American Presidents

by Kopasinova Nastya

Bill Clinton is the 42nd American president

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born 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. Inaugurated at age 46, he

was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first

president of the baby boomer generation.

Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of

his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of

governance.

Born and raised in Arkansas,

Clinton became both a student

leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of 

Georgetown University where he

was Phi Beta Kappa and earned

a Rhodes Scholarship to attend

the University of Oxford. He is married to 

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the 

United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was the 

Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received 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 Chair of the 

National Governors Association.

Clinton was elected president in 1992,

defeating incumbent president 

George H.W. Bush. As president, Clinton

presided over the longest period of

peacetime economic expansion in

American history. He signed into law the 

North American Free Trade Agreement.

He implemented Don't ask, don't tell, a

controversial intermediate step to full

gay military integration. After a failed 

health care reform attempt,Republicans 

won control of Congress in 1994, for the

first time in forty years. Two years later,

the re-elected Clinton became the first

member of the Democratic Party since 

Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full

term as president. He successfully

passed welfare reform and theState

Children's Health Insurance Program,

providing health coverage for millions of

children. Later, he was impeached for 

perjury andobstruction of justice in a 

scandal involving a White House intern,

but was acquitted by the U.S. Senate

 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.

Clinton left office with the highest

end-of-office approval rating of any

U.S. president since World War II.

Since then, he has been involved in

public speaking and humanitarian

work. Based on his philanthropic

worldview, Clinton created the 

William J. Clinton Foundation to

promote and address international

causes such as prevention of AIDS

 and global warming. In 2004, he

released his autobiography My Life,

and was involved in his wife's and then Barack Obama's 

campaigns for president in 2008. In

2009, he was named United

Nations Special Envoy toHaiti, and

after the 2010 earthquake he

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

.

• He was elected Governor of Arkansas for five terms.

• He is known for appointing minorities and

women to high-level positions.

• Warren Christopher and later Madeleine Albright

served as his Secretaries of State.

• During his term, the federal budget was

balanced.

 

In the first primary contest, the 

Iowa caucus, Clinton finished a distant third to

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. During the campaign

for the New Hampshire primary, reports of an

extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers

 surfaced. As Clinton fell far behind former 

Massachusetts SenatorPaul Tsongas in the New

Hampshire polls,[5] following Super Bowl XXVI,

Clinton and his wife Hillary went on 60 Minutes

 to rebuff the charges. Their television

appearance was a calculated risk, but Clinton

regained several delegates. He finished second

to Tsongas in the New Hampshire primary, but

after trailing badly in the polls and coming

within single digits of winning, the media viewed

it as a victory. News outlets labeled him "The

Comeback Kid" for earning a firm second-place finish.[35]

Winning the big prizes of Florida and Texas and

many of the Southern primaries on 

Super Tuesday gave Clinton a sizable delegate

lead. However, former California Governor Jerry

Brownwas scoring victories and Clinton had yet

to win a significant contest outside his native

South.[5][34] With no major Southern state

remaining, Clinton targeted New York, which had

many delegates. He scored a resounding victory

in New York City, shedding his image as a

regional candidate.[34] Having been transformed

into the consensus candidate, he secured the

Democratic Party nomination, finishing with a

victory in Jerry Brown's home state of California.[5]

Bill Clinton is a very interesting person!