Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas. He was the 42nd President of the United States. In 1964, he graduated from Hot Springs High School where was a student leader and a musician. He went to Georgetown University and got his degree in 1968. Later he attended Oxford University on a a scholarship and in 1973, he got his degree from Yale Law School. At Yale he met Hillary Rodham, who he married in 1975. In 1974, he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, but lost to his Republican opponent. In 1976, he was elected attorney general of Arkansas and in 1978 he was elected governor of the state. However he lost the re-election for governor. In 1982 he won the governorship again and this time he would remain governor until 1992. In 1992, Clinton became the democratic nominee for the presidential election. In the Clinton defeated Bush with 370 electoral votes and 43 percent popular votes. Clinton was the third youngest president of the United States. During his first term, Clinton enacted a variety of pieces of domestic legislation, including the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Violence Against Women Act, along with key bills pertaining to crime and gun violence, education, the environment and welfare reform. He put forth measures to reduce the federal budget deficit and also signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated trade barriers between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Clinton appointed a number of women and minorities to key government posts, including Janet Reno, who became the first female U.S. attorney general in 1993, and Madeleine Albright, who was sworn in as the first female U.S. secretary of state in 1997. He appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993. She was the second female justice in the court’s history. Clinton ran again in 1996 and won with 379 electoral votes and 40.7 percent popular vote. 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. In 1998, the United States achieved its first federal budget surplus in three decades. In 2000, the president signed legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations with China.However, Clinton’s second term was spoiled by a scandal. On December 19, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached him for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a sexual relationship he had with White House intern Monica Lewinsky between late 1995 and early 1997. On February 12, 1999, the U.S. Senate acquitted the president of the charges and he remained in office. Clinton was the second American president to be impeached. The first, Andrew Johnson  was impeached in 1868 and also later acquitted