Bill Clinton

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

William Jefferson Clinton
42nd President of the United States
In office January 20, 1993 –  January 20, 2001
Vice President	Albert Gore, Jr.
Preceded by	George H. W. Bush
Succeeded by	George W. Bush
52nd Governor of Arkansas
In office January 11, 1983 –  December 12, 1992
Lieutenant	Winston Bryant (1983-1991) Jim Guy Tucker (1991-1992)
Preceded by	Frank D. White
Succeeded by	Jim Guy Tucker
50th Governor of Arkansas
In office January 9, 1979 –  January 19, 1981
Lieutenant	Joe Purcell
Preceded by	Joe Purcell
Succeeded by	Frank D. White
Attorney General of Arkansas
In office 1977 – 1979
Preceded by	Jim Guy Tucker
Succeeded by	Steve Clark
Born	August 19, 1946 (1946-08-19) Hope, Arkansas
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Hillary Rodham Clinton
Children	Chelsea Clinton
Alma mater	Georgetown University University College, Oxford Yale Law School
Occupation	Lawyer
Religion	Baptist
Signature

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946) was the forty-second President of the United States of America, serving from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president, older only than Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and is known as the first baby boomer president, as he was born in the period after the Second World War.

Clinton was described as a New Democrat and was mainly responsible for the Third Way philosophy of governance that came to epitomize his two terms as president. His policies, on issues such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have been described as "centrist." Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget and a federal surplus. His presidency was also quickly challenged. On the heels of a failed attempt at health care reform with a Democratic Congress, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. In his second term he was impeached by the U.S. House for perjury, but was subsequently acquitted by the United States Senate and completed his term.

Clinton left office with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-presidency rating of any President that came into office after World War II. However, public reaction to the Lewinsky scandal left a mixed impression about his personal character. Since leaving office, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes, such as treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2004, he released a personal autobiography, My Life. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the junior United States Senator from the state of New York, where they both currently reside, and a Democratic candidate for president in the 2008 election.

Biography

Early life

William Jefferson Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope, Arkansas, and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. His father was William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., a traveling salesman, who died in a car accident three months prior to the birth of his son. In 1950, his mother, Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923-1994), married Roger Clinton, a partner with his brother in an automobile dealership.

It was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned 14 that he formally adopted his stepfather's surname of Clinton, although he had assumed use of it prior to that. Clinton has said that he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and, at times, his half-brother, Roger, Jr.

Education

In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School - where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician. He was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography My Life:

“

(…) Sometime in my sixteenth year I decided I wanted to be in public life as an elected official. I loved music and thought I could be very good, but I knew I would never be John Coltrane or Stan Getz. I was interested in medicine and thought I could be a fine doctor, but I knew I would never be Michael DeBakey. But I knew I could be great in public service.

”

In 1963, two influential moments in Clinton's life contributed to his decision to become a public figure. One was his visit to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy, as a Boys Nation senator. The other was listening to Martin Luther King's 1963 I Have a Dream speech (which he memorized).

Clinton was also a member of Youth Order of DeMolay, but he never actually became a Freemason. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi's National Honorary Band Fraternity, Inc. With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.F.S.) degree in 1968. It was at Georgetown that he interned for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. While in college he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Upon graduation he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied government. He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests, including organizing an October 1969 Moratorium event. In later life he admitted to smoking cannabis at the university, but claimed that he "never inhaled".

After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and obtained a Juris Doctor ( J.D.) degree in 1973. While at Yale, he began dating law student Hillary Rodham who was a year ahead of him. They married in 1975 and their only child, Chelsea, was born in 1980.

Early political career

Leader of Texas McGovern Presidential Campaign of 1972

During his study at Yale, Clinton took a job with the McGovern campaign and was assigned to lead McGovern's effort in Texas. He spent considerable time in Dallas, Texas, at the McGovern campaign's local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue where he maintained an office. There, Clinton met and worked with Ron Kirk, who would be elected mayor of Dallas twice, the future governor of Texas Ann Richards, and film director and producer Steven Spielberg.

Governor of Arkansas

After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a University of Arkansas law professor. A year later, in 1974, he ran for the House of Representatives. The incumbent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, defeated Clinton with 52% of the vote. In 1976, Clinton was elected Attorney General of Arkansas without opposition in the general election.

In 1978, Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas for the first time; at 32, he was the youngest governor in the country. He worked on educational reform and the infrastructure of Arkansas's roads, but his first term also was fraught with difficulties, including an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens' anger over the escape of Cuban refugees (from the Mariel boatlift) detained in Fort Chaffee in 1980. A political maverick, Monroe Schwarzlose of Kingsland in Cleveland County, polled a surprising 31% of the vote against Clinton in the 1980 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Some suggested that Schwarzlose's unexpected voter turnout foreshadowed Clinton's defeat in the general election that year by Republican challenger Frank D. White. As Clinton once joked, he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history.

In 1982, Clinton reclaimed his old job as governor and kept it for another 10 years, helping Arkansas transform its economy and significantly improving the state's educational system. He became a leading figure among the New Democrats. The New Democrats, organized within the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) were a branch of the Democratic Party that called for welfare reform and smaller government, a policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans. He served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987, bringing him to an audience beyond Arkansas.

Clinton made economic growth, job creation and educational improvement high priorities of his administration. He removed the sales tax from medicine for senior citizens and increased the home property tax exemption for the elderly. Clinton was also responsible for some state educational improvement programs, notably more spending for schools, rising opportunities for gifted children, an increase in vocational education, and raising of teachers' salaries.

Clinton's approach answered conservative criticism during his terms as governor, but personal and business transactions made by the Clintons during this period became the basis of the Whitewater investigation, which dogged his later presidential administration. After very extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were made against the Clintons related to the years in Arkansas.

Campaign for the Democratic nomination

There was some media speculation in 1987 that Clinton would enter the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination after then- New York Governor Mario Cuomo declined to run and Democratic front-runner Gary Hart left the nomination owing to revelations about marital infidelity.

"Boy Governor"

Often called the "Boy Governor" at that time because of his youthful appearance, Clinton decided to remain as Arkansas governor and postpone his presidential ambitions until 1992. Clinton then endorsed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for the nomination. He did, however, give the opening night address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, a nationally-televised speech that introduced him to the American public, but was criticized for its length. Presenting himself as a moderate and a member of the New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, he headed the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in 1990 and 1991.

In 1992, Clinton was the early favorite of the Democratic Party for the presidential nomination and was able to garner the support of many superdelegates even before the first nominating contests were conducted. However, Clinton's presidential bid ran into difficulty in the opening weeks. First he finished well behind in the Iowa caucus, which was largely uncontested due to the presence of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who subsequently won. Secondly the campaign encountered difficulty when, during the New Hampshire Primary campaign, revelations of a possible extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers began to surface. Clinton and his wife Hillary decided to go on 60 Minutes following the Super Bowl to refute these charges of infidelity, as Clinton had fallen far behind former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas in the New Hampshire polls.

"The Comeback Kid"

Their television appearance was a calculated risk, but it seemed to pay off as Clinton regained several delegates. He finished second to Tsongas in the New Hampshire primary, but the media viewed it as a moral victory for Clinton, since he came within single digits of winning after trailing badly in the polls. Clinton shrewdly labeled himself "The Comeback Kid" on election night to help foster this perception and came out of New Hampshire as the leader by a large percentage. Tsongas, on the other hand, picked up little or no momentum from his victory.

Clinton used his new-found momentum to win many of the Democratic Southern primaries, including the big prizes of Florida and Texas, and build up a sizable delegate lead over his opponents in the race for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. However, there were still some doubts whether he could secure the nomination, as former California Governor Jerry Brown was scoring victories elsewhere and Clinton had yet to win a significant contest outside of his native South.

With no major Southern state remaining on the primary calendar, Clinton targeted the New York primary, which contained a large number of delegates and was to be his proving ground. He scored a resounding victory in New York City. He finally shed his image as a regional candidate. 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.

Presidential Election

Clinton won the 1992 presidential election (43.0% of the vote) against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush (37.4% of the vote) and billionaire populist H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent (18.9% of the vote) on a platform focusing on domestic issues; a large part of his success was Bush's steep decline in public approval. Previously described as "unbeatable" because his approval ratings were in the 80% range during the Persian Gulf conflict, Bush saw his public approval rating drop to just over 40% by election time because of a souring economy.

Additionally, Bush reneged on his promise not to raise taxes when he compromised with Democrats in an attempt to lower the Federal deficits; this hurt his approval rating among conservatives. Clinton capitalized on Bush's policy switch, repeatedly condemning the president for making a promise he failed to keep.

Finally, Bush's party base was in disarray. Conservatives had previously been united by anti-communism, but with the end of the Cold War, new issues would have to emerge. The 1992 Republican National Convention was perceived by some moderate voters to have been uninspiring and usurped by religious conservatives. All of this worked in Clinton's favour. Clinton could point to his moderate, "New Democrat" record as governor of Arkansas, though some on the far left remained suspicious of him leading up to the election. Many Democrats who had supported Ronald Reagan and Bush in previous elections switched their allegiance to Clinton.

His election ended an era of Republican rule of the White House for the previous 12 years, and 20 of the previous 24 years. The election also gave the Democrats full control of both branches of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Clinton was the first president to enjoy this privilege since Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

However, questions of conflict of interest regarding state business and the politically powerful Rose Law Firm, at which Hillary Rodham Clinton was a partner, arose during the campaign. Further controversy arose when Bill Clinton announced that voters would be getting two presidents "for the price of one". Considering Hillary Clinton's prominent role in the administration, especially in such projects such as health care, adoption and foster care reform, and foreign policy, "co-presidents" became a popular deragotary term for the Clintons among conservatives.

Presidency, 1993–2001

The Clinton Cabinet
OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Bill Clinton	1993 – 2001
Vice President	Al Gore	1993 – 2001
Secretary of State	Warren M. Christopher	1993 – 1997
	Madeleine K. Albright	1997 – 2001
Secretary of Treasury	Lloyd Bentsen	1993 – 1994
	Robert E. Rubin	1995 – 1999
	Lawrence H. Summers	1999 – 2001
Secretary of Defense	Les Aspin	1993 – 1994
	William J. Perry	1994 – 1997
	William S. Cohen	1997 – 2001
Attorney General	Janet Reno	1993 – 2001
Secretary of the Interior	Bruce Babbitt	1993 – 2001
Secretary of Agriculture	Mike Espy	1993 – 1994
	Daniel R. Glickman	1994 – 2001
Secretary of Commerce	Ronald H. Brown	1993 – 1996
	Mickey Kantor	1996 – 1997
	William M. Daley	1997 – 2000
	Norman Y. Mineta	2000 – 2001
Secretary of Labor	Robert B. Reich	1993 – 1997
	Alexis M. Herman	1997 – 2001
Secretary of Health and Human Services	Donna E. Shalala	1993 – 2001
Secretary of Education	Richard Riley	1993 – 2001
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	Henry G. Cisneros	1993 – 1997
	Andrew Cuomo	1997 – 2001
Secretary of Transportation	Federico F. Peña	1993 – 1997
	Rodney E. Slater	1997 – 2001
Secretary of Energy	Hazel O'Leary	1993 – 1997
	Federico F. Peña	1997 – 1998
	Bill Richardson	1998 – 2001
Secretary of Veterans Affairs	Jesse Brown	1993 – 1997
	Togo D. West, Jr.	1998 – 2000
	Hershel W. Gober, act.	2000 – 2001

First term, 1993–1997

Clinton was inaugurated on January 20, 1993 as the 42nd President of the United States. In his inaugural address he declared that:

“

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

”

Shortly after taking office, Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which required large employers to allow their employees to take unpaid leave because of pregnancy or a serious medical condition. While this action was popular, Clinton's attempt to fulfill another campaign promise of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the armed forces was the subject of criticism. His handling of the issue garnered criticism from the left (for being too tentative in promoting gay rights) and the right (for being too insensitive to military life). After much debate, Congress implemented the " Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, stating that homosexual men and women may serve in the military as long as their sexuality is kept secret. Later in his presidency, in 1999, Clinton said he did not "think any serious person could say" that the way the policy was being implemented was not "out of whack". Some gay rights advocates criticized Clinton for not going far enough and accused him of making his campaign promise simply to get votes and contributions. These advocates felt Clinton should have integrated the military by executive order, noting that President Harry Truman ended racial segregation of the armed forces in that manner. Clinton's defenders argued that an executive order might have prompted the Senate, which then had a Democratic majority, to write the exclusion of gays into law, potentially making it even harder to integrate the military in the future.

The Clinton-Gore administration launched the first official White House website on 21 October 1994. It was followed by three more versions, resulting in the final edition launched in 2000. The White House website was part of a wider movement of the Clinton administration toward web-based communication. According to Robert Longley, "Clinton and Gore were responsible for pressing almost all federal agencies, the U.S. court system and the U.S. military onto the Internet, thus opening up America's government to more of America's citizens than ever before. On 17 July 1996, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13011 - Federal Information Technology, ordering the heads of all federal agencies to fully utilize information technology to make the information of the agency easily accessible to the public."

Also in 1993, Clinton promoted another controversial issue, this time regarding free trade when he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement for ratification by the U.S. Senate. Clinton, along with most of his Democratic Leadership Committee allies, strongly supported free trade measures, however there was strong opposition from within the main democratic party. Opposition chiefly came from anti-trade Republicans, protectionist Democrats and supporters of Ross Perot. The bill passed the house with 234 votes against 200 opposed (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favour, 156 Democrats, 43 Republicans, and 1 independent against). The treaty was then ratified by the Senate and signed into law by the President on 1 January 1994.

Clinton signed the Brady Bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases. He also expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low income workers.

One of the most prominent items on Clinton's legislative agenda was a health care reform plan, the result of a taskforce headed by Hillary Clinton, aimed at achieving universal coverage via a national healthcare plan. Though initially well-received in political circles, it was ultimately doomed by well-organized opposition from conservatives, the American Medical Association, and the health insurance industry. However, John F. Harris, a biographer of Clinton's, states that the program failed because of a lack of co-ordination within the White House. Despite his party holding a majority in the House and Senate, the effort to create a national healthcare system ultimately died under heavy public pressure. It was the first major legislative defeat of Clinton's administration.

Two months later, after two years of Democratic Party control under Clinton's leadership, the mid-term elections in 1994 proved disastrous for the Democrats. This was the first time the Democratic Party had lost control of both houses of Congress in 40 years.

In August 1993, Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which passed Congress without a single Republican vote. It raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers, while cutting taxes for 15 million low-income families and making tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses. Additionally, it mandated that the budget be balanced over a number of years, through the implementation of spending restraints.

Second term, 1997–2001

In the 1996 presidential election, Clinton was re-elected, receiving 49.2% of the popular vote over Republican Bob Dole (40.7% of the popular vote) and Reform candidate Ross Perot (8.4% of the popular vote), becoming the first Democrat to win reelection to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt. The Republicans lost a few seats in the House and gained a few in the Senate, but overall retained control of the Congress. Clinton received 379, or over 70% of the Electoral College votes, with Dole receiving 159 electoral votes.

On January 21, 1998, a controversy was raised by the media and prominent Republicans over Clinton's relationship with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, resulting in the Lewinsky scandal. In a lame duck session after the 1998 elections, the Republican-controlled House voted to impeach Clinton for matters related to the scandal. The Republican-controlled Senate then voted to acquit Clinton the following year, and he remained in office to complete his term.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted by Clinton on October 21, 1998, served as the first significant amendment to the Copyright Act since 1976. The DMCA extended the protection of intellectual property to outlaw reverse engineering of digital protection. It also provided a framework for sound recording copyright owners and recording artists to seek public performance royalties under statute, which proved to be a landmark achievement for the recording industry.

The Elián González affair took prominent stage during early 2000. The boy survived a boat wreck as his family fled from Cuba, but his mother died, setting off an international legal fight for where the boy should stay. Eventually the administration, via Janet Reno, had González forcefully obtained and returned to Cuba.

Two notable military events occurred during Clinton's second term. The first was Operation Desert Fox, a bombing campaign designed to weaken Saddam Hussein's grip on power over Iraq. The four-day campaign lasted from December 16 to December 19, 1998. It began after Clinton signed H.R. 4655 into law on October 31, 1998, which instituted a policy of "regime change" against Iraq, though it explicitly stated that it did not speak to the use of American military forces. The law was signed months after his State of the Union Address to Congress where Clinton warned Congress of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear weapons:

“

"Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons, and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation's wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job, finding and destroying more of Iraq's arsenal than was destroyed during the entire gulf war. Now, Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from completing their mission. I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein, "You cannot defy the will of the world," and when I say to him, "You have used weapons of mass destruction before; we are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.

”

The second was Operation Allied Force, a 1999 NATO bombing campaign against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Clinton authorized the use of American troops in the mission to stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Albanians at the hands of the nationalist Serbians. General Wesley Clark was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO at the time and oversaw the mission. The bombing campaign ended on June 10, 1999, with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 adopted that same day, placing Kosovo under UN administration and authorizing a peacekeeping force. NATO claimed to have suffered zero deaths in combat, and two deaths total from an Apache helicopter crash. Opinions in the popular press criticized pre-war genocide claims by Clinton and his administration as greatly exaggerated. A U.N. Court ruled that genocide did not take place, although it did recognize, "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments". The term "ethnic cleansing" was used as an alternative to "genocide" to denote not just ethnically motivated murder but also displacement, though critics charge there is no difference. Slobodan Milošević, the President of Yugoslavia at the time, was eventually charged with the "murders of about 600 individually identified ethnic Albanians" and "crimes against humanity".

In the closing year of his administration, Clinton attempted to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. After initial successes such as the Oslo accords of the early-1990s, the situation had quietly deteriorated, breaking down completely with the start of the Second Intifada. Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat together at Camp David. However, Barak and Arafat could not find common ground, and the negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful.

In November 2000, Clinton became the first president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War. Clinton remained popular with the public throughout his two terms as President, ending his presidential career with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-term approval rating of any President since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clinton also oversaw a boom of the U.S. economy. Under Clinton, the United States had a projected federal budget surplus for the first time since 1969.

Legislation and programs

Major legislation signed 1993- 02-05 - Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 1993- 08-10 - Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 - Raised income tax rates; income tax, top rate: 39.6%; corporate tax: 35% 1993- 09-21 - creation of the AmeriCorps volunteer program 1993- 11-30 - Brady Bill 1994- 09-13 - Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, part of an omnibus crime bill, the federal death penalty was expanded to some 60 different offenses (see Federal assault weapons ban) 1996- 02-01 - Communications Decency Act 1996- 02-08 - Telecom Reform Act: eliminated major ownership restrictions for radio and television groups. 1996- 02-26 - Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, a welfare reform bill 1996- 03-14 - authorized $100 million counter-terrorism agreement with Israel to track down and root out terrorists. 1996- 04-09 - Line Item Veto Act 1996- 04-24 - Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act 1996- 08-20 - Minimum wage Increase Act 1996- 09-21 - Defense of Marriage Act, allowed states to refuse recognition of certain same-sex marriages, and defined marriage as between a male and female for purposes of federal law 1997- 08-05 - Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 1998- 10-28 - Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998- 10-31 - Iraq Liberation Act

Major legislation vetoed national budget H.R. 1833, partial birth abortion ban Twice vetoed welfare reform before signing the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Congress overrode the veto, however, to enact the bill into law. Proposals not passed by Congress Health care reform Campaign finance reform (1993) Initiatives Tried to get Ehud Barak of Israel and Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian National Authority, to agree to a final settlement agreement. Initiated the Don't ask, don't tell policy toward gays in the military, 1993. Reversed a ban on senior Sinn Féin politicians entering the U.S. Proposed a national challenge to end the racial divide in America, the One America Initiative. Extraordinary rendition got approval for the first time in the USA from the Clinton administration.

Supreme Court appointments

Clinton appointed the following justices to the Supreme Court:

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg - 1993
• Stephen Breyer - 1994

Public approval

While Clinton's job approval rating varied over the course of his first term, ranging from a low of 36% in mid-1993 to a high of 64% in late-1993 and early-1994, his job approval rating consistently ranged from the high-50s to the high-60s in his second term. Clinton's approval rating reached its highest point at 73% approval in the aftermath of the impeachment proceedings in 1998 and 1999.

A CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll conducted as he was leaving office, revealed deeply contradictory attitudes regarding Clinton. Although his approval rating at 68% was higher than that of any other departing president since polling began more than seventy years earlier, only 45% said they would miss him. While 55% thought he "would have something worthwhile to contribute and should remain active in public life", 68% thought he would be remembered for his "involvement in personal scandal" rather than his accomplishments as president, and 58% answered "No" to the question "Do you generally think Bill Clinton is honest and trustworthy?". 47% of the respondents identified themselves as being Clinton supporters. 47% said he would be remembered as either "outstanding" or "above average" as a president while 22% said he would be remembered as "below average" or "poor".

In recent public rankings of American presidents, Bill Clinton ranked highly. The Gallup Organization published a poll in February 2007 that asked respondents to name the greatest president in U.S. history; Clinton came in fourth place, capturing 13% of the vote. In a 2006 Quinnipiac University poll that asked respondents to name the best president since World War II, Clinton ranked second with 25% of the vote, 3% behind Ronald Reagan. However, in the same poll, when respondents were asked to name the worst president since World War II, Clinton came in third with 16% of the vote, 1% behind Nixon and 18% behind George W. Bush.

In May 2006, a CNN poll comparing Clinton's job performance with that of his successor, George W. Bush, found that a strong majority of respondents said Clinton outperformed Bush in six different areas questioned.

ABC News characterized public consensus on Clinton as, "You can't trust him, he's got weak morals and ethics — and he's done a heck of a good job."

Public image

As the first Baby Boomer president, Clinton was the first president in a half-century not to have been shaped by World War II. The public image of Clinton was important throughout his presidency and his innovative use of soundbite-ready dialogue, personal charisma, and public perception-oriented campaigning is stated by authors Martin Walker and Bob Woodward as one of the major reasons for his high public approval ratings. With his pioneering use of pop culture in his campaigning, such as playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, Clinton was sometimes described by religious conservatives as "the MTV president".

Clinton was also very popular among African Americans and made improving race relations a major theme of his presidency.

In 1998, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison called Clinton "the first Black president," saying "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas," and comparing Clinton's sex life, scrutinized despite his career accomplishments, to the stereotyping and double standards that blacks typically endure.

Standing over 6'2.5" tall (1.88 m), Clinton was one of the tallest U.S. Presidents in the nation's history.

Post-presidential career

Public speaking and campaigning