The Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century

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William Jefferson Clinton

Early Life and Career

August 19, 1946 - January 20, 1993

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, III, on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years old, his mother wed Roger Clinton, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, he took the family name. He excelled as a student and as a saxophone player and once considered becoming a professional musician. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service. Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas. He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas’s Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born. Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until he defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

1946: Clinton lives with maternal grandparents James Eldridge and Edith Grisham Cassidy while his mother attends nursing school in Shreveport and New Orleans, Louisiana.
August 19, 1946: William Jefferson Blythe III is born in Hope, Arkansas, to William J. and Virginia Cassidy Blythe. William Blythe had been killed in an auto accident four months before Bill Clinton’s birth.
June 1950: Virginia Cassidy marries Roger Clinton, owner of a Buick dealership in Hope.
1953: The Clinton family moves to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
1961: At age 15, Bill takes the name of his step father.
July 24, 1962: Clinton meets President John F. Kennedy while attending an American Legion Boy’s Nation event in Washington, D.C.
May 29, 1964: Clinton graduates from Hot Springs High School.
June 8, 1968: Clinton graduates from Georgetown University.
October 1968: Clinton attends Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship.
June 1972: Clinton works in the Texas campaign of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.
1973: Clinton graduates from Yale Law School.
September 1973: Clinton teaches law at the University of Arkansas.
1974: Clinton loses the congressional race against incumbent Republican Representative Paul Hammerschmidt.
October 11, 1975: Clinton marries Hillary Rodham from Park Ridge, Illinois.
1976: Clinton is elected Attorney General of Arkansas.
November 7, 1978: Clinton is elected Governor of Arkansas at age 32.
February 27, 1980: Daughter Chelsea Victoria Clinton is born in Little Rock.
November 4, 1980: Clinton loses bid for re-election and begins practicing law.
November 2, 1982: Clinton is re-elected Governor of Arkansas.
1983: Clinton receives legislative approval for a comprehensive and nationally recognized education reform plan.
1984: Clinton is re-elected to third term as Governor.
1986: Clitnon is re-elected to fourth term as Governor.
1986: Clinton serves as Chairman of the National Governors’ Association.
1986: Clinton serves as Chairman of the Education Commission of States.
1987: Clinton works with the White House and Congress on behalf of the nation’s governors to restructure the nation’s welfare system.
1989: As Co-chair of the President’s Education Summit, Clinton helps draft National Education Goals with the nation’s governors.
1990: Clinton is re-elected to fifth term as Governor.
June 1991: Clinton is ranked by fellow governors as the nation’s Most Effective Governor.
October 2, 1991: Clinton announces candidacy for President of the United States.
July 16, 1992: Clinton is nominated for President at the Democratic National Convention in New York City.
November 3, 1992: Clinton is elected forty-second President of the United States.

Presidency

January 20, 1993 - January 20, 2001

During the Clinton administration, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well-being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country’s history, dropping crime rates in many places and reduced welfare rolls. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. After the failure in his second year of a huge program of health care reform, Clinton shifted emphasis, declaring, “The era of big government is over.” He sought legislation to upgrade education, to protect jobs of parents who must care for sick children, to restrict handgun sales and to strengthen environmental rules. In the world, he successfully dispatched peacekeeping forces to war-torn Bosnia and bombed Iraq when Saddam Hussein stopped United Nations inspections for evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. He became a global proponent for an expanded NATO, a more open international trade and a worldwide campaign against drug trafficking. He drew huge crowds when he traveled through South America, Europe, Russia, Africa and China, advocating U.S. style freedom. In 1998, as a result of issues surrounding personal indiscretions with a young woman serving as a White House intern, Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was tried in the Senate and found not guilty of the charges brought against him. He apologized to the nation for his actions and continued to have unprecedented popular approval ratings for his job as president.

January 20, 1993: Clinton takes the oath of office, becoming the first president born after World War II.
January 25, 1993: Clinton names First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to head a task force on national health care reform. Attempts to institute these reforms are abandoned in September 1994.
February 26, 1993: A tower of the World Trade Center in New York is damaged by a terrorist bomb.
April 19, 1993: The Branch Davidian Compound near Waco, Texas, is destroyed by fire following a 51-day standoff between federal authorities and followers of religious cult leader David Koresh.
June 26, 1993: A missile attack is launched against Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George Bush.
July 19, 1993: Clinton announces so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces so long as they are discreet about their sexual orientation and do not engage in homosexual conduct.
September 13, 1993: Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sign accords providing for initial steps toward Palestinian self-rule at a White House ceremony hosted by Clinton.
September 21, 1993: Clinton signs the bill creating the National Service Program, which provides $1.5 billion over 3 years to enable students to repay federal educational aid through community service.
October 3, 1993: Clinton orders military reinforcements to Somalia after an attack on United Nations peace-keeping forces leaves 18 U.S. servicemen dead. U.S. forces are withdrawn from Somalia over the next 6 months.
November 30, 1993: Clinton signs into law the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named for James Brady, President Reagan’s former press secretary who was critically wounded in an assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981.
December 8, 1993: Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), lowering tariffs and other trade restrictions between the U.S., Canada and Mexico over 15 years.
January 6, 1994: Clinton’s mother Virginia Kelley dies of breast cancer.
February 3, 1994: Clinton announces the lifting of the nineteen-year trade embargo against Vietnam, stating that the South East Asian nation is cooperating with the U.S. in helping to locate over 2,000 Americans still listed as missing since the Vietnam War. The two countries resume free trade in July 2000.
April 1994: Civil war between the Hutu and Tutsis erupts in Rwanda. The conflict destabilized the region and results in one of the worst cases of genocide in history.
May 6, 1994: Former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones files a federal lawsuit, alleging sexual harassment by then-governor Clinton in May 1991.
July 26, 1994: Congress begins hearings into allegations that the Clintons had illegally profited from investments with a failed Arkansas savings and loan in a real estate deal called Whitewater. An independent council is later appointed to investigate charges against the Clintons.
September 15, 1994: Clinton orders the military leaders of Haiti to step down in favor of ousted President Jean-Batiste Aristide or face a U.S. Invasion.
October 26, 1994: Clinton attends a ceremony at the Jordanian seaport of Aqaba to witness the signing of agreements between Israel and Jordan.
November 8, 1994: Midterm elections give Republicans control of both houses of Congress after four decades of Democratic control.
April 19, 1995: A truck bomb destroys the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people. Clinton visits the scene a few days later.
July 11, 1995: Clinton normalizes relations between the United States and Vietnam after 20 years.
November 21, 1995: The Presidents of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia initial documents and 11 annexes relating to the Dayton peace agreement brokered by the United States at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Peace Accords were signed on December 14, 1995, in Paris, ending years of conflict between Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia.
December 16, 1995: A confrontation between the White House and the Republican congressional leadership over the budget results in a partial shutdown of the federal government.
August 22, 1996: Clinton signs bill providing for major reforms to the nation’s welfare system, limiting lifetime welfare benefits to five years and giving more control to states.
September 24, 1996: Clinton addresses the United Nations General Assembly. He signs the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
November 5, 1996: Clinton wins a second term, defeating Republican candidate Robert Dole.
May 2, 1997: The White House and Congress reach an agreement to balance the federal budget by 2002.
January 17, 1998: Clinton denies allegations that he had a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
March 23, 1998: Clinton begins his 11-day tour of six sub-Saharan African nations to strengthen international ties to the emerging market and to show support for democracy in Africa.
April 10, 1998: Political leaders on both side of Northern Ireland’s sectarian conflict agree on Good Friday to a tenative settlement brokered by United States mediators.
August 17, 1998: Clinton provides videotaped testimony to a federal grand jury about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
August 20, 1998: Clinton orders the launch of cruise missiles at targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in a response to what he calls an “imminent” terrorist threat from a network run by Osama bin Laden. The strikes follow attacks at United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earlier in the month.
September 30, 1998: Clinton announces that the 1998 fiscal year resulted in the first budget surplus in nearly 30 years.
October 23, 1998: President Clinton, Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sign the Wye River Memorandum authorizing withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the occupied West Bank.
November 6, 1998: Speaker Newt Gingrich resigns from the House after Democrats gain seats in the midterm election.
December 19, 1998: The House of Representatives votes to impeach Clinton on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury.
February 12, 1999: The United States Senate acquits Clinton of all impeachment charges.
March 24, 1999: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launches an intense air campaign against Yugoslavia after the Serbs refuse to end their military operations against the ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo.
April 20, 1999: Clinton is informed of two armed students going on a shooting spree in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others before taking their own lives.
September 20, 2000: Independent Counsel Robert Ray closes the six-year Whitewater investigation, clearing the Clintons of all criminal wrongdoing.
November 16, 2000: Clinton visits Vietnam for three days, the first such trip by a United States president since 1969.
December 12, 2000: The result of the 2000 presidential race between Vice President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush is decided by the Supreme Court, which, in a narrow decision, votes to halt a recount of contested ballots in Florida, giving Florida’s electoral votes and the election to Bush.

Post-Presidency

January 20, 2001 - Present

In the years since leaving the presidency, Bill Clinton in his work has stressed the theme of global interdependence. He established the William J. Clinton Foundation very early after leaving office with the intention of using it as a vehicle to help the United States and the other nations of the world to meet the challenges posed by this issue. The Clinton Foundation focused most of its efforts on the problem of health security, especially the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In recent years President Clinton has twice collaborated with former President Bush in fundraising campaigns in response to natural disasters. In January 2005, George W. Bush asked his father and Bill Clinton to head-up a relief effort in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami that caused widespread devastation. The two men crisscrossed the country and met with an enthusiastic reception in their attempt to drum up private donations. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s destructive path along the Gulf Coast, President Bush asked the two men to do what they could do to assist survivors. The result was the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, which raised millions of dollars and served as the spearhead of the recovery effort.