The 42nd American President, Bill Clinton was born on this day in 1946. The former U.S. President with birth name, William Jefferson Blythe III was born in a small town of Hope, Arkansas. His father, who was a traveling salesman, died in an automobile accident three months before he was born. Young Bill later took the last name of his stepfather, Roger Clinton. In 1993, Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States.
Bill Clinton who attended Georgetown University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford in 1968, where he bagged a degree in Law from Yale, was inspired to join politics after meeting 35th U.S President John F. Kennedy at White House as a high school student in 1963. The meeting lasted just seconds, but the brief interaction with John F. Kennedy inspired teenager Bill Clinton to a life of public service and helped lead to his own election as President 30 years later.
In 1974, Clinton lost a bid for Congress in Arkansas’ Third District. He married fellow Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham in 1975, and in 1980, their daughter Chelsea was born.
Elected Arkansas attorney general in 1976, Bill Clinton at age of 32 was elected governor in 1978 and he became the youngest governor to be elected in the United States in four decades. Though he lost his first reelection campaign in 1980, he regained the office four years later and was reelected comfortably three more times. In 1992, he won the Democratic nomination for president. In a campaign that revolved largely around economic issues, Clinton’s youth and the promise of change won over many voters, propelling him to victory over the incumbent George H.W. Bush and upstart third-party candidate Ross Perot.
Issues that arose during the first two years of his administration—including an ethics investigation into the Clintons’ involvement with the Whitewater housing development in Arkansas and a bitter debate in Congress over Clinton’s health care initiative—helped fuel a Republican takeover of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the midterm elections of 1994. Nevertheless, the improving economic climate during Clinton’s presidency resulted in a low unemployment and inflation rate and a balanced budget (even a budget surplus), and in 1996 he became the first Democratic president after Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term in office.
In 1998, scandal erupted over Clinton’s alleged involvement with a young female White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. On the basis of an investigation by independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Clinton was accused of perjury and obstruction of justice over his repeated denials of the affair; he eventually apologized to his family and to the American public for his dishonesty. He became only the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives, but was acquitted of the charges by the Senate in 1999.
Even throughout the tumult surrounding the Lewinsky affair, Clinton enjoyed high approval ratings at home. He was also popular on the world stage, confronting foreign policy challenges including war in Bosnia and Herzegovina; continuing hostility between Israelis and Palestinians; and Iraq’s refusal to comply with United Nations weapons inspections. He was praised for his peacemaking efforts in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and became the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.
After leaving the White House, Clinton remained active in global affairs and as a public speaker. He heads up the William J. Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has addressed issues such as HIV/AIDS and the environment. Meanwhile, his wife launched her own political career, winning election to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000 and running her own presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016. She served as secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama.
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