Life and Presidency of Bill Clinton - Essay Example

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton, well known as Bill Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas 1946 where his grandparents raised him after the death of his father from a car accident a few months before Clinton was born, while his mom Virginia was in New Orleans finishing her training in nursing. Clinton’s grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, were strict disciplinarians, who early on in his childhood years infused in him the love for education. Clinton had a strong religious devotion from early in his childhood where he attended the Park Place Baptist Church although even when neither his parents nor grandparents were religious people. Clinton woke himself up on Sunday mornings, wore his best clothes then walked to Park Place Baptist Church, which was half a mile away from his home to attend services alone. Gospel music performed by the church choir was among the important influencing factors to Clinton’s love for the church, which also inspired him to start playing the jazz saxophone. By the time Clinton was through with his high school education, he had developed his skills in playing jazz saxophone where many recognized him as the best saxophonist in the city (Finkelman and Wallenstein 80). Clinton went to Hot Springs High School, which was a segregated high school for the whites where he became a stellar student in addition to being an integral member of the school’s jazz band. Clinton went to the Arkansas Boys State in 1963 and was successfully elected the Arkansas representative to the American Legion's Boys Nation. Each representative had a chance to meet the USA president which gave him an opportunity through an invitation to meet the then President John F. Kennedy. As a result of the photo shoot the young Bill Clinton had shaking hands with President Kennedy; the photograph has since become an iconic image signifying a passing of the leadership baton between generations of modern Democratic leadership (Benson 11). His political nature having taken roots in his high school years, Clinton instantly entered university politics at the Georgetown University being elected president of his freshman and sophomore classes but later lost the election for student body president in his junior year. Clinton then shifted his focus from campus politics to his work as a clerk for the Foreign Relations Committee, which at the time was under Senator Fulbright (Benson 19). Clinton’s immediate availability to take the Rhodes scholarship to attend Oxford University he had won while at Georgetown University became uncertain shortly after his arrival in Oxford as he was required back to Arkansas when he received a draft notice. To ensure he attends Oxford, Clinton enrolled in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School to avoid military service, but did not attend law school that fall, as he returned to Oxford to take up his scholarship (Benson 27). It was while attending the Yale Law School after seeing out his Rhodes scholarship, that Clinton met Hillary Rodham, a bright young woman whose political objectives were in harmony with those of Clinton (Finkelman and Wallenstein 80). The Clintons moved to Arkansas after their graduation, where Bill took up a teaching position at the University of Arkansas but since his heart was in politics, he right away entered the world of politics. His first shot at an elective seat after graduating from Yale was in 1974 when he faced the Republican incumbent U.S. House of Representatives John Paul Hammer Schmidt in an election Clinton lost. Clinton lost the election in by a small margin to the surprise of many marking his stature as the fast rising political star of the Arkansas Democratic Party. Clinton was to feature again the election campaigns two years later this time getting elected the state attorney general a position he held until 1978 when he ran for the governor’s position defeating Republican Lynn Lowe to become one of the youngest governors in American history at 32 years of age (Gaines 16). Having secured his victory as the Governor of Arkansas, Clinton set out on an ambitious agenda that he thought would bring about important reforms especially in the state's education and health care systems. However, his youthfulness and political inexperience were presented great hindrance to his ambitious plans due to the mistakes he made as governor. Two key decisions he made at the time were the most damaging to his rising political career one being his handling of riots by Cuban immigrants incarcerated at Fort Chaffee and the second, his introduction of fee hike on auto licenses that further damaged his political profile. The governorship position in Arkansas was held in two-year terms at the time where after his first term; Clinton was defeated in 1980 by the Republican Frank White (White 15). Clinton was out of politics for the two years after his election loss where he worked at a Little Rock law firm until 1982 when he came back to seek the governorship seat. Clinton accepted he made critical errors in his first term in office beseeching voters to give him a second chance to make amends, which saw him clinch the governorship seat and held on for four consecutive terms. Through his centrist approach, Clinton was able mix both the traditionally liberal and conservative ideas in his years as a governor. He appointed Hillary Clinton as the chairperson of a committee on education reform where his tenure saw the establishment of more thorough educational standards and the introduction of competence tests for teachers. Additionally, Clinton was in favour of affirmative action where he increased the number of African American employees to key government positions. Clintons, other principles included his support for death penalty and a welfare reforms that would ensure its recipients get back to work (McNeese 93). Over the years, Clinton made apparent efforts to increase his national outlook by taking part in various national functions where he at one time was the chairperson of the National Governors Association and later in the 1990s became an active participant in the Democratic Leadership Council. By 1992 his national visibility earned him key victory in the Democratic primaries making Clinton the party's nominee for the presidency where he nominated Tennessee Senator Al Gore his vice presidential running mate. Several factors played to Clinton’s advantage during the run for presidency among them George H. W. Bush’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise not to raise taxes and the national economic recession experienced at the time. The third-party campaign of billionaire Ross Perot was also a key factor in the 1992 election given that most of his campaign resorted well with many Republican supporters therefore ensuring that he got a significant portion of the Republican votes ((Benson 61). After winning the 1992 elections and becoming the forty second president of USA, the achievements for Clinton’s first term in office include passage into law of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 in addition to the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement. However, many see his first years in office as unsuccessful especially when judged based on the failed bid to introduce massive health-care reforms that would have resulted in universal health coverage (McNeese 94). In the ran up to 1996 election, President Clinton adopted his centrist policies and rhetoric that were instrumental to the restoration of his popularity by signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act which resulted into the addition of 100,000 policemen in addition to introducing stiff penalties for a range of crimes. The establishment of a law that increased the national minimum wage in 1996 further boosted Clinton’s popularity. This change of tact ensured Clinton Defeated his Republican opposition Bob Dole to secure a second term in office contrary to the expectation of his critics who expected him to be a one-term president. Clinton's presidency was largely successful in the country’s economic sector where it was characterized by lowest unemployment rates in recent times, the highest homeownership rates in the country’s history in addition to the lowest inflation rate. On the foreign relations front, Clinton presided over the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (Volle 126), helped in the negotiations to end Serbia's ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo, taking part in Dayton Peace Accords that made Bosnia stable after years of war (Duttweiler and Garofano 1). However, his failure on the international front includes the failed American military operation in Somalia and the lack of active interventions by United States during the genocide in Rwanda. Clinton became the first US president to be impeached by the House of Representatives due to the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998 but was later acquitted on all charges by Senate in 1999 (McNeese 94). After the end of his presidency in 2001, Clinton remains an active participant in the global arena through the William J. Clinton Foundation, which has made several developmental initiatives like the Clinton Global Initiative, the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund to mitigate the after effects of the Haitian earthquake and the Clinton Climate Initiative. Clinton sees the foundation as having the task of poverty reduction, global health improvement, strengthening of economies and environmental protection which is achievable through partnerships of governments, nongovernmental organizations, business organizations and private citizens (Moore and Pubantz 73). Works Cited Benson, Michael. Bill Clinton. Minneapolis: Lener Publications Company, 2004. Print Gaines, Ann. William J. Clinton: Our Forty-second President. Childs World Incorporated, 2001. Print Finkelman, Paul, and Peter Wallenstein. The encyclopedia of American political history. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2001.Print McNeese, Tim. US Presidency. Dayton: Lorenz Educational Press, 2001.Print Duttweiler, Christian, and John Garofano, eds. Clinton's foreign policy: a documentary record. Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2003.Print Moore, John Allphin and Pubantz, Jerry. Encyclopedia of the United Nations, 2nd Ed. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008. Print Volle, Jeffrey J. Clinton/Gore: Victory from a Shadow Box. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.Print White, Mark, ed. The Presidency of Bill Clinton: The Legacy of a New Domestic and Foreign Policy. New York: I.B Tauris and Co. Ltd, 2012.Print Read More