
.
.Bill
CLINTON
William Jefferson
"Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III,
August 19, 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States from
1993 to 2001.
At 46 he was the third-youngest president; only
Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering
office. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and as he
was born in the period after World War II, he is known as the
first baby boomer president. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is
currently the United States Secretary of State. She was previously
a United States Senator from New York, and also candidate for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. Both are graduates of
Yale Law School.
Clinton was described as a New
Democrat and was largely known for the Third Way philosophy of
governance that came to epitomize his two terms as president. His
policies, on issues such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement and welfare reform, have been described as centrist.
Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic
expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget
and a federal surplus, a situation similar to the Roaring
Twenties (the Coolidge administration) and the Fabulous
Fifties (the Eisenhower administration) both comparable booms
happened after each of the two world wars.
The Congressional
Budget Office reported a surplus of $236B in 2000, the last full
year of Clinton's presidency. On the heels of a failed attempt at
health care reform with a Democratic Congress, Republicans won
control of the House of Representatives for the first time in
forty years. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton was re-elected and
became the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D.
Roosevelt to win a second full term as president. Later he was
impeached for obstruction of justice, but was subsequently
acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
Clinton left office with an
approval rating at 66%, the highest end of office rating of any
president since World War II. Since then, he has been involved in
public speaking and humanitarian work. Clinton created the William
J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes
such as treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming.
In 2004, he released his
autobiography My Life, and was involved in his wife
Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign and subsequently in that of
President
Barack Obama. In 2009, he was named United Nations
Special Envoy to Haiti. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti
earthquake, Clinton teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton
Bush Haiti Fund.
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