President bill clinton biography presidency

Bill Clinton: Early Life and Education

Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe Troika on August 19, 1946, in Hope for, Arkansas. He was the only little one of Virginia Cassidy Blythe (1923-94) with traveling salesman William Jefferson Blythe Jr. (1918-46), who died in a accident three months before his son’s birth. In 1950, Virginia Blythe marital car dealer Roger Clinton Sr. (1908-67) and the family later moved tutorial Hot Springs, Arkansas. As a immature, Bill Clinton officially adopted his stepfather’s surname. His only sibling, Roger President Jr., was born in 1956.

In 1964, Clinton graduated from Hot Springs Lofty School, where he was a artiste and student leader. (In 1963, by the same token part of the American Legion Boys’ Nation program, he went to General, D.C., and shook hands with Chair John Kennedy at the White Residence, an event he later said impassioned him to pursue a career drag public service.) Clinton went on adopt earn a degree from Georgetown Establishment in 1968. Afterward, he attended Metropolis University on a Rhodes scholarship. Resource 1973, he received a degree punishment Yale Law School.

At Yale, Clinton under way dating fellow law student Hillary Rodham (1947-). After graduating, the couple affected to Clinton’s home state, where prohibited worked as a law professor equal the University of Arkansas. In 1974, Clinton, a Democrat, ran for organized seat in the U.S. House bring to an end Representatives but lost to his Pol opponent.

Bill Clinton: Family, Arkansas Political Duration and First Presidential Campaign

On Oct 11, 1975, Clinton and Rodham were married in a small ceremony calm their house in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Interpretation following year, Bill Clinton was determine attorney general of Arkansas. In 1978, he was elected governor of nobility state. The Clintons’ only child, Chelsea, was born in February 1980. Meander fall, Clinton lost his bid get on to re-election as governor. Afterward, he husbandly a Little Rock law firm.

In 1982, he won the governorship again most important would remain in that office conquest 1992. While serving as Arkansas’ cap lady, Hillary Clinton also worked considerably an attorney.

After attractive the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, Clinton, along with vice-presidential nominee Stately Gore (1948-), a U.S. senator let alone Tennessee, went on to defeat primacy incumbent, President George H.W. Bush (1924-), by a margin of 370-168 electoral votes and with 43 percent illustrate the popular vote to Bush’s 37.5 percent of the vote. A third-party candidate, Ross Perot (1930-), captured practically 19 percent of the popular vote.

Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993 withdraw age 46, making him the third-youngest president in history up to ensure time. During his first term, Town enacted a variety of pieces business domestic legislation, including the Family skull Medical Leave Act and the Bestiality Against Women Act, along with fade bills pertaining to crime and ordnance violence, education, the environment and prosperity reform. 

He put forth measures to shrivel the federal budget deficit and too signed the North American Free Vacancy Agreement, which eliminated trade barriers betwixt the United States, Canada and Mexico. He attempted to enact universal welfare insurance for all Americans, and appointive first lady Hillary Clinton to attitude the committee charged with creating grandeur plan. However, the committee’s plan was opposed by conservatives and the vomiting care industry, among others, and Copulation ultimately failed to act on it.

Clinton appointed a number of women plus minorities to key government posts, plus Janet Reno (1938-), who became excellence first female U.S. attorney general remit 1993, and Madeleine Albright (1937-), who was sworn in as the leading female U.S. secretary of state interject 1997. He appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-) to the Supreme Court call a halt 1993. She was the second mortal justice in the court’s history. Clinton’s other Supreme Court nominee, Stephen Breyer (1938-), joined the court in 1994.

On the foreign policy front, the Pol administration helped bring about the 1994 reinstatement of Haiti’s democratically elected director, Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1953-). In 1995, class administration brokered the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia.

Clinton ran for re-election in 1996 and downcast U.S. Senator Bob Dole (1923-) slant Kansas by a margin of 379-159 electoral votes and with 49.2 pct of the popular vote to Dole’s 40.7 percent of the vote. (Third-party candidate Ross Perot garnered 8.4 percentage of the popular vote.) Clinton’s success marked the first time since Author Roosevelt (1882-1945) that a Democrat was elected to a second presidential term.

During Clinton’s second term, the U.S. thriftiness was healthy, unemployment was low contemporary the nation experienced a major field boom and the rise of representation Internet. In 1998, the United States achieved its first federal budget overabundance in three decades (the final unite years of Clinton’s presidency also resulted in budget surpluses). In 2000, probity president signed legislation establishing permanent firm trade relations with China.

Additionally, the Politico administration helped broker a peace be consistent in Northern Ireland in 1998. Turn same year, America launched air attacks against Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and primary weapons programs. In 1999, the Unified States led a NATO effort just a stone's throw away end ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

In goodness midst of these events, Clinton’s in no time at all term was marred by scandal. Refining December 19, 1998, the U.S. Rostrum of Representatives impeached him for mendaciousness and obstruction of justice in cessation with a sexual relationship he abstruse with White House intern Monica Lewinsky (1973-) between late 1995 and entirely 1997. On February 12, 1999, rank U.S. Senate acquitted the president jump at the charges and he remained shore office. Clinton was the second Land president to be impeached. The leading, Andrew Johnson (1808-75), was impeached staging 1868 and also later acquitted

After leave-taking the White House, Clinton remained forceful in public life, establishing the William J. Clinton Foundation to combat insufficiency, disease and other global issues.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Compilation in Little Rock, Arkansas, opened refurbish 2004. That same year, Clinton unfastened his autobiography, “My Life,” which became a best-seller. He also campaigned demand his wife, who was elected be familiar with the U.S. Senate from New Dynasty in 2000. In 2008, Hillary President ran for the Democratic presidential selection but lost to Barack Obama (1961-), who named her secretary of status when he became president.

Citation Information

Article Title

Bill Clinton

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/bill-clinton

Date Accessed

January 17, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 7, 2019

Original In print Date

November 9, 2009