William J. Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton, the young President from Hope, Arkansas, succeeded where no other Democrat had since Franklin Roosevelt: he was reelected to a second term. Clinton also defied his critics by surviving an array of personal scandals, turning the greatest fiscal deficit in American history into a surplus, effectively using American force to stop the murderous "ethnic cleansing" wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and presiding over the greatest level of economic prosperity since the early 1960s. He also endured unrelenting personal attacks from the right-wing of the Republican Party, the loss of Congress to the Republicans for the first time in forty years, and a humiliating but unsuccessful impeachment trial by the U.S. Senate. He fashioned himself as a "New Democrat" and has frequently been referred to as the "Comeback Kid." Few Presidents have both raised more questions about the standing of the presidency and simultaneously presided over a longer period of sustained prosperity.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1993
Legacy
Clinton won the presidency in a three-way race against the incumbent President Bush and the Independent candidate, Texas businessman Ross Perot, by campaigning on a message of change.
Foreign affairs dominated Clinton’s presidency just as they had for President Bush. Clinton successfully negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which eliminated trade barriers and created the world’s largest free trade zone. In 1994 Clinton helped to obtain peace in Haiti by sending 20,000 troops to reinstate its ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide had become Haiti’s first freely elected leader in 1990, but was ousted only eight months later. The following year Clinton sent U.S. troops to lead a NATO attack against Serbian forces that were engaged in ethnic cleansing and also bombed Iraq when Saddam Hussein prevented UN weapons inspections. Clinton also met multiple times with the leaders of Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in an effort to bring a lasting peace to the Middle East, but no formal agreements were realized.
All Presidents
1. George Washington
2. John Adams
3. Thomas Jefferson
4. James Madison
5. James Monroe
6. John Quincy Adams
7. Andrew Jackson
8. Martin Van Buren
9. William Henry Harrison
10. John Tyler
11. James Knox Polk
12. Zachary Taylor
13. Millard Fillmore
14. Franklin Pierce
15. James Buchanan
16. Abraham Lincoln
17. Andrew Johnson
18. Ulysses S. Grant
19. Rutherford B. Hayes
20. James Abram Garfield
21. Chester A. Arthur
22. Grover Cleveland (First Term)
23. Benjamin Harrison
24. Grover Cleveland (Second Term)
25. William McKinley
26. Theodore Roosevelt
27. William Howard Taft
28. Woodrow Wilson
29. Warren G. Harding
30. Calvin Coolidge
31. Herbert Clark Hoover
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt
33. Harry S Truman
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower
35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
36. Lyndon B. Johnson
37. Richard M. Nixon
38. Gerald R. Ford
39. James Earl Carter
40. Ronald Reagan
41. George H. W. Bush
42. William J. Clinton
43. George W. Bush
44. Barack Obama
45. Donald Trump (First Term)
46. Joe Biden
47. Donald Trump (Second Term)
