Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton was a very controversial topic back in the late 90s. Always involved in some
scandal. However, he did many great things for the country. He was something special. Most
presidents come from the east or west coast in very political-oriented families; however, Bill was
from Hope, Arkansas. He was very involved with his community, and people loved him.
William Jefferson Blythe was born in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19th, 1946. His father
died in a car accident months before Bill was born. Bill was raised by his mother, Virginia, and
his grandmother, Edith. Two powerful women dominated Bill’s early years. His mother was a
fun-loving free spirit. She was often away from home taking nursing classes in New Orleans.
During those periods when Bill’s mother was out of town Bill’s grandmother, Edith, a
temperamental and strong-willed disciplinarian, tried to shape her grandson’s character--- and
taught him to be an exceedingly early reader. Bill looked back on his life with them and
remembered loving them, but he always thought he was the middleman between their arguments.
In 1950, Bill’s mother married Roger Clinton; he worked at a car dealership and was an
abusive alcoholic. They ended up moving to Hot Springs, Arkansas, a resort town an hour away
from Hope. Bill changed his last name to Clinton. So, he was now known as William Jefferson
Clinton. Bill played Saxophone in high school and loved gospel music. Bill is a Baptist. While
Bill’s mother went to the racetracks on Sunday, Bill went to church, only to hear the music he
loved. The community recognized Bill as a kid with rare talent and ambition.
After high school, Bill attended Georgetown University in 1968, then went to Oxford
from 1968 to 1970, and eventually to Yale Law School in 1973. Clinton moved back to Arkansas
and got a job teaching law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. As soon as Bill arrived
home, he threw himself into politics and ran for a spot in the U.S House of Representatives
against the Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt. Although Clinton lost the race in 1974, it was
the closest election for Hammerschmidt in his 26 years in Congress, which made Clinton a
political rising star. Clinton married Hillary Rodham about a year later, on October 11th, 1975.
In 1976, Arkansas voters elected Clinton to be the state attorney general. In 1978, Bill ran for
governor at age 32, winning an easy victory and becoming one of the nation’s youngest
governors ever. However, his youth and inexperience quickly had Arkansans unimpressed.
Governor Clinton had made several missteps, including handling the rioting among
Cuban Refugees temporarily interned by the federal government at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. He
also raised auto license fees to help pay for road construction. He alienated the state’s powerful
timber interests by an unsuccessful intervention in the controversy over the practice of clearcutting. So the voters voted against him in favor of Frank White, a little-known Republican
savings and loan executive. Clinton became the youngest former governor in American history.
Shocked by his defeat, Clinton went to work for a Little Rock law firm but spent
most of his time campaigning for reelection. In the 1982 race, Clinton apologized for his
mistakes and used his incredible charm and well-honed TV ads to convince the voters to give
him another chance. He won the election in 1982 and once again in 1984. Voters then supported
him for two, 4-year terms in 1986 and 1990. As Governor, Bill strongly advocated for
educational reform. He appointed his wife, Hillary Clinton, to lead a committee to draft higher
standards for Arkansas schools, which experienced a huge decrease in dropout rates and
increased college-entrance exam test scores under his watch. That was one of the many
accomplishments Clinton had as governor.
Clinton did not want to stop at achieving governor though; in fact, he wanted to become
president. So, like anyone trying to become president, he did a lot of campaigning. Bill Clinton
defeated the leading democratic contenders in the 1992 primaries. It was not even close. Bill
Clinton’s opponent was George W. Bush, a member of the Republican party, who ran a horrible
campaign that failed to execute his great successes in foreign affairs into a convincing argument
to re-elect him. Republican die-hards never forgave Bush for not keeping his promise in 1988 to
not raise taxes. Middle-class Americans had grown increasingly upset over Bush’s refusal to act
on the economic recession that had settled in the nation. Clinton won the election and became the
42nd president of the United States. He was inaugurated on January 20th, 1993. Bill Clinton’s
mother lived to see her son become president but died of cancer a year later.
Bill Clinton was responsible for many changes in our country. One of his most
memorable accomplishments was including homosexual people in the military. He proposed a
policy called “Don’t ask, Don’t tell,” meaning that the military services would not ask for sexual
orientation or sexual preference, and it would not be required to divulge this information.
Nevertheless, the policy backfired, liberals and gays felt betrayed by the president, and
conservatives overrode the administration’s executive by writing a more strict policy into the law
in a defense authorization bill.
During Clinton’s campaign back in 1992, he vowed to form a cabinet that “looked like
America.” Clinton appointed a Florida woman named Janet Reno for attorney general. Clinton
named three other women to cabinet positions. He nominated Donna E. Shalala, who had been
chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, to secretary of health and human services. He also
nominated Hazel O’Leary, an African-American woman, secretary of energy, and Madeleine K.
Albright as secretary of state. He appointed many other diverse people to help him through his
presidency as well, such as campaign managers and the like.
Along with the multiple political scandals with Bill Clinton’s presidency, he failed to
realize his presidency’s major goal, affordable healthcare for every American Citizen. The
United States is the only industrialized nation without a universal health care system for all its
citizens in the world. Clinton then realized that if he could administer affordable healthcare
insurance for everyone, it would help the economy by leaps and bounds.
Bill Clinton turned the greatest government-related deficit in American History into a
surplus by using American force to stop the “ethnic cleansing” wars in Bosnia and Kosovo and
presiding over the greatest economic prosperity level since the early 1960s. Few presidents have
ever raised more questions about the president’s standing and simultaneously presided over a
longer period of sustained prosperity. Bill Clinton had a humiliating but unsuccessful
impeachment trial after having an affair with another woman. People referred to Bill Clinton as
the “comeback kid” after surviving an array of personal scandals. Clinton was the 2nd democrat
ever to be re-elected for a second term. The first was Franklin Roosevelt. Bill Clinton’s term
ended on January 20th, 2001.
All in all, Bill Clinton’s presidency was very controversial, and people take very
opinionated sides about his presidency. He did many great things for the country, but he was
involved in so many scandals that Republicans took every opportunity to use them against him.
However, he defied the odds and was re-elected for a second term. He really was the “comeback
kid.”
Works Cited/References
Maraniss, David. First in His Class: the Biography of Bill Clinton. Touchstone.
Riley, Russell L. “Bill Clinton: Life Before the Presidency.” Miller Center, 23 Sept. 2020,
millercenter.org/president/clinton/life-before-the-presidency.
White House Historical Association. “William J. Clinton.” WHHA (En-US),
www.whitehousehistory.org/bios/william-clinton.
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