bill clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton , the young President from Hope , Arkansas accomplished something where no other Democrat had since Roosevelt : he was reelected to a subsequent term . Clinton also resisted his detractors by surviving a range of personal humiliations , turning the greatest fiscal deficit in American history into a surplus , successfully using American force to put to stop the "ethnic cleansing " wars in Bosnia and Kosovo , and being in charge over the greatest level of economic prosperity since the early 1960s . Clinton achieved these successes despite unrelenting personal attacks from the

right-wing of the Republican Party , the loss of Congress to the Republicans for the first time in forty years , and a embarrassing but unsuccessful impeachment trial by the U .S . Senate . He shaped himself as a "New Democrat " and has repeatedly been referred to as the "Comeback Kid (Brittanica , 2006

Bill Clinton , whose father died a few months before he was born , wanted to become President from a very early age . Born in 1946 , he went to public schools in Hot Springs , Arkansas , after moving there from Hope As a boy he was preoccupied with politics , triumphant in student elections at high school and later at Georgetown University in Washington , D .C . Work on a committee staff of Arkansas Senator William Fulbright and attendance at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar fortified his resolve for a political career . After graduating from Yale Law School , Clinton momentarily taught law at the University of Arkansas . He ran for the United States House of Representatives and lost , in 1974 , and then was elected state attorney general . In 1978 , at the age of thirty-two , he became the youngest governor in the nation and in Arkansas history . After losing his bid for reelection , Clinton came back to win four terms , positioning himself for a shot at the Democratic nomination for President in 1992 . Clinton defeated President Bush and upstart independent Ross Perot in 1992 after besting a large field of fellow Democrats for the nomination . As President-elect , Clinton vowed to focus on economic issues like a "laser beam " working especially to overcome the sluggish growth of the American economy . He also sought to remake the Democratic Party by focusing on issues supported by the middle class , such as government spending to stimulate the economy tough crime laws , jobs for welfare recipients , and tax reform that shifted the burden to the rich . At the same time , Clinton stood firm on certain traditional liberal goals such as converting military expenditures to domestic purposes , gun control , legalized abortion environmental protection , equal employment and educational opportunity national health insurance , and gay rights . Clinton stumbled badly in his first term when his complex health care reform initiative , spearheaded by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton , was vigorously rejected by Congress . By 1994 , Republicans had launched an aggressive attack on Clinton that delivered Republican majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time since 1955 . Clinton fought back by capitalizing on Republican blunders and the nearly fanatical attacks unleashed on...