President Bill Clinton example essay topic

On August 19, 1946, William Jefferson blithe IV was born in the small town of Hope, Arkansas. William never had the opportunity to meet his father who was a traveling salesman. William's mother was still mourning the loss of her beloved husband who died only three months earlier in a tragic car accident. "As a small child, Bill lived with his mother, Virginia Cassidy Blythe, and her parents in Hope, Arkansas" (Maran iss, 1995). When Bill was a year old, his mother moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to study nursing. While his mother was away, Bill was being raised by his grandparents.

Four years later, in hopes of a better life, Virginia remarried to Roger Clinton. Roger turned out to be an alcoholic, which lead him to become violent towards Bill and his mother Virginia. At age 14, young Bill had enough of the abuse. He finally stood up to his stepfather. After gaining the respect of his father figure, Bill decided to take the last name of Clinton. Clinton's high school years were just as all teenagers wished for.

Clinton was a popular guy with lots of friends and even then he had a drive to be successful in life. Clinton's passion for playing saxophone led him to consider a life as a professional musician. However, after having the opportunity to meet President John F. Kennedy at the White House Rose Garden during his senior year in high school, Clinton's previous musician dreams came to a halting stop. After graduated from High School, he knew that the only way he would accomplish all his goals would be to attend college. Clinton did understand that attending college would be expensive, but he also knew that it would be well worth the expense. Clinton's hard work in school, combined with his music ability, earned him many academic and music scholarships.

With the assistants of those scholarships and loans from the government, Clinton decided to attend Georgetown University located in Washington, D.C. He decided to attend Georgetown University because the school had an excellent Foreign Service program and also because it was located in the nation's capital. Clinton earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in International Affairs and worked as an intern in the office of Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. After graduating from Georgetown University, Clinton continued his education by attending Oxford University in England and Yale University. "Clinton won a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford in England, and he spent two years in Oxford's graduate program" (Tyrrell, 1996). After graduating from Oxford University, Clinton attended Yale University where he studied Law. While there, Clinton kept his concentration in government by campaigning for Senator Candidates in Connecticut.

While at Yale, Clinton also met Hillary Rodham, whom he would later marry on October 11, 1975. When Clinton graduated from Yale University in 1973, he returned to Arkansas to teach at the University of Arkansas Law School. In 1974, while teaching his first year at the University of Arkansas, Clinton decided it was time to enter his first political race. His target was winning a seat in the United States House of Representatives. It was not going to be easy to win the campaign because the current incumbent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, was extremely popular and considered unbeatable. Nevertheless, Clinton defeated three Democratic candidates to become the parties' official nominee to run against Hammerschmidt.

Clinton ran an energetic campaign but was still defeated. Hammerschmidt won the race by getting 52 percent of the votes. Clinton was devastated after being defeated in 1974 for Congress Campaign for Arkansas' 3rd district. However, the power of his devastation was no match for Clinton's determination. Three years after his defeat to Hammerschmidt, Clinton decided to run for Governor of Arkansas when Governor David Pryor decided to run for a spot in the U.S. Senate. When all was said and done, Clinton won easily, receiving 63 percent of the vote against Republican candidate, Lynn Lowe.

When Clinton took office in January 1979 at age 32, he was one of the youngest governors in the nation's history. "Bill Clinton took his first oath of office as governor on January 10, 1979, in the packed House chamber of the Capitol" (Allen, 1992 pg. 54). Although things were looking up at this time, Clinton failed to be re-elected for a second term. In the 1982 campaign, Clinton worked hard to convince voters that he was well aware of his previous mistakes and was more mature. Clinton buckled down and become governor once more in January of 1983. Clinton easily went on to win re-election three more times.

In the middle of all this political excitement, Clinton was falling deeply in love. While attending Yale, Clinton met Hillary Rodham and by the time 1975 rolled around, he was certain that she was the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Bill and Hillary were engaged and married shortly after his decision. Hillary even established her own very successful law practice in Little Rock, Arkansas. Five years after they were married, Hillary became pregnant and they were blessed with their only daughter, Chelsea. After being governor of Arkansas for the past ten years of his life, he began to become impatient.

Clinton had bigger things on his agenda, and he was eager to get started. Clinton was ready to make his high school dream a reality. Clinton announced his intention to seek the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination. In his campaign's outline, a booklet titled "A plan for America's Future", Clinton boldly declared that the future of the nation is in serious jeopardy and that he has suggestions, answers, and solutions to the problems which we face (Moore, 1992 a, p. 217). In the booklet, Clinton declares: I am running for President with a specific plan for economic change, a plan to jump-start our economy in the short-term and a new long-term strategy to turn our country's economy around and restore the American Dream for all (Moore, 1992 b, p. 218). While Clinton was governor, he was constantly coming up with new ideas, goals, and campaign tactics, just waiting for this moment to put them to use.

Clinton didn't waste a minute to start gaining popularity. Clinton possessed excellent campaigning skills. He had the ability to sharply identify issues in his favor. As most everyone does, Clinton had the tendency to give in to public opinion instead of trying to shape it. For example, during his 1992 presidential campaign, he revealed that he wore boxers, not briefs. Although the comment was beside the point, these types of remarks were the possible reasons that made him an appealing, down-to-earth president.

Shortly there after, Clinton was inaugurated as President of the United States in January 1993, after defeating George Bush senior. At 46, he was the youngest U.S. president since John F Kennedy was elected. He won the presidency with 43% of the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide. It goes to show that all of Clinton's hard work and dedication paid off. One of the first things that Clinton was faced was dealing with the economic state of the country. Clinton inherited the largest federal budget deficit ever.

He then took that debt and turned it right around. Clinton was able to gain back $230 billion. One of Clinton's biggest goals while being President was to balance the budget. He worked long and hard at it and he also realized that it was going to be a long-term goal. Clinton realized that in order to get the nation back on track, taxes were going to have to be increased and there would have to be many spending cuts in order to achieve the goal at hand. Not only did Clinton inherit the largest budget deficit ever, he was also looking at the lowest unemployment rate in forty years.

He also was dealing with the most rapid growth in real wages for more than 20 years, and the biggest drop in welfare rolls ever seen. Understanding what he was faced with, Clinton worked extremely hard to tackle each one of these issues to the best of his ability. Another one of Clinton's top priorities was a new health reform. He was criticized that his proposal would be too expensive. Critics believed that his proposal would lead to government interference in the healthcare system.

Clinton soon found out that what he thought would be one of his best presidential accomplishments was turn down. Every President that has ever been in office has had particular accomplishments that set them aside from the rest. In this case, Clinton's long lasting legacy will be the economic boom that occurred under him. After his inauguration, the reforms began. The economy expanded by 50%. Also, the unemployment rate to 4% because the economy had created around 15 million job opportunities.

The stock market was also growing at a fast pace, creating thousands of millionaires among stockholders. Although there were a lot of positive things happening, not everything was well. Under Clinton the U.S. had the highest rate of inequality of any industrialized country. In many people's eyes, Clinton was unwilling to do much to combat the inequality figures. Some of the policies he embraced were designed to reallocate money to working families.

But others, such as welfare reform, meant that even less government support was likely for poor people at the bottom of the income distribution. In the beginning of Clinton's first term, he was experiencing difficulties regarding foreign policy. Issues concerning Bosnia, Somalia, the former Soviet Union, Haiti, Cuba, North Korea, and Iraq seemed difficult. His lack of experience involving foreign affairs showed when he appeared powerless when it came to establish a reliable U.S. position on foreign politics.

Although Clinton lacked foreign policy experience, he learned on the job and soon became one of the best presidents in dealing with foreign affairs. Clinton had visited more countries in his term then any other previous president. In 1996, President Bill Clinton went up for re-election campaigning against Republican Senator Robert Dole and Independent Ross Perot. After everything was said and done, Clinton eventually came out victorious while receiving 49% of the popular vote. Clinton's first major task on his agenda of his second term was to reach an agreement with congress on how to achieve a balanced budget.

His other goals were still the same as his last term. In 1994, the Clinton's seemed to be in some type of scandal. It had to do with an investment that happened in 1978. Bill and Hillary partnered up with a couple of their good friends James and Susan McDougal, who owned a savings and loans company, invested in 220 acres of riverfront land in Arkansas. They were planning to sell the acres individually but plans didn't turn out as well as they all planned. The expenses grew too much and the partnership ended in 1992.

It was believe that the Clinton family lost an estimated $40,000. The government was suspicious in why the company went bankrupt and to ease their minds, they appointed Kenneth W. Starr to head the investigation. As it turned out, the McDougal's were investing in imaginary people to give loans to. After all the loan documents were done, the McDougal's would keep the loan money and use it on their real estate development projects. The trials were held in 1996, and the McDougal's were found guilty of committing fraud and sentenced to do prison time. There was proof discovered regarding the fraudulent loans, but there was nothing that proved the Clintons involvement.

The mysterious vanishing and rediscovery of billing records showed the degree of Hillary Clinton's legal work which she did for McDougal's savings and loan. Missing and under subpoena for two years, the documents turned up in January 1996 in the Clintons' private quarters at the White House. President Clinton testified on videotape about one of the loans but was not accused of wrongdoing. The Clintons came through allegation after allegation with their credibility shaken but not destroyed.

As it turned out, Clinton survived the Whitewater scandal, but now it was time for him to face the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Monica worked as a White House intern in the summer of 1995. While she was interning there, Bill and Monica allegedly had an affair that lasted about a year. In 1996, Monica was transferred to the Defense Department. While Monica was working there, she became really good friends with Linda Tripp, whom she opened up to about the affair with Clinton. Monica had confessed to Tripp that in late 1995, she had an ongoing sexual relationship with President Clinton (Cohen, 2000, p. 26).

Tripp recorded Monica's story and later gave it to special investigator Kenneth Star. Before it was all over, Clinton had lied to the grand jury about the affair he had with the intern. Clinton found himself at his Senate impeachment trial on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Fortunately for Clinton, it takes a 2/3 vote of the Senate to impeach, and only around half were in favor of it. Clinton was acquitted on the charges but was ordered to pay over $90,000 for giving false testimony by the U.S. District Court Judge.

Controversy followed Clinton throughout his presidency and even after he was out of office. His last minute pardon of fugitive Marc Rich was not welcomed by many. Till this day, Clinton remains in demand as a speaker and Democratic fund raiser. In 2001, Clinton opened his office in Harlem in New York City. People will always remember Bill Clinton, for what reason, however, might be different. Some might remember him as a wonderful president who helped our country pull through the millennium unscathed.

Others might remember him for being involved with numerous scandals. Which ever it is, he will always be known as this country 42nd President.

Bibliography

Allen, C., Portis, J. (1992).
Bill Clinton: The Comeback Kid. New Jersey: Carol Cohen, Daniel. (2000).
The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton. Connecticut: Twenty First CenturyMaraniss, David. (1996).
First in his Class: The Biography of Bill Clinton. New York: Simon & Schuster Moore, Jim. (1992).
Clinton: Young Man in a Hurry. Texas: Summit Tyrrell, Emmett. (1996).