, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. senator (2001–09) and secretary of state (2009–13) in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama. She had served as first lady (1993–2001) during the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the ...
