geeky
Clinton later said that he remembered his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who was violent towards his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton, Jr.. He said that he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.
Bill Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School. He played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. In
1963 he was part of a group of "Boys Nation" who visited the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy.
With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Foreign Service in 1968. In 1964 and 1965 he won elections for class president. From 1964 to 1967 he served as an intern and then a clerk in the office of Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright.
Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, but he did not receive a degree there. He played Rugby at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam event.
Clinton received Vietnam War draft deferments during 1968 and 1969 while he was in England. He made arrangements to join the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program at the University of Arkansas, but later decided not to join the ROTC. He further stated that because he opposed the war, he would not volunteer to serve in uniform, but would subject himself to the draft, and would serve if selected. Clinton registered for the draft and received a high number. Clinton's political opponents accused him of using Senator Fulbright's influence to avoid military service.
After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973. In 1971 he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham at the school library. She was a year ahead of him. They began dating and were married on October 11, 1975. Their only child, Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980. Clinton and his then fiancee moved to Texas take a job on Senator George McGovern's presidential campaign in 1972.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. In 1974 he ran for the House of Representatives, running in a conservative district against an incumbent Republican. Bolstered by the anti-Republican sentiment resulting from the Watergate scandal, Clinton narrowly lost the contest. In 1976 Clinton successfully ran for Arkansas Attorney General.
In 1978 Clinton ran for, and was elected Governor of Arkansas. He became the youngest governor in the country at 32 and was often called the "Boy Governor". He worked on educational reform and on improving Arkansas's roads. His wife Hillary led a successful committee on urban health care reform. However, his term included an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens' anger over the escape of Cuban refugees (from the Mariel boatlift) detained in Fort Chaffee in 1980. He lost his bid for re-election and became, in his own words, "the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history."
Clinton joined the Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings. In 1982, he was again elected governor and this time he held the office for ten years. He worked to transform Arkansas's economy and to improve the state's educational system. He removed the sales tax for senior citizens from medications and increased the home property-tax exemption. He became an advocate of welfare reform, smaller government, and other policies not supported by traditional liberal Democrats. He argued that in light of President Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1984, the Democratic Party needed to adopt a more centrist political stance in order to succeed at the national level. Clinton delivered the Democratic response to President Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address and served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987.
Clinton made reform of the Arkansas education system a top priority. Chaired by Clinton's wife Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Arkansas Education Standards Committee helped to transform Arkansas's education system from the worst in the United States to one of the best. Proposed reforms included more spending for schools (supported by a sales-tax increase), better opportunities for gifted children, vocational education, higher teachers' salaries, more course variety, and compulsory teacher competency exams. The reforms passed in September 1983 after Clinton called a special legislative session.
The Clintons' personal and business affairs included transactions that became the basis of the Whitewater controversy investigation. After extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were made against the Clintons related to their years in Arkansas.
During Clinton's term, Arkansas performed its first executions since 1964. The death penalty had been re-enacted in the state on March 23, 1973. As Governor, he oversaw four executions: one by electric chair and three by lethal injection.
In 1987, there was media speculation Clinton would seek the Democratic nomination for president, but he endorsed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis instead. He gave the nationally televised opening night address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, but his speech was criticized for being too long and poorly delivered.
Clinton decided to seek his party's nomination for President in 1992, in a campaign in which many popular Democrats believed that incumbent President George H. W. Bush was too popular to be defeated. In the first Democratic primary contest, the Iowa caucus, Clinton finished a distant third to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. During the campaign for the New Hampshire primary, reports of an extramarital affair Clinton was alleged to have with Gennifer Flowers surfaced. As Clinton fell far behind former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas in the New Hampshire polls, following Super Bowl XXVI, Clinton and his wife Hillary went on 60 Minutes to rebuff the charges. Their television appearance improved Clinton's chances and he finished second to Tsongas in the New Hampshire primary. News outlets labeled him "The Comeback Kid" for earning the second-place finish.
From there Clinton's campaign gained momentum. He won the Florida and Texas primaries and many of the Southern primaries on Super Tuesday to gain a sizable delegate lead. However, former California Governor Jerry Brown was scoring victories and Clinton had not won a significant contest outside his native South. Clinton targeted New York, where he scored a resounding victory, shedding his image as a regional candidate. He secured the Democratic Party nomination, and finished with a victory in Jerry Brown's home state of California.
Because Bush's approval ratings were over 80 percent during the Gulf War, he was described as unbeatable. However, when Bush compromised with Democrats to try to lower Federal deficits, he reneged on his promise not to raise taxes, hurting his approval rating. Clinton repeatedly condemned Bush for failing to keep this promise. By election time, the economy was souring and Bush saw his approval rating plummet to just slightly over 40 percent. With the end of the Cold War, Bush was unable to campaign on his greatest strength. Bush lost support as third party candidate Ross Perot drew some of his supporters. Clinton and his running mate, Al Gore, toured the country during the final weeks of the campaign, shoring up support by criticizing Bush for his ineffective response to the failing economy, painting him as out of touch and running on the slogan "it's the economy stupid" while pledging a "new beginning".
Clinton won the 1992 presidential election with 43.0 percent of the vote against George H. W. Bush, who received 37.4 percent of the vote, and billionaire populist Ross Perot, who ran as an independent and captured 18.9 percent of the vote. Clinton received 370 electoral votes to 168 for Bush and none for Perot. Clinton's election ended twelve years of Republican rule of the White House and it gave Democrats full control of the United States Congress, the first time one party controlled both the executive and legislative branches since Democrats held the 95th United States Congress during the Jimmy Carter presidency.