The year was 1992. Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was the Democratic presidential candidate, facing current president George H. W. Bush. Clinton looked as if he could win and become the 42nd president of the United States, because Bush was currently at the reigns of the failing economy. The 1992 election was mostly centered around economics, something that was turned in Clintons favor. The outcome of the election showed that the American people were ready for another Democrat in office, with Clinton holding the majority of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes.
You’d be mistaken if you said Clinton didn’t get things done right away. The newly elected Democrat, now the nation’s 42nd president, accomplished many key things in his first term in office. Within his first two years he created nearly 6 million new jobs, an average of 250,000 per month. He enacted the 1993 Economic Plan, which cut the taxes of 15 million low-income families, made tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses, and raised taxes on 1.2% of the wealthy. He also signed the largest deficit reduction plan in history, which was the result of over $600 billion in deficit reduction. In 1994, the United States had the lowest combination of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. To protect us against crime he signed the Brady Bill in November 1993, which created a 5-day waiting period on handgun purchases so background checks could be performed. The Crime Bill put 100,000 new police officers to work, punished criminals by expanding the number of offenses eligible for the death penalty, and banned the manufacturing of 19 specific types of deadly assault weapons.
President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which offered workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for child birth, adoption, or personal/family illness. He expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit to cut 15 million working families’ taxes who earn $27,000 or less. The U.S. Justice Department was ordered for crackdown of deadbeat parents who refused to accept the financial responsibility for their children, the first time anything like that was done. Clinton signed the Community Development Banking Financial Institutions Act and Interstate Banking Bill in September 1994. He also made the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and Mortgage Revenue Bond Program permanent. For educational purposes, Clinton signed Goals 2000, a national standard for public schools. The Safe and Drug Free Schools and Community Act, along with the Safe Schools Act, provided funding to schools against violence and drug abuse. The School-To-Work program provided venture capital to help kids go from high school to a job with a future. Clinton passed NAFTA, which helped exports to Mexico rise 23% in 1994. He also fought to pass GATT, which lowered tariffs worldwide by $744 billion in 10 years, the largest international tax cut in history.
If you didn’t think President Clinton could do much more, you are once again wrong. The EPA started the Common Sense Initiative, which made health protection cheaper and safer by focusing on results rather than plain regulations. The Northwest Forest Plan helped Northwest communities get back to work and conserve the forests. He signed the California Desert Protection Act in 1994. Funding for breast cancer research was increased by 65%. The National Voter Registration Act was signed on May 20, 1993. He helped our relations with several countries; Clinton helped Israel and Jordan create a peace treaty, contributed to the cease-fire in Northern Ireland, helped restore Haiti President Aristide to power, prevented Russian from continuing to point nuclear missiles at the United States, and among other things, persuaded Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to give up their nuclear weapons.
The United States once again voted in President Bill Clinton for a second term in 1996. Even though Americans weren’t sure about his character and ethics, they decided that Clinton would be a better president than Bob Dole. Dole never quite connected with the voters and some thought that he was just too old to be president. Clinton won the election with 9% more of a popular vote than Dole, and 379 electoral votes. Clinton was the first Democrat to be elected to a second term since Roosevelt. During his second term, Clinton’s accomplishments included increasing the percentage of schools connected to the internet to 95% in 1999 and signing bipartisan welfare reform legislation in 1996. Continuing from his first term, Clinton told Americans to come together to fight teen pregnancy, and the birth rate for teenagers age 15-19 dropped every year of his presidency, from 60.7% in 1992 to 49.6% in 1999, a record low. The national debt was reduced by $363 billion between 1998-2000, the largest in American history. By 2000 President Clinton set aside over 3 million acres of land in wilderness and national monuments. He also protected more acreage in the lower states than any other president.
The major landmark of the Clinton Presidency was the Lewinsky Scandal. Paula Corbin Jones brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton after making claims against him dating back to 1991. Her lawyers, searching for a pattern, questioned several other women and also Clinton on January 17, 1998, making him the first current president to testify as a civil defendant. Clinton also denied having an affair in 1995-1996 with unpaid intern Monica Lewinsky. She also denied an affair, but Kenneth Starr received tape recordings from Linda Tripp of Lewinsky describing her involvement over the telephone. On August 17, 1998, Clinton appeared in front of a grand jury, and later admitted to the Lewinsky scandal on national television and asked the country for forgiveness. The following month Kenneth Starr sent a 445-page report about possible impeachment to the House of Representatives. On December 12 the committee approved 4 impeachments courts, after sending Clinton 81 formal inquiries in November.
The House lost Republican seats unexpectedly in November, which turned things in favor of Clinton since it was mainly the Republican’s doing and the public didn’t favor impeachment. But on December 19, 1998, Clinton became the second president to be impeached (first that was elected to office). The reasons for impeachment were perjury and obstruction of justice. In January 1999 the trial began, and on February 12 the Senate rejected both counts of impeachment. Ten Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in voting against the perjury charge, and obstruction of justice was an equal 50-50 vote. In July the president was ordered to pay almost $90,000 to Paula Jones’ lawyers. A Maryland grand jury also found Linda Tripp guilty of illegally taping phone calls, but the charges were later dropped. On January 19, 2001, the day before Clinton left office, he agreed to admit to false testimony in the Jones case and accept a five-year suspension of his law license along with a $25,000 fine.
I really enjoyed doing my blog on President Clinton, as I’m sure you’ve already figured. Was it obvious while reading the blog that I’m Democrat? I felt a little touch bias when I was typing this up. I think this blog was a little confusing though, because there was so much (especially during his first time) that he enacted. That’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong, but there’s so much I feel that I left out. It was also a little hard to type up the sex scandal information because I’m not exactly a genius when it comes to court cases so I can’t really understand them unless I see them on TV or something, which I can’t really remember anything when I was 2 or 3. Typing this blog reminded me of a story my mom told me. Her uncle, who is a strong Republican, was very against me being named Chelsea because he hated the Clintons and thought I should be named something ‘normal’ like Kelsey instead. Just to get the story straight, I am not named after Chelsea Clinton. :)
I’m not going to lie; I think Clinton was one of the best presidents we’ve ever had. I think he got a lot of things done during his presidency that moved our country forward, which is what we need from every president. This blog was a change from my Nixon blog, because it seemed like my main point with his was the Watergate Scandal. I felt like I actually had some notable accomplishments to mention with Clinton. Of course he wasn’t perfect, but who is? We’ve had some great things come from Republican presidents, some terrible things from Democrat presidents, and vice versa. I like to look at both sides what a (mostly) open mind, but I always know where I stand. I'm always afraid people base their political standings on what their parents were. My dad, who came from a farming family, had Republican parents and was a registered Republican until the 2008 election. My mom, who had a mother who was a teacher and a father who was in the Korean War, had Democrat parents and is a registered Democrat (but now considers herself more of an Independent). As for me? My political standing is based on my beleifs, plus what I'm going through personally in my life at the moment, the way it should be for everyone. I believe no matter how extreme you are, always vote for the person and not the party. Doing this blog also reminded me so much of why I am proud to call myself a Democrat; because most of the things Clinton passed I would support them if it was happening today. Doing a blog on President Clinton was definitely a plus for me.
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