Bill Clinton
1946 -
Bill Clinton, 42nd
president of the United States (1993- ) and the first
president born after World War II (1939-1945). Clinton, who
was 46 when he took office, was the third youngest person to
become president, after Theodore Roosevelt and John F.
Kennedy. After a difficult campaign, Clinton defeated
incumbent president George Bush and independent candidate H.
Ross Perot in the November 1992 election. In 1996 he was
elected to a second term, defeating the Republican candidate
Robert Dole.
A
moderate Democrat and longtime governor of Arkansas, Clinton
was the first Democrat in 12 years to hold the presidency, and
the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected
to a second term. He promised to change not only the direction
the country had taken under the two previous Republican
presidents, but also the policies of his own Democratic Party.
Clinton’s first presidential election victory came in part
because Americans were gravely concerned about the nation’s
economy, which had been depressed for much of George Bush’s
presidency. Clinton worked on legislation to increase foreign
trade and to address social issues, such as health care and
education.
Early
Life
Childhood
Clinton
was born on August 19, 1946, as William Jefferson Blythe IV in
Hope, Arkansas. He never knew his father, William Jefferson
Blythe III, a traveling salesman who died in a car accident
several months before Bill was born. After Bill became
president, he and his mother learned that his father had been
married at least three other times and that Bill had a half
brother and half sister whom he had never met. Bill took the
name William Jefferson Clinton after his mother remarried.
As
a small child, Bill lived with his mother, Virginia Cassidy
Blythe, and her parents in Hope, Arkansas. When Bill—called
Billy—was a year old, his mother went to New Orleans,
Louisiana, to study to be a nurse-anesthetist, and for the
next two years he was reared mainly by his maternal
grandparents.
When
Bill was four years old, his mother married Roger Clinton,
later the owner of a car dealership in Hope. Two years later,
the family moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Life at home for
Bill and his mother was not always easy. Roger was an
alcoholic and a gambler, often losing the family’s money,
including Virginia’s earnings as an anesthetist. He cursed
and sometimes beat his wife and verbally abused Bill and his
younger brother, Roger Jr., who was born in 1956. Bill was
especially close to his mother and sometimes stood up to his
stepfather to protect her. As a college student, Bill
reconciled with his stepfather, who died of cancer in 1967.
Schooling
Clinton
attended a Roman Catholic school for two years in Hot Springs
before attending public schools. He was a popular student and
maintained top grades. He held several student offices, played
the tenor saxophone, and was a member of the all-state band.
In 1963, after his junior year in high school, Clinton was
elected as one of two delegates from Arkansas to Boys
Nation—a government study program for young people sponsored
by the American Legion, a veterans organization—in
Washington, D.C. There he debated for civil rights legislation
and met President John Fitzgerald Kennedy at a ceremony in the
White House Rose Garden.
College
Clinton
graduated from high school in 1964 and enrolled at Georgetown
University in Washington, D.C., where he majored in
international affairs. He was elected president of his class
during both his freshman and sophomore years. As a junior and
senior he earned school expenses by working as an intern for
the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which
was chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright, an Arkansas
Democrat. Clinton greatly admired Fulbright, who was a leading
critic of United States involvement in the Vietnam War
(1959-1975). Clinton was also deeply moved by black
Americans’ fight for equality in the 1960s. In April 1968, a
few weeks before Clinton graduated, the assassination of civil
rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., set off rioting in
several American cities, including Washington. Clinton
volunteered to work with the Red Cross and took clothing and
food to people whose homes had been burned.
During
his senior year, Clinton won a Rhodes Scholarship to the
University of Oxford in England, and he spent two years in
Oxford’s graduate program after graduating from Georgetown.
In 1970 Clinton enrolled at Yale University Law School, where
he studied for a law degree. He paid his way with a
scholarship and by working two or three jobs at the same time.
At Yale he met fellow law student Hillary Diane Rodham from
the Chicago area (see Clinton, Hillary Rodham). They
began dating and in 1972 Clinton and Rodham worked in Texas
for the presidential campaign of Democrat George S. McGovern
of South Dakota. Clinton worked as a campaign coordinator for
McGovern, and Rodham helped organize a voter-registration
drive for the Democratic National Committee.
Marriage
Clinton
graduated from law school in 1973 and went to Fayetteville,
Arkansas, to teach at the University of Arkansas Law School.
Rodham worked with a congressional team investigating
Watergate, a political scandal that involved members of the
administration of President Richard M. Nixon. She joined
Clinton on the law school faculty in 1974, and they were
married on October 11, 1975. Their daughter, Chelsea Victoria
Clinton, was born on February 27, 1980.
Early
Public Career
Clinton
had worked on a number of political campaigns in the late
1960s, including those of several Arkansas Democratic
politicians and a U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut. In
1972 he had coordinated George McGovern’s presidential
campaign in Texas and Arkansas. In 1974, midway in his first
year of teaching at the University of Arkansas, Clinton
entered his first political race, campaigning for a seat in
the United States House of Representatives. The incumbent
Republican congressman, John Paul Hammerschmidt, was a popular
candidate and considered unbeatable. Clinton defeated three
candidates for the Democratic Party nomination and ran an
energetic campaign against Hammerschmidt. Hammerschmidt won
with 52 percent of the votes, although it was the closest
election of his 26 years in Congress.
Clinton’s
close race with Hammerschmidt earned him statewide attention
and helped him in his campaign for attorney general in 1976.
He defeated two Democrats for the nomination and had no
Republican opposition. Clinton took public office for the
first time in January 1977. As attorney general, he fought
rate increases by public utilities and opposed the
construction of a large coal-burning power plant. He promoted
tougher laws to protect the environment and consumers.
When
Arkansas governor David Pryor ran for the U.S. Senate in 1978,
Clinton ran for governor. He promised to improve the state’s
schools and highways and to improve economic conditions so
that more jobs would be created. At that time, the average
income of people in Arkansas ranked 49th among the 50 states.
Clinton won easily, receiving 60 percent of the votes against
four opponents in the Democratic primary election and 63
percent against the Republican candidate, Lynn Lowe, in the
general election. When he took office in January 1979 at age
32, he was one of the youngest governors in the nation’s
history.
Governor
of Arkansas
First
Term
Clinton’s
first term as governor included efforts to improve Arkansas’
economy. One of his biggest successes as governor was his
highway program, but it was politically costly. Clinton
thought good highways were a key to developing the state, and
the state’s roads were among the worst in the country. To
upgrade the highways, he asked the legislature to pass a
package of tax increases. The largest increases were on
licensing fees on automobiles and on large trucks that damaged
the highways with heavy loads. Clinton was forced to make
compromises in his plan because many businesses and the
trucking industry opposed his program. The compromise plan
passed but was unpopular because it levied more taxes on
individual car owners.
Clinton
undertook other legislative initiatives that generated
opposition. His criticism of the practice of clear-cutting
trees in national forests alienated the lumber and papermaking
companies, which were the largest employers in the state.
Physicians opposed his efforts to increase health care in
poor, rural areas. Bankers disliked Clinton’s proposal to
withhold state funds from banks that did not lend enough money
for businesses that created jobs in their communities.
Another
factor affecting the governor was the presence of Cuban
refugees in Arkansas. In 1980 Cuba temporarily removed its
exit restrictions and permitted about 120,000 people to go to
the United States. In May 1980, President Jimmy Carter
temporarily housed about 18,000 Cuban refugees at an old U.S.
Army post near Fort Smith, Arkansas. By the end of May, the
confined refugees were disgruntled with delays in their
resettlement, and some 300 escaped from the fort. On June 1
approximately 1000 Cuban refugees broke through the gate of
the post and were met in the nearby town of Barling by
approximately 500 armed townspeople. State officers subdued
the refugees, but the incident proved disastrous for Clinton,
who had previously campaigned on his friendship with Carter.
Clinton
ran for reelection in 1980 against Frank D. White, a Little
Rock businessman who had switched to the Republican Party to
run against Clinton. White received support from many of those
alienated by Clinton—including the trucking and wood
products companies, banks, utilities, and the poultry
industry. In addition, White used television advertisements
that showed rioting Cubans and claimed that the Cubans would
be released into Arkansas communities and take jobs away from
Arkansas workers. Clinton’s popularity plummeted further,
and White won the election with nearly 52 percent of the
votes.
Second
Through Fifth Terms
After
his defeat, Clinton joined a large corporate law firm in
Little Rock. Against the advice of most of his friends and
advisers, who urged him to wait before running for office
again, Clinton quickly began planning his campaign for the
next gubernatorial election, in 1982. Clinton won the
Democratic nomination, although it required a runoff election
because of the closeness of the race. In the general election,
Clinton faced White, who was running for reelection, and the
two candidates swapped bitter charges. White repeated his
accusations from the 1980 campaign, and Clinton accused White
of unfairly letting utilities raise the rates people paid for
electricity and telephone service. Clinton promised he would
make it harder for utilities to obtain rate increases. Clinton
campaigned for the votes of blacks, and he received more than
95 percent of their votes. Clinton defeated White with nearly
55 percent of the votes.
Clinton
had found lessons in his 1980 defeat about how to govern. He
learned to choose his fights carefully, not to try to change
everything at once, and to prepare people before proposing
major changes. These abilities helped Clinton continue to be
reelected in 1984, 1986, and after the gubernatorial term
changed from two years to four years, in 1990.
At
the start of his second term, Clinton decided to spend all his
energies trying to improve education, which he thought was the
state’s biggest problem. Clinton believed that the state’s
poor education system did not prepare children for good jobs
nor make Arkansas attractive to industries that offered
skilled jobs. He appointed his wife as the head of a committee
to write higher standards for Arkansas schools. She conducted
hearings in each of the state’s 75 counties, and she and
Clinton made numerous speeches across the state, saying more
should be demanded from schools and students.
In
the fall of 1983, Clinton called the legislature into a
special session to approve many changes in the school system.
Clinton won approval of most parts of his sweeping reform
program: taxes were increased to pay teachers more money,
offer more courses in the high schools, and provide college
scholarships; state money for education was distributed
differently to help the poorest schools; eighth graders were
required to pass a test of basic knowledge before going to
high school; and all school teachers and administrators also
had to take a basic knowledge test in order to keep their
jobs. The Clinton administration also adopted tough new
standards proposed by Hillary Clinton’s committee that
raised the requirements for graduation from high school and
forced high schools to offer more science, mathematics,
foreign language, art, and music classes, and to reduce the
size of kindergarten and elementary school classes. School
districts that did not meet these requirements within three
years would be merged into districts that did meet the
standards. The requirement that all teachers pass a test
angered most school teachers and generated a national debate.
But the program, and the taxes, proved popular with Arkansas
voters. During this time, the scores of Arkansas students on
college-entrance tests improved. In the early 1980s a high
percentage of Arkansas students dropped out of school before
graduating, and fewer high school graduates went to college
than in any other state. But by 1990, the dropout rate had
fallen well below the national average, and the percentage of
young people who went to college matched the national average.
Clinton
also concentrated on economic development, promoting new
businesses and job creation. He introduced an economic package
to change banking laws; provide money to start new
technology-oriented businesses; arrange loans for people to
start new businesses; and reduce the taxes of large Arkansas
companies that expanded their production and created new jobs.
The legislature approved nearly the entire package. Although
the rate at which new jobs were created in Arkansas in the
late 1980s was among the highest in the nation, most of these
jobs did not pay high wages, and the average family income
remained low.
Clinton
had difficulty trying to persuade the legislature to raise
more taxes to carry out further reforms in education. The
business groups he had once angered—the state’s largest
electric utility, the wood-products industry, trucking
companies, the poultry industry and other farm
groups—combined to block Clinton’s proposed higher taxes.
They also defeated legislation that would have imposed higher
ethical standards on public officials and lobbyists.
After
his election to a fifth term in 1990, Clinton was more
successful in getting his legislative program enacted. Based
on his overall success at the legislative session in 1991,
Clinton announced that, despite a campaign promise in 1990 to
complete a four-year term, he was free to run for president
because he had accomplished his goals for the state more
quickly than he had planned.
Clinton
had assumed national leadership roles during his years as
governor. In 1985 and 1986, he served as chairman of the
Southern Growth Policies Board, a group that planned
strategies for economic development in 12 Southern states and
Puerto Rico. He became vice chairman of the National Governors
Association in 1985 and was the organization’s chairman in
1986 and 1987. In this role he was spokesman for the
nation’s governors. In 1988 he led a movement to change the
nation’s system of providing welfare to poor people. Clinton
also headed the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of
moderate Democrats and businesspeople who work to influence
national policies, in 1990 and 1991.
The
Presidential Campaigns
Clinton
had prepared to run for president in 1988, but he backed out
at the last minute, saying the campaign and the position would
be too hard on his family, especially his eight-year-old
daughter. He was then asked to give the nominating speech—a
key role at the Democratic National Convention—for
Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.
On
October 3, 1991, Clinton announced in Little Rock that he
would run for president in the 1992 election. The presidential
campaign consisted of party primary elections and caucuses in
most states, which would select most of the delegates for each
party’s nominating convention (see Political
Convention). As the party primaries approached in early 1992,
Clinton faced five Democratic candidates: former Massachusetts
senator Paul Tsongas; former California governor Edmund
“Jerry” Brown, Jr.; Governor L. Douglas Wilder of
Virginia; Senator Robert Kerrey of Nebraska; and Senator Tom
Harkin of Iowa. Clinton became the early front-runner among
the Democratic candidates because he had raised more money
than the other candidates and had a national backing from his
connections in education and the National Governors
Association.
Clinton’s
campaign focused on domestic policy. He promised to institute
national health care, enact a tax cut for the middle class,
organize a new welfare system, institute a national service
program for college graduates, make major investments in the
nation’s infrastructure (highways, bridges, airports,
libraries, and hospitals), reduce the federal budget deficit,
and reform campaign-finance laws. Internationally, Clinton
promised to use American military power to stop the advance of
Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia. After a series of successful
primaries, Clinton won the presidential nomination at the
Democratic National Convention, held in New York City in
mid-July. Clinton picked Senator Al Gore of Tennessee as his
vice-presidential running mate.
During
the presidential campaign, Clinton ran against George Bush and
H. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent candidate. The three
candidates participated in three nationally televised debates.
Clinton blamed Bush for the downturn in the economy and
accused him of not caring about working people. In return,
Bush said Clinton would raise taxes if he became president and
that Clinton lacked foreign policy experience. Perot focused
on the country’s deficit spending and promised to balance
the budget by raising taxes and reducing government spending.
Clinton
won the election with 43 percent of the popular vote as
compared to 38 percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot.
Clinton received the votes of 33 states in the electoral
college, where each state has a number of electoral votes
depending on its population and usually gives all of them to
the candidate who received the most votes in that state. On
January 20, 1993, Clinton was sworn in as president.
In
1996 Clinton ran for reelection against Republican senator
Robert Dole. During the campaign, Clinton stressed his desire
to control the federal budget deficit and work for campaign
finance reform. At the nominating convention, held in Chicago
in August, Clinton announced more plans including additional
funding for environmental programs; a proposal for a capital
gains tax break for homeowners selling their houses; and tax
credits for college tuition and for businesses that hire
people who had been on welfare. In contrast, Dole focused on a
15 percent tax cut and attacked Clinton’s character. He also
pointed to his own World War II military record and long
career in government as examples of his service to the
country. However, Dole was unable to build sufficient support
for himself or his proposals.
In
November 1996 Clinton defeated Dole with 49.2 percent of the
popular vote, compared with Dole’s 40.8 percent. Ross Perot
ran as a candidate of the Reform Party but was not as
successful as he had been in 1992; he won only 8.5 percent of
the vote. Clinton soundly defeated Dole in the electoral
college votes, receiving 379 to Dole’s 159.
The
Clinton Administrations
In
his first term, Clinton appointed more women and minorities as
cabinet members—the heads of major departments of
government—than had any previous president. These included
Attorney General Janet Reno, the first woman to hold that
office, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, Secretary of
Commerce Ron Brown, Secretary of Health and Human Services
Donna Shalala, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Henry Cisneros. In addition, in his first two years in office,
Clinton appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court of the
United States. Stephen G. Breyer replaced Harry A. Blackmun
and Ruth Bader Ginsburg replaced Byron R. White, becoming the
second woman on the Supreme Court.
At
the beginning of his second term, Clinton reaffirmed his
commitment to appointing women to cabinet positions by
nominating Madeleine Albright as the first woman secretary of
state. In addition he worked to make his cabinet bipartisan,
appointing Republican senator William Cohen as secretary of
defense. Other second-term Clinton appointees included
Secretary of Commerce William Daley, Secretary of Labor Alexis
Herman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew
Cuomo, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, and ambassador
to the United Nations Bill Richardson.
Domestic
Issues
During
his first term, Clinton focused on the country’s internal
problems, especially the economy and health care, rather than
on foreign affairs, which had occupied Bush. With the
Democratic Party’s sizable majority in both houses of
Congress, Clinton promised in his inaugural speech “an end
to the era of deadlock and drift.” He immediately signed
orders overturning restrictions on abortions that had been put
in place during the 12 years the Republicans occupied the
White House. In little more than two weeks, he signed his
first major piece of legislation, a family leave law that
required companies with more than 50 workers to allow workers
up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to cope with family
issues such as childbirth and illness.
During
his first campaign for president, Clinton promised to lift the
ban against homosexuals serving in the United States armed
forces. He moved ahead on the plan as he took office for his
first term, but his proposal ignited protests from military
leaders and members of Congress. Clinton and supporters of the
ban eventually settled on a compromise: Homosexuals would be
allowed to serve if they did not reveal their sexual
orientation and refrained from homosexual conduct. This
compromise became known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell”
policy.
Clinton’s
budget for the 1993 and 1994 fiscal year passed by a narrow
margin in both houses, 218-216 in the House of Representatives
and 51-50 in the Senate. The package called for cutting $500
billion from the deficit over five years by reducing spending
by $255 billion and raising $241 billion in new taxes. The
federal budget declined sharply in the next two years. Clinton
delayed acting upon his campaign promise to give middle-class
families a tax cut until 1995.
One
of Clinton’s most popular campaign promises during his first
election was to guarantee health insurance for every American
for life. Clinton promised that the health-care system would
be reformed in his first year in office. He appointed his wife
to head a task force to write a bill that would guarantee
health insurance and hold down the rapidly rising cost of
health care. The task force proposed a plan under which people
would join a health-care alliance that would contract with
insurance companies and others to offer health insurance to
their members. The plan soon encountered stiff opposition from
health insurance companies and Republicans in Congress. It was
criticized as being too complicated and as giving the federal
government too large a role in medical care. The
Administration was unable to reach a compromise with
Republicans in the Senate, and health-care reform efforts
never made it through Congress.
Although
Congress did not enact Clinton’s health-care reform
proposal, it did pass a number of his programs during his
first term in office, including major trade legislation; a
national service program, which provided education money to
students who performed service for their communities; the
so-called Brady bill, which made it more difficult for
criminals to buy handguns; and an anti-crime law that imposed
the death penalty for more crimes, banned the sale of assault
weapons, and gave the states money to hire 100,000 more police
officers and start crime prevention programs.
During
his first two years in office, Clinton was the subject of
controversy. In the fall of 1993, new questions were raised
about his early business dealings in Arkansas, particularly
the investment he and his wife had made in a 1978 real-estate
venture called the Whitewater Development Corporation, a home
development in a remote part of Arkansas. Although the
Clintons lost money, their partners in the venture later
bought a tiny savings and loan association, Madison Guaranty
Savings and Loan Corporation, which went into bankruptcy in
1989 and was bailed out by the Resolution Trust Corporation, a
federal agency. Federal investigators and Republican members
of Congress questioned whether money from the savings and loan
might have helped the Clintons’ land venture and whether
Clinton had used his influence as governor to help the savings
and loan. In April 1996 Clinton gave videotaped testimony in
the bank fraud trial of his former Whitewater business
partners. Investigation of this controversy, dubbed the
Whitewater Affair, continued into Clinton’s second term. In
April 1997 the grand jury that was hearing evidence in the
Whitewater investigation was granted an extension for six
months, allowing it to continue until November 1997.
Another
controversy facing Clinton during his terms as president
involved a civil case filed by Paula Jones, a former state
employee. Jones filed suit against President Clinton in 1994,
alleging that he had violated her civil rights when he made
unwanted sexual advances towards her in 1991 while he was
governor. Clinton’s lawyers contended that the suit should
be delayed until Clinton was out of office. The case went to
the U.S. Supreme Court, which in May 1997 ruled 9 to 0 that
sitting presidents were not protected from civil lawsuits and
that the trial could proceed.
Republican
Congress
The
congressional elections of 1994 ended the Democratic Party’s
control of the Senate and House of Representatives. The
election gave the Republicans a 52-48 majority in the Senate,
and during the four months after the election, two Democratic
senators switched parties. In the House of Representatives the
Republicans also gained a majority with 230 Republican to 204
Democratic seats. Republican Newt Gingrich, committed to a
conservative agenda, became the new Speaker of the House.
The
House of Representatives became the focus of national
attention as the Republicans worked on the agenda written by
Gingrich in the “Contract with America.” The Republican
Congress and Clinton often disagreed on legislation. Two
pieces of legislation that were passed with the support of
both Congress and the president were a bill to help combat
terrorism by providing more funds to fight terrorism and
making it easier to deport foreigners suspected of terrorist
activities, and the presidential line-item veto, which allowed
the president to veto individual items on appropriations bills
but was challenged in court as being unconstitutional. But
most initiatives of the Republican Congress were stymied by
the president’s veto or threat of it.
Clinton
and the Republicans in Congress were unable to agree on a
federal budget for 1996. The debates ranged from how much to
cut spending to how to reform welfare. Clinton particularly
opposed the size of Republican cuts in Medicare, Medicaid,
educational and environmental programs, a stand that seemed to
be popular with the voters. As a result, the federal
government had two partial shutdowns because money was
unavailable for government operations. In April 1996 Clinton
and Congress agreed on a federal budget that would provide
money for government agencies until the end of the fiscal year
in October. The budget included spending cuts, especially in
art, labor, and housing programs, that the Republicans wanted,
but preserved many programs, particularly educational and
environmental ones, that Clinton wanted.
In
August 1996, a week before the Democratic nominating
convention, Clinton approved in quick succession three bills
passed by Congress earlier in the summer. The new laws
included an increase in the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15,
signed on August 20; a measure making it easier for workers to
transfer their health insurance between employers and not be
denied coverage for preexisting conditions, signed on August
21; and a controversial overhaul of the welfare program,
signed on August 22.
Clinton
signed the welfare bill, in part, to fulfill a 1992 campaign
promise to “end the welfare system as we know it.” Clinton
had vetoed two previous welfare bills, saying that the
cutbacks were too severe. The bill that he signed included
provisions such as limiting lifetime benefits to five years,
denying some welfare programs and food stamps to legal
immigrants, and requiring that adult recipients work after two
years. In addition, the federal government allowed states to
set their own guidelines and gave them some money to help pay
for the programs.
Early
in his second term, Clinton reached an agreement with Congress
on how to balance the federal budget in five years. However,
disagreements between the president and members of Congress
soon surfaced, calling into question the viability of the
original agreement.
Foreign
Affairs
Although
the United States was no longer confronted by the Cold War,
during his first term Clinton faced difficult decisions
regarding bloody conflicts in Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and
Haiti, all places where the interests of the United States
were not clear.
Conflicts
in Africa
Only
weeks before Clinton took office, President Bush had sent
American soldiers to Somalia, on the eastern coast of Africa,
where people were dying from starvation and civil war. The
soldiers were to protect food and other relief supplies for
starving people from being stolen by warring clans. When the
soldiers came under fire from armed clans, the mission became
unpopular with the American people. Clinton doubled troops in
the country to help the Americans defend themselves and to
prevent anarchy and starvation, but calls for withdrawal grew
and United States soldiers were withdrawn in March 1994. In
May 1993 the United Nations (UN) had taken command of the
peacekeeping troops in Somalia, and UN troops remained until
March 1995.
In
April 1994 a civil war erupted in Rwanda. Within a few weeks,
2 million people had fled the massacres and repression in the
country. With thousands dying of disease and starvation in
refugee camps in neighboring countries, the Clinton
administration was under pressure to provide relief. Clinton
ordered airdrops of food and supplies for refugees, and in
July he sent 200 troops to the Rwanda capital of Kigali to
operate the airport and safeguard relief supplies. These
troops were withdrawn by October 1994.
Bosnia
and Herzegovina
More
troubling for Clinton was the civil war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, a nation formed after the breakup of Yugoslavia
in southern Europe. Bosnian Serb soldiers, supported by
Serbia, were better armed than the Muslims of Bosnia and
controlled much of the countryside. They besieged cities,
including the capital of Sarajevo, and caused massive
suffering. Clinton suggested bombing Serb supply lines and
lifting an embargo that blocked military arms from reaching
the outgunned Muslims, but could not get European nations to
join him on either strategy. He eventually found himself
opposing Republicans in Congress who wanted to lift the arms
embargo without the agreement of American allies in Western
Europe. Throughout 1994 Clinton pressured Western European
countries to take strong measures against the Serbs, but in
November, after the Serbs seemed on the verge of overwhelming
the Bosnians in several strongholds, he changed course and
pushed conciliation with the Serbs to reach a settlement with
the Bosnians.
In
November 1995 the Clinton administration hosted peace talks
between the warring parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A peace
agreement was reached that left the country as a single state
made up of two separate areas with a central government. As
part of the agreement, Clinton pledged to send American
soldiers to Bosnia and Herzegovina to help NATO troops in
providing humanitarian aid and policing a zone between the two
factions.
Haiti
Clinton
had more success in Haiti, an impoverished island in the
Caribbean Sea southeast of Cuba. Military leaders had ousted
the country’s first elected president, Father Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, in September 1991. Aristide escaped to the United
States. As Clinton became president, thousands of Haitians
fled from the country’s repressive military regime to the
United States. Although Clinton had criticized Bush for
returning Haitian refugees to their country, he continued
Bush’s policy on the grounds that accepting refugees might
encourage as many as 500,000 more to flee to the United
States.
Clinton
worked out an agreement with the Haitian dictators for
Aristide to return to Haiti on October 30, 1993. The United
States and the United Nations promised to send troops to
retrain the Haitian military and police forces, but the
military rulers balked when the time arrived. When
anti-Aristide demonstrators prevented the American troops and
Canadian engineers from reaching the dock, the ship was turned
back. In 1994 Clinton gave the Haitian rulers repeated
warnings that they must step down and restore democratic rule.
Members of both parties in Congress opposed American
intervention, but Clinton sent a large military force to the
country in September 1994. At the last minute, before the
troops reached Haiti he sent a delegation led by former
President Jimmy Carter to urge the Haitian military leader,
Raoul Cédras, to step down and leave the country. Cédras
agreed to leave and surrender the government to Aristide. Cédras
and his top lieutenants left the country on October 13; on
October 15 American forces escorted Aristide into the capital,
and the democratic government was restored. In early 1995 the
UN assumed responsibility of the remaining troops in Haiti.
They were expected to remain in Haiti until June 1997,
although there was a possibility that their stay would be
extended.
The
Middle East
Clinton
also had success in the Middle East. Secret negotiations
between the nation of Israel and the Palestine Liberation
Organization led to a historic declaration of peace between
the two groups in September 1993, which had been at war for 45
years. Clinton arranged for the peace accord to be signed at
the White House. In July 1994, he helped orchestrate an
historic agreement between long-time enemies Israel and Jordan
to end their state of war. The leaders of the countries signed
their pact at the White House. In April 1995 the Clinton
Administration helped to negotiate an agreement between
Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. The agreement was intended to
protect civilians and stop fighting between the Israelis and
Hezbollah, a guerrilla organization in Lebanon that is
supplied by Syria.
Korea
Tensions
on the Korean peninsula, where the United States had fought a
war 40 years earlier, increased when North Korea, one of the
few remaining Communist dictatorships in the world, violated
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by refusing to allow
international inspectors to look at sites where nuclear waste
from two electric generating plants was dumped. The inspectors
wanted to see if North Korea was extracting plutonium, which
could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons in violation of
the treaty. Despite international concerns and repeated
warnings by Clinton, North Korea refused to allow the
inspections and raised the prospect of war with South Korea, a
United States ally. After some private diplomacy by former
president Jimmy Carter, the Clinton administration reached an
agreement with North Korea in October 1994. North Korea would
shut down the nuclear plants that produced the bomb material,
and the United States would help North Korea build plants that
generated electricity with “light-water” nuclear reactors
that are more efficient and produce waste from which
extracting material for nuclear bombs is more difficult. The
United States promised to supply fuel oil to operate electric
plants until the new plants were built, and North Korea
promised to allow inspection of the old waste sites when
construction started on the new plants.
Mexico
Another
foreign crisis occurred in early 1995, when the value of the
peso, the currency of Mexico, began to fall sharply,
threatening the collapse of the Mexican economy. Clinton said
the collapse of the Mexican economy would have a harsh effect
on the United States and submitted a plan to Congress to help
Mexico ease its financial crisis. Fearing that voters would
not favor giving money to Mexico, Congress refused to approve
the plan. Clinton then devised a $20 billion loan package for
Mexico to restore confidence of investors around the world in
the Mexican economy. In January 1997 Mexico announced that it
had completed its loan payments to the United States, three
years ahead of schedule.
In
March 1996 Clinton declared Mexico a partner with the United
States in the war against drugs. However, many members of
Congress felt that Mexico had not done enough to discourage
the production and transport of drugs. In February 1997 many
U.S. politicians again questioned Mexico’s commitment to the
war against drugs when a top Mexican antidrug official was
arrested on charges of protecting one of the country’s most
prominent drug traffickers. However, Clinton still supported
Mexico’s efforts to combat the illegal drug trade and again
declared Mexico a partner in the war against drugs. Clinton
made his first visit to Mexico in May 1997. However, issues
such as the drug controversy and the U.S. immigration policies
strained relations between the United States and Mexico.
Cuba
Following
talks with representatives of the Cuban government, in May
1995 Clinton announced a controversial decision to reverse a
30-year policy allowing Cuban refugees into the United States.
Some 20,000 refugees detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station
in Cuba were to be admitted to the United States over a period
of about three months; to prevent a mass exodus of refugees to
the United States, all future refugees would be returned to
Cuba. According to United States Attorney General Janet Reno,
Cubans seeking refugees status could apply for that status
while still in Cuba.
Although
the Cuban American National Foundation, an organization led by
Jorge Mas Canosa, an exiled political leader from Cuba,
approved of admitting the detained refugees, Mas Canosa was
critical of the new policy to return future Cuban refugees.
Cuban Americans feared that refugees would not be safe if they
were handed back to the Communist government led by Fidel
Castro. While some political figures praised the decision,
such as the governor of Florida (where refugees were
considered likely to settle), others in the Clinton
Administration voiced their opposition.
Relations
between the United States and Cuba worsened in February 1996
when Cuba shot down two civilian planes. Cuba claimed that the
planes had been in Cuban airspace. However, Clinton condemned
Cuba for shooting down unarmed civilian planes without
warning. In response, Clinton tightened sanctions against
Cuba, including the suspension of flights from the United
States to Cuba. The president hoped this suspension would hurt
Cuba’s tourist industry.
Also
in response to the incident, the U.S. Congress passed in March
1996 the Helms-Burton Act, named after its two sponsors,
Senator Jesse Helms and Representative Dan Burton. Parts of
the bill strengthened the embargo against Cuba. However,
another part, Title III, allowed American citizens whose
property was seized during and after the 1959 Cuban revolution
to file suit in U.S. courts against foreign companies that
later invested in those properties. The uproar from other
countries such as Mexico, Canada, and members of the European
Union (EU) was immediate because they believed that the United
States could not penalize them for doing business with Cuba.
In July 1996 and again in January 1997 Clinton suspended Title
III of the legislation for six months.
Trade
Legislation
Clinton
successfully lobbied for the passage of sweeping trade
legislation that lowered the barriers to trade with other
nations. He broke with many of his supporters, including labor
unions, over free-trade legislation. Many feared that cutting
tariffs (taxes on exports or imports) and import rules would
cost American jobs because people would buy products made with
cheaper labor from other countries. Clinton said the country
would be helped, not harmed. The first fight was over the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would
gradually reduce tariffs and create a free-trading block of
the North American countries—the United States, Canada, and
Mexico. Opponents, led by H. Ross Perot, said it would drive
American companies to Mexico, where they could produce goods
with cheap labor and ship them back to the United States.
Clinton persuaded Democrats to join most Republicans in voting
for the measure. The treaty was voted on in the House of
Representatives in November 1993, and passed, 234 to 200.
Clinton
also met with leaders of the Pacific Rim nations to discuss
lowering trade barriers. In November 1993 he hosted a summit
meeting in Seattle, Washington, attended by the leaders of 12
Pacific Rim nations. Clinton’s negotiators also participated
in the final round of negotiations to work out a comprehensive
world trade agreement, called the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT). Similar negotiations had been going on for
seven years under three presidents. After the general election
in 1994, Clinton summoned Congress to a rare lame-duck session
to ratify the treaty. Congress approved GATT by votes of 76-24
in the Senate and 288-146 in the House of Representatives. Two
weeks before the GATT vote, he orchestrated an agreement with
the Pacific Rim nations meeting in Indonesia to gradually
remove trade barriers and open their markets.
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"Clinton, Bill," Microsoft® Encarta® 98 Encyclopedia. © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.