Actors - Bill Clinton

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	Actors - Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19 1946) was the 42nd President of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001. Clinton served five terms as the Governor of Arkansas. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is currently the junior U.S. Senator from New York.

Generally regarded as a moderate populist, and a member of the moderate New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, he headed the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in 1990 and 1991. During his tenure as president, his domestic priorities included efforts to create a universal healthcare system, improve education, restrict handgun sales, balance the federal budget, strengthen environmental regulations, improve race relations, and protect the jobs of workers during pregnancy or medical emergency. His domestic agenda also included other themes such as reforming welfare programs, expanding the "War on Drugs", and increasing law enforcement funding. Internationally, his priorities included reducing trade barriers, preventing nuclear proliferation, and mediating the Northern Ireland peace process and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Clinton was the third-youngest president, behind Theodore Roosevelt (the youngest) and John F. Kennedy (the youngest elected). He was the first baby boomer president and the first Democratic president to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. The Clinton/Gore ticket of 1992 was the youngest in history, with a combined age of 90 (Clinton was 46, Vice Presidential nominee Al Gore was 44). Clinton was one of only two Presidents in American history to be impeached, and was acquitted by a vote of the United States Senate on February 12, 1999. In both runs for Presidency, Clinton never received a majority of the popular vote, though he ended his Presidential career with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-term approval rating of any President in the post-Eisenhower era.

Early years

Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III; in Hope, Arkansas, and raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was named after his father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., a traveling salesman who had been killed in an auto accident three months before his son was born. His mother, born Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923–1994), remarried in 1950 to Roger Clinton. Roger Clinton owned an automobile dealership business with his brother, Raymond Clinton. The young Billy, as he was called, was raised by his mother and stepfather, assuming his last name "Clinton" throughout elementary school, but not formally changing it until he was 14. Clinton grew up in a traditional, albeit blended, family; however, according to Clinton, his stepfather was a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused Clinton's mother, and sometimes Clinton's half-brother Roger, Jr..

Clinton was a member of the Masonic Youth Order of DeMolay, but never became a Freemason.

Clinton was an excellent student and a talented saxophonist. He considered dedicating his life to music, but a visit to the White House of President John F. Kennedy, following his election as a Boys Nation Senator, led him to pursue a career in politics.

Arkansas political career and education

Clinton received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.F.S.) degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., where he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega, worked for Senator J. William Fulbright, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, (University College) in England where he was selected as a Chevalier. While at Oxford he played rugby union as a lock, later in life he played for The Little Rock Rugby club in his home state of Arkansas.

After attending Oxford, Clinton obtained a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School in 1973. While at Yale, he met a classmate who would eventually be his wife, Hillary Rodham; the couple married in 1975.

In 1974, his first year as a University of Arkansas law professor, Clinton ran for the House of Representatives. The incumbent, John Paul Hammerschmidt, defeated Clinton with 52% of the vote. In 1976, Clinton was elected Attorney General of Arkansas without opposition in the general election.

In 1978, Bill Clinton was first elected governor of the state of Arkansas, the youngest to be elected governor since 1938. His first term was fraught with difficulties, including an unpopular motor vehicle tax and popular anger over the escape of Cuban prisoners (from the Mariel boatlift) detained in Fort Chafee in 1980.

In the 1980 election, Clinton was defeated in his bid for a second term by Republican challenger Frank D. White. As he once joked, he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history. But in 1982, Clinton won his old job back, and over the next decade helped Arkansas transform its economy. He became a leading figure among the New Democrats, a branch of the Democratic Party that called for welfare reform, smaller government, and other ideas that reached out to Democrats and Republicans alike.

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Actors - Bill Clinton

Early years

Arkansas political career and education

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