Bill Clinton

Quick facts

• Full name: William Jefferson Clinton
• Born: August 19, 1946, Hope, Arkansas
• Role: 42nd President of the United States (1993-2001)
• Earlier offices: Arkansas Attorney General; Governor of Arkansas; Chairman, Democratic Leadership Council
• Political brand: “New Democrat” / “Third Way” triangulation — positioning between the traditional left and right
• Signature policies as president: NAFTA (1993), welfare reform / PRWORA (1996), repeal of Glass-Steagall via Gramm-Leach-Bliley (1999)

Key positions

Biography

William Jefferson Clinton grew up in Hope and Hot Springs, Arkansas, in modest circumstances. He was elected Arkansas attorney general at 30 and became the nation’s youngest governor at 32 in 1978. He lost his 1980 reelection bid after raising car-tag fees tenfold and mishandling a rebellion by Cuban refugees at Fort Chaffee, then spent 1981 touring the state to apologize before voters restored him to office in 1982. That defeat became the formative experience of his career: a survival instinct and a willingness to compromise liberal positions to hold power. As DLC chairman from 1989, he positioned himself as leader of the “New Democrats,” distilling the council’s philosophy into the slogan “opportunity, responsibility, community.”

Clinton’s path to the presidency ran through Wall Street as much as through Arkansas. In 1991, Goldman Sachs executive Ken Brody brought him to a small Manhattan dinner of roughly 15 bankers and media executives, including Goldman Sachs co-chairman Robert Rubin. Rubin would go on to direct Clinton’s National Economic Council and then serve as Treasury Secretary (1995-1999), succeeded by his protégé Larry Summers (1999-2001). Across his career, Clinton drew at least $69 million from financial-sector employees and PACs, and helped his broader political network pull in more than $1 billion from corporate donors (per OpenSecrets, July 2016, and Washington Post reporting).

As president, Clinton governed through what advisor Dick Morris called “triangulation,” adopting Republican economic frames while keeping Democratic social rhetoric — captured in his 1996 State of the Union declaration that “the era of big government is over.” He signed NAFTA on December 8, 1993, promising it would “create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone.” On August 22, 1996, he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, replacing AFDC with TANF, imposing a five-year lifetime benefit limit and work requirements, and ending welfare as a federally guaranteed entitlement — over the objection of several of his own cabinet members.

In November 1999 he signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, repealing the Depression-era Glass-Steagall separation of commercial and investment banking, declaring “the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate.” By then the wall was already crumbling: the Federal Reserve had granted Citigroup a temporary waiver in September 1998 to accommodate its April 1998 roughly $70 billion merger with Travelers, a deal that violated the existing law. Clinton’s Treasury team also moved, in 1998, to block CFTC chair Brooksley Born’s effort to regulate derivatives. Clinton later argued the Glass-Steagall repeal “had nothing to do with” the 2008 financial crisis — a claim disputed by many economists.

Sources

1. Encyclopedia of Arkansas — Bill Clinton (1946–) — https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/bill-clinton-95/
2. Washington Post — “Lessons of Humbling Loss Guide Clinton’s Journey” (July 14, 1992) — https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/07/14/lessons-of-humbling-loss-guide-clintons-journey/
3. OpenSecrets — “Clinton and Wall Street: What’s the deal, really?” (July 2016) — https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/clinton-and-wall-street-whats-the-deal-really/
4. The Nation — “How the Third Way Made Neoliberal Politics Seem Inevitable” — https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/third-way-dlc-bill-clinton-tony-blair-1990s-politics/
5. Miller Center — Remarks on the Signing of NAFTA (December 8, 1993) — https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-8-1993-remarks-signing-nafta
6. Demos — “Owning the Consequences: Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall” — https://www.demos.org/blog/owning-consequences-clinton-and-repeal-glass-steagall