On that trip, Clinton met and shook hands with President John F. Clinton describes the moment as having a profound impact on him and his political aspirations.
Clinton began his collegiate education at Georgetown University in and graduated with a degree in International Affairs at Georgetown University in In , a young woman named Hillary Rodham boldly strolled up to Clinton and introduced herself. The two started dating and they both graduated in Clinton convinced Rodham to move to Fayetteville in , and Rodham joined Clinton as faculty at the law school.
In , Clinton embarked on his first campaign for public office and entered the congressional race against John Paul Hammerschmidt, an extremely popular Republican incumbent. Hammerschmidt had dominated every congressional race for over twenty years. Despite being only 28 years old and a newcomer to the 3rd District, Clinton won the primary election and only narrowly lost to Hammerschmidt, 48 to 52 percent.
Clinton came the closest to beating Hammerschmidt of any Democrat in 23 years. In June , Clinton took Rodham to the airport and on the way, they passed a small brick house for sale near the university.
Rodham remarked that the house was pretty. I bought it. In , Clinton decided to run for Attorney General. He easily defeated his Democratic primary opponents and did not have a Republican contender in the general election.
Jimmy Carter, the Democratic presidential nominee, invited Clinton to chair his campaign in Arkansas. School Principal Johnnie Mae Mackey—another strong woman in Clinton's life—recruited staff committed to producing leaders who thought of personal success in terms of public service.
It was under her mentoring that Clinton was sent to Washington, D. While there, the seventeen-year-old Clinton was captured in a historic photograph shaking hands with his political idol, President John F. Kennedy, in the White House Rose Garden.
That July handshake later symbolized the continuity between the Kennedy s and the Clinton s. Ever since he was child, Clinton's mother had told him that he would some day be President of the United States.
The Kennedy handshake left Clinton determined to fulfill her prediction. Virginia Clinton lived to see her son become President, dying in of cancer. An international affairs major, he managed to cover his expenses through scholarships and by working part-time jobs.
At this Catholic-sponsored, well-heeled institution, the student body clearly looked upon Clinton as an outsider from backwoods Arkansas. Although a clique of students running the newspaper discouraged Clinton's efforts to contribute to the school, his energy, dashing good looks, and personal charm pushed him to the top in student government.
He won the presidency of his freshman and sophomore classes. In his junior year, Clinton ran for president of the student council, but lost in a stunning defeat. In attempting to please everybody, Clinton had miscalculated.
He looked too political to his peers, and they elected his lesser-known opponent. Beginning in his junior year, Clinton worked as a clerk for the U. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
At that time, the powerful committee was headed by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, a leading critic of U. The experience greatly shaped Clinton's perspective as he came to believe, as did Fulbright, that the United States had no moral or strategic reason for being in Vietnam. Just prior to his graduation from Georgetown, he won a prized Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University in England for two years.
However, he faced being drafted for the Vietnam War due to a change in federal policy that eliminated almost all college deferments.
His local draft board in Arkansas, however, allowed him to sail for England. While in England, Clinton received his draft notice. Instead he returned to Oxford, although the evidence is unclear as to whether this was done with the approval of his ROTC contacts. Back in England, Clinton evidently remained conflicted about his decision to avoid the draft, torn between his moral convictions that the war was wrong and his sense of kinship with former classmates who were serving and dying in Vietnam.
In the fall of , he chose to re-subject himself to the draft—doing so, however, at a time when Nixon administration policy seemed to suggest that future call-ups of combat troops would significantly decline. In any event, Clinton's luck held when his birth date in the lottery drew the high number of , distant enough to ensure that he would never be called.
Clinton then wrote a letter to the director of the Arkansas ROTC program thanking him for "saving" him from the draft, explaining that he still loved his country while nevertheless despising the war. In England, Clinton participated in numerous antiwar demonstrations, and both his antiwar activities and his ROTC letter resurfaced years later during his bid for the presidency in Although Clinton remained in the Rhodes Scholar program, making many contacts with students who would later become part of his administration, his Oxford coursework never added up to a degree.
In , Clinton entered Yale Law School, earning his degree in and meeting his future wife, Hillary Rodham, whom he married in During this period he also worked on the U. Senate campaign of Joe Duffy in Connecticut, and toward the end of his studies he managed the Texas campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern who lost Texas in the Nixon landslide.
After graduation, Clinton moved back to Arkansas with a job teaching law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Almost as soon as he arrived home, Clinton threw himself into politics, running for a seat in the U. Although Clinton lost this race, it was the closest election for Hammerschmidt in his twenty-six years in Congress, marking Clinton as a rising political star. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives but not the Senate, which meant that he remained in office through both of his two terms.
In December , the Republican-dominated House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for perjury and obstruction of justice for his actions in the Lewinsky affair. However, in February , following a five-week trial, the Senate voted to acquit Clinton on both articles of impeachment.
In the years since his presidency concluded in , Clinton has remained active on the global stage. Despite facing an enormous backlash from the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton rejuvenated his image and remained popular among Democratic supporters.
Clinton himself offered his own preliminary evaluation of his presidency in his memoirs: "I judge my presidency primarily in terms of its impact on people's lives. That is how I kept score: all the millions of people with new jobs, new homes and college aid; the kids with health insurance and after-school programs; the people who left welfare for work; the families helped by the family leave law; the people living in safer neighborhoods — all those people have stories, and they're better ones now.
Through the William J. Clinton Foundation founded in and later renamed the Clinton Foundation , he created the Clinton Climate Initiative, dedicated to supporting research to combat climate change; the Clinton Global Initiative, which connects entrepreneurs and world leaders to foster new ideas and action; and the Haiti Fund, dedicated to rebuilding Haiti in the aftermath of its devastating earthquake.
According to Clinton, the foundation's mission is "to alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies and protect the environment, by fostering partnerships among governments, businesses, nongovernmental organizations and private citizens.
Clinton has continued to be a force behind his foundation, which has overseen the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations, governments and individuals to global-minded charitable works. Having published his first book, Between Hope and History , prior to the election, the former president in followed with a best-selling autobiography, My Life.
Clinton has since published three more books, Giving , Back to Work and The President Is Missing , a political thriller co-authored with James Patterson. During a promotional tour for The President Is Missing , Clinton raised eyebrows with his analysis of special counsel Robert Mueller 's investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump and Russian agents, saying that a Democratic president in an identical situation would already be facing impeachment.
Clinton played an active role in Hillary's failed presidential bid and, afterward, in Barack Obama 's successful presidential campaign. In his speech at the convention, Clinton said that he wanted Obama to be the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party, calling him a president who's "cool on the outside, but who burns for America on the inside.
In November , Clinton received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to civilians. The former president has made other special appearances including administering the oath of office in to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and eulogizing boxing legend Muhammad Ali in Having previously served as secretary of state under the Obama administration, Hillary eventually launched a new campaign to be elected commander-in-chief.
In July , she became the official Democratic nominee for the American presidency, becoming the first woman in the U. During the Democratic National Convention, Clinton, who had previously campaigned on behalf of his wife, spoke at length about the history of their dating and marriage, her civil rights work, her work on behalf of children, her commitment to diversity and the disenfranchised, her professional dedication as a public servant and her overall tenacity.
After one of the most contentious presidential races in U. Trump's stunning victory defied pre-election polls and was considered a resounding rejection of establishment politics by blue-collar and working-class Americans. The day following the election, Clinton, daughter Chelsea and her husband, along with vice presidential running mate Tim Kaine and his wife, stood behind Hillary as she delivered an emotional concession speech.
We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will.
And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. In Clinton met a bright young Wellesley College graduate named Hillary Rodham, who shared his political ambitions. The pair graduated from Yale in and married two years later in They had their only child, a daughter named Chelsea , in His second grandchild, Aidan Clinton Mezvinsky, was born on June 18, , and his third grandchild, Jasper Clinton Mezvinsky, was born on July 22, When Clinton was president, he was fitted for a hearing aid, had a potentially cancerous skin lesion removed from his back and went on medication to lower his cholesterol.
In , Clinton underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery and, six months later, had scar tissue removed from his lungs. He subsequently adopted a vegan diet, which helped him lose a significant amount of weight. However, Clinton and his doctors deny he has any health issues and say he is in good condition.
We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. President Bill Clinton. When Hillary Clinton was elected to the U. Senate in , she became the first American first lady to win a public office seat.
In , she became the first woman in U.
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