Bill Clinton Born: Future Two-Term President and Economic Reformer

Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 by relentlessly centering his campaign on economic anxiety. His strategist James Carville posted a sign in the Little Rock campaign headquarters that read "The economy, stupid," and it became the most quoted piece of political advice in modern campaign history. Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush, a sitting president with a 90 percent approval rating just eighteen months earlier, by making the election about jobs, wages, and health care. Born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope, Arkansas on August 19, 1946, three months after his father died in a car accident, Clinton was raised by his mother and later adopted the surname of his stepfather, Roger Clinton. He graduated from Georgetown, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and earned his law degree at Yale, where he met Hillary Rodham. He became governor of Arkansas at 32, lost reelection, and won again, serving five terms total. As president, he presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history. The federal budget moved from deficit to surplus for the first time in decades. Unemployment fell below 4 percent. He signed NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which expanded trade with Mexico and Canada but became a symbol of industrial job losses that would shape American politics for the next two decades. He signed welfare reform legislation in 1996 that imposed work requirements and time limits on federal assistance, a move that satisfied centrists and infuriated the Democratic left. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the broadcast industry. He brokered negotiations at Camp David between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in 2000 that came closer to a comprehensive peace agreement than any before or since. His presidency was permanently scarred by the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. His poll numbers remained high throughout the crisis, but the episode defined his legacy alongside his economic record.