William Jefferson Clinton was born in the year 1946 and was the 42nd US president between 1993 and 2001. Before he became the president, he was Arkansas’s 40th Governor from the years between 1979 and 1981 and the 40th governor of the state from the years 1983 and 1992 1 . Serving as the governor of Arkansas, Clinton was reported to have overhauled the education system of the state. Before serving as the governor, Clinton also was Arkansas’s Attorney General between 1977 and 1979 2 . He was a Democratic Party’s member and most of his policies precisely mirrored centrist “Third Way” political values. He became the US president in the year 1992 after defeating George Bush. President Clinton has gone into records to have served in the longest era ever of peace and economic growth in American history. The paper will critically analyse the achievements of Clinton that makes one of the best presidents in the American history.
Evidence of Clinton as the best president
Based on the new political scientist's survey carried out by Brandon at Houston University and Justin at Boise State University, Clinton was placed among the top great US presidents and was ranked at position eight as the best president ever. Clinton rose as one of the greatest modern greatest presidents 3 . Clinton got impeached in his second term, however; he enjoyed the favorable approval rating of approximately 66 percent in 2001. Studies have pointed out that his popularity significantly improved since left office as the president and has further paid off with the political scientist. In a poll with 162 participants of the American Political Science Association Clinton was ranked as the eight greatest presidents. In 2010 survey, Clinton was ranked at position 13 and in 2011 was the 19th greatest president based on the survey carried out. Bill Clinton emerged as one of the highest ranking modern president ahead of the 11th President Ronald Reagan, 12th President Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy the 14th President and the 17th President Bush 4 .
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Job approval rating of Clinton significantly varied between 40 and 50 during his first term in office. Throughout the second term, jobs overall ratings were ranging from 50 to 60. In the 1998 and 1999 impeachment procedures, his ratings were reported to have reached its highest point. By the time he was leaving the office, his job rating was at 68% highest among departing presidents throughout the contemporary period. His last quarter in-house Gallup poll approval rating was approximately 61 percent. In the survey 47 of all the respondents stated that they were Clinton supporters. By the time, that Clinton was leaving the office polls by Gallup, USA Today and even CNN established that approximately 47 percent of all the Americans stated that they would miss him while about 55 percent believed that Clinton would make significant contribution hence he has to remain active in the public affairs 5 . In the year 2006, CNN conducted a poll that compared job performance of Clinton to that of George W. Bush and the results established that most of the participants believed that Clinton performed much better than Bush. Based on the 2007 and 2011 Gallup polls, the results confirmed that about 13 percent of all Americans consider Clinton as the greatest president of the US. In the year 2014, a Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed that about 18 percent of the respondents thought Clinton as the best president since WWII. The poll results thus made Clinton the third most famous presidents among the post-war p US presidents. In 2015, there was another poll conducted by the Washington Post and it was established that Clinton was ranked at position eight with an overall rating of about 70 percent.
Clinton's Accomplishments the Made him the best President
When it comes to ranking the best president of the US, the following are the core performance measures that are often taken into consideration: deficit reduction, disposable income growth, stock market increase, GDP growth, unemployment rate decline, inflation decline and even employment growth. Based on these measures, the following are major successes that were brought during Clinton’s presidency period that made him one of the best and greatest presidents the US has ever had in history:
Economically, the US was reported to have got the largest budget deficit in the history of America of about $290 billion in the year 1992 when Clinton entered the office to have a budget surplus of approximately $127 billion upon leaving the office in the year 2001. His period as the president experienced a continuous stretch of economic prosperity. He attained a GDP growth of +3.6% annual growths which rose from the 1993’s 7.5 trillion to approximately $9.9 trillion around 2000 6 . The country achieved +3.5% average annual growth of the disposable income growth from about $5.5 trillion in 1993 to $7.3 trillion in 2000 7 . Further, he created about 22.5 million new jobs which substantially led to the drop in unemployment from 7.5% when he entered the office as the president to about 4.0% when he left the office. The tech boom of the 1990s in the U.S. created thousands of jobs not only here but also in India. The poverty levels in the US further dropped significantly to about 11.8 percent in the year 1999 which was reported to be the lowest since 1979. The US economy boasts of the longest growth period in American record under his presidency after he signed the balanced budget Act in 1997. Signing the NAFTA trade agreement into law was also one of his key economic achievements. The country also had one of the highest home ownership rates in history 8 .
In the health sector, Clinton also made a significant impact where he increased the funding manifold for HIV/AIDS related programs. He increased the funding on all the AIDS-related programs was increased by about 150 percent in his period, and later he became a leader in the development of the international initiatives in the search for vaccines. Further, he signed the 1996’s Newborn and Mother Health Protection Act which enabled mothers in the US to remain in hospitals for about 48 to 96 hours after delivery rather than being sent home within a period of 24 hours 9 . He also signed the 1993’s Family and Medical Leave Act into law.
In the foreign policy, Bill Clinton further impacted the peace process in the Northern Ireland that was established to have culminated around 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Clinton assisted in getting the former Soviet nation to stop working on nuclear arsenals and enhance their overall nuclear material’s control 10 . Clinton carefully coordinated with NATO which was a military alliance between the North America and Europe in bombing Serbia with the aim of ending Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing campaign. Therefore, he helped in halting the genocide in Serbia by sending troops and air strikes. Further, Clinton had sent about 20,000 troops to restore peace throughout the area which was a successful operation with no American casualty. He almost pulled off a Jimmy Carter at Camp David by trying to reach a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, but he did not succeed to close the deal.
Focusing on defense, Clinton was reported to have presided over the US military’s modernization that led to the enhanced preparedness and overall effectiveness. Clinton’s management majorly targeted the exactitude weapons in addition to the utilisation of the Global Positioning System machinery. Clinton’s focus substantially resulted in lower rates of causalities, advanced and sophisticated communication and even reduced levels of collateral damage. In addition to this, Clinton also increased the benefits and pay for the entire military personnel 11 .
In the education sector, Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 program was reported to have efficiently distributed approximately two billion dollars in the years around 1994 and 1999 with the aim of setting standardized principles in all the schools throughout the US. In his 1994 IASA, Clinton obtained massive support particularly from both the Democrats and Republicans. Further both business and education also strongly supported his reform act 12 . The IASA stated that the accountability and standards should be equal to all the students who were economically deprived as was the case with other students.
Environmentally, Clinton established a pro-environmental policy that entailed preservation of approximately 4.6 million acres within national monument, energy efficiency standards, improved Safe Drinking Water Act and enacted tough emission standards. As a result of this, about 44 million citizens were able to access clean air standard throughout his period as the presidency. In the year 1999, Environmental Protection Agency together with Justice Department put on trial 241 environmental crimes which were about twice that were prosecuted in 1992 before he took over the office 13 .
Focusing on the social policy, Bill Clinton was successful in fulfilling his campaign promise that focused on reforming the welfare through a creation of effective regulations. The policy demanded a recipient to work within a period of two years after obtaining the benefits and limit the overall time that majority of the individuals could spend on welfare to approximately five years. One of the primary proof that the adopted welfare reforms were flourishing, about ten years after signing of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare rolls was reported to have declined from about 12.2 million to approximately 4.5 million 14 .
Clinton further went into the history of American to have attained the lowest crime rates during his presidency, and he also introduced the Brady Bill which mandated 5-day waiting period before a firearm purchase. He signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a law to add 100,000 police officers and increase funding for crime prevention activities 15 .
Clinton’s failures
Despite being the best president in the American history, Clinton had his failures. The first failure is the Battle of Mogadishu (1993). The U.S. mission in Somalia was withdrawn as a result of this battle and hence was a major foreign policy failure. The fear of a repeat of Somalia led to the biggest disaster of Clinton administration - his inaction in Rwanda which resulted in a massive genocide of Tutsi's killing almost a million people. The US also used its influence at the UN to discourage a strong UN response to the Rwandan massacre. For a long time, the U.S. did not even recognize the genocide. It was only acknowledged when Clinton visited Rwanda and issued an apology 16 .
Secondly, the repeal of Glass–Steagall Act also turned out catastrophic in the long run. This Act prevented commercial banks to trade securities and limited their affiliations with securities firms. The repeal of this act in 1999 resulted in all big banks engaging in predatory lending building up to the financial crisis of 2008.
Lastly, the Hillarycare healthcare reform which he tried to push through the Congress headed by Hillary Clinton failed infamously. The Plan lacked support even from his fellow Democrats. Irrespective of these failures, overall President Clinton is considered a successful President with the highest approval ratings at the end of office since WWII.
From the above analysis, Clinton became the president at age 46 making him the youngest after President John F. Kennedy. He is among the best presidents based on overall job performance during his period. During his time, 22.5 jobs were created causing a drop in unemployment from 7.5% when he took the presidency to about 4.0% by the time he left office. In his period budget surplus was experienced between 1998 and 2000 particularly in his three last years in office. He had one of the best Vice-presidents in recent history - Al Gore who was also the biggest advocate of recognizing climate change and addressing environmental issues. The majority of Clinton’s proponents contended that during his leadership, the US had experienced the lowest levels of inflation and unemployment rates in the US history. In addition to this, the country achieved the lowest record of crimes in history, a massive budget surplus in addition to increased home ownership. He was impeached for the obstruction of justice in a lawsuit against him and perjury before a grand jury both cases involved Monica Lewinsky who was one of the White House employees. By the time he left office, Clinton had obtained the highest job approval ratings of all the presidents of US since WWII.
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1 Levy, Peter B. Encyclopedia of the Clinton presidency . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
2 Gambino, Megan. 2012. "How Would You Rank The Greatest Presidents?". Smithsonian .
3 Cohan, Peter. 2017. "Forbes Welcome". Forbes.Com .
4 Gambino, Megan. 2012. "How Would You Rank The Greatest Presidents?". Smithsonian .
5 Cohan, Peter. 2017. "Forbes Welcome". Forbes.Com .
6 Cohan, Peter. 2017. "Forbes Welcome". Forbes.Com .
7 Gambino, Megan. 2012. "How Would You Rank The Greatest Presidents?". Smithsonian .
8 Levy, Peter B. Encyclopedia of the Clinton presidency . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
9 Fisher, Patrick. "Clinton's greatest legislative achievement? The success of the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Bill." White House Studies 1, no. 4 (2001): 479-496.
10 Cohan, Peter. 2017. "Forbes Welcome". Forbes.Com .
11 Levy, Peter B. Encyclopedia of the Clinton presidency . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002.
12 Cliff Pinckard. 2015). "Bill Clinton Cracks Top 10 In Rankings Of Presidents; Obama Sits 18Th (Poll)". Cleveland.Com .
13 Posner, Richard A. An affair of state: The investigation, impeachment, and trial of President \Clinton . Harvard University Press, 2009.
14 Cliff Pinckard. 2015). "Bill Clinton Cracks Top 10 In Rankings Of Presidents; Obama Sits 18Th (Poll)". Cleveland.Com .
15 Fisher, Patrick. "Clinton's greatest legislative achievement? The success of the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Bill." White House Studies 1, no. 4 (2001): 479-496.
16 Gambino, Megan. 2012. "How Would You Rank The Greatest Presidents?". Smithsonian .
