Bill Clintons Time Line Essay Research Paper

Bill Clintons Time Line Essay, Research Paper

In announcing his intention to seek the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton called for a jobs plan to lift the country out of its economic recession, tax cuts for the middle class, and a form of national health insurance. During the campaign, Clinton was pursued by questions about his character. He was attacked by some for evading military service and appearing to cover it up.

Nevertheless, he won enough delegates to assure his swift nomination at the 1992 Democratic convention. For his VICE-PRESIDENTIAL running mate, Clinton chose 44-year-old Senator Albert (Al) Gore of Tennessee.

Capitalizing on the poor state of the nation’s economy, Clinton won 370 ELECTORAL votes to 168 for his Republican opponent, President George BUSH. The entry into the campaign of a strong independent candidate, H. Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, made it a three-way race. No candidate won a majority of the popular vote, but Clinton won a plurality of 43 percent, compared to 38 percent for Bush and 19 percent for Perot. It was only the second time in 28 years that a Democrat had won the presidency.

Clinton’s Presidency – First Term

Domestic Affairs: Soon after taking office, Clinton called for nearly $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts. Although Republicans and some conservative Democrats opposed his plans to raise taxes, Congress finally gave the new president much of what he had asked for. Clinton also won congressional approval for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico.

However, one of Clinton’s top priorities–health reform–met with stiff opposition. Critics complained that his proposal would cost too much and lead to government interference in the health care system. Clinton had to abandon the idea.

Meanwhile, Clinton devoted considerable time to dealing with allegations of misconduct prior to his election as president. One controversy stemmed from investments that he and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had made in the Whitewater Development Corporation, an Arkansas real estate development firm. The other concerned charges of sexual harassment made by a former Arkansas government employee, Paula Jones. These issues contributed to the Democratic Party’s defeat in the 1994 midterm elections and helped the Republicans gain control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

But the efforts of congressional Republicans to balance the budget while cutting back spending and reducing taxes led to a shutdown of the federal government. This angered the American people, many of whom sided with President Clinton, who had opposed the Republican moves. Clinton emerged as the victor in this struggle, and that success paved the way for his re-election in 1996.

Foreign Affaris: In international matters, Clinton helped bring about an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) concerning self-rule for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And in the Balkans, he sent 20,000 American troops to serve as part of an international peacekeeping force.

Second Term

In the 1996 elections, Clinton won 49 percent of the popular vote and 379 electoral votes. His opponents were the Republican candidate, former U.S. senator Robert (Bob) Dole of Kansas, and independent candidate H. Ross Perot.

First Year: 1997. On the domestic front, the president’s first major accomplishment of his second term was to reach an agreement with the Republican Congress on how to achieve a balanced budget. Despite tax cuts worth $95 billion, the balance was to be achieved by trimming $263 billion from federal expenditures, including $122 billion from Social Security over a five-year period.

Meanwhile, in addition to the Whitewater investigation and the Paula Jones case, Clinton and Vice President Gore were accused of questionable fund-raising activities for the 1996 campaign. Clinton insisted that they had acted “within the letter of the law” and called for campaign finance reform.

In foreign affairs, the president persuaded Russian president Boris N. Yeltsin to accept the expansion of NATO by admitting three former Soviet Bloc countries as members.

Second Year: 1998. At the start of the year, President Clinton set out to build on his previous accomplishments in the White House by supporting the Social Security system, aiding education, and reforming health care. But even before he could outline his goals in his State of the Union message, his plans were disrupted by the latest and most serious scandal to confront his presidency. This controversy sprang from charges that he had had an improper relationship with a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and then tried to cover up the relationship. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who had been investigating the Whitewater case, began looking into whether Clinton had committed perjury by denying the affair with Lewinsky in a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones case, and whether he had tried to get Lewinsky to lie in her own sworn statement in the Jones lawsuit.

At first Clinton denied the charges, and his supporters accused Starr, a conservative Republican, of seeking to embarrass the president, a Democrat. The public continued to give Clinton high ratings in the polls. But then Lewinsky confirmed the affair in testi