Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001). He oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion. In 1998 Clinton became the second U.S. president to be impeached; he was acquitted by the Senate in 1999.

Bill Clinton’s father was a traveling salesman who died before his son was born. His widow, Virginia Dell Blythe, married Roger Clinton, and her son eventually took his stepfather’s name. Bill Clinton developed political aspirations at an early age; they were solidified (by his own account) in 1963, when he met Pres. John F. Kennedy.

Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton, who served as a U.S. senator (2001–09) and as secretary of state (2009–13) in the administration of Pres. Barack Obama and was the first woman presidential nominee of a major party in the United States. They have one daughter, Chelsea, and three grandchildren.

Bill Clinton taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law. He served as attorney general and then governor of Arkansas, and he became the U.S. president in 1993. After his presidency, Clinton remained active in politics and was a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. He is the board chair of the Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1964 and graduated in 1968 with a degree in international affairs. That year he went to the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and he graduated from Yale University Law School in 1973.

An assessment of Bill Clinton’s legacy as U.S. president should take into account the effects of his administration’s domestic and foreign policy as well as his impeachment and subsequent acquittal, among other factors. Brief summaries of Clinton’s accomplishments are available at ProCon.org.