As the 1992 presidential election approached, members of the Democratic Leadership Committee—an organization formed after the 1984 election in which Reagan defeated Mondale—pushed to move the Democratic Party away from liberal positions toward a more moderate political stance. One prominent figure in this effort was William Jefferson Clinton, four-term governor of Arkansas. Clinton, who graduated from Georgetown University, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned his law degree at Yale, entered the primary race for the Democratic nomination for president. Although he encountered accusations of extramarital affairs and avoiding service in the Vietnam War, Clinton won the nomination. To complete the ticket, he chose Tennessee Senator and Vietnam Veteran Al Gore as his running mate.

For the Republican nomination, incumbent President Bush was challenged briefly by Patrick Buchanan but ultimately received the nomination uncontested. Bush seemed to rely on the victory in the Persian Gulf in his re-election campaign, while Clinton promised economic improvements, reformed healthcare, and middle-class tax cuts. Adding interest to the presidential race was Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, who entered as an independent candidate.

At the polls, the most important issue proved to be the state of the economy, and Americans elected Clinton and Gore, who received 43 percent of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes. Bush managed 39 percent and 168 electoral votes. Ross Perot garnered no electoral votes but won 18 percent of the popular vote, the best showing for a third-party candidate since 1912.

After taking office, Clinton struggled to maintain some of his campaign promises. As the new president faced opposition, he tended to back down from his position and offer a compromise. One of the first issues he took on was lifting the ban on gays in the military. However, many members of Congress as well as military commanders strongly opposed the move, and Clinton eventually accepted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Making headway on the economy also proved challenging. In February 1992, Clinton created a program to reduce the deficit by cutting spending and increasing taxes for corporations and the wealthy. He also introduced an economic stimulus package. The deficit reduction plan narrowly passed both houses of Congress, but the economic stimulus package was brought down by Republican opposition in the Senate.

Clinton's attempt at reforming healthcare was highly controversial and even politically damaging. Healthcare reform was an important issue since nearly 35 million Americans were uninsured mostly because they could not afford it. President Clinton appointed First Lady Hillary Clinton, also a Yale Law school graduate, as the head of a taskforce charged with proposing a new healthcare plan. When the plan was revealed in October of 1993, critics argued it was too complicated and might be more costly than the nation could afford. Some of the strongest opposition came from drug companies, insurance companies, and small businesses concerned about lower revenues and increased expenses.

Controversy stirred over Clinton's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Bush administration had negotiated the agreement, which removed trade restrictions with Canada and Mexico. Clinton supported NAFTA, believing it would provide opportunities for American goods in foreign markets. Critics charged Americans would lose jobs when companies began moving their facilities to Mexico. Strong Republican support moved the agreement through the House, and the Senate approved NAFTA in November of 1993.

Clinton did make headway on a number of other domestic issues. In 1993, he appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, making her the second woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. Ginsburg helped to balance many of the conservative appointments made during previous administrations. That same year, Clinton signed the "Brady Bill," which required a five-day waiting period before buying a handgun. The bill was supported by and named for presidential aide James Brady, who suffered a bullet wound during the assassination attempt on President Reagan 12 years earlier. Clinton also oversaw the Family Medical Leave Act, which provided 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year that workers could use to manage significant family events, including birth, adoption, or illness.

President Clinton, however, faced more challenges as Republicans gained control of the House and Senate during the midterm elections of 1994. In the election, every Republican incumbent was re-elected, and the party also made gains in state legislatures and governorships.

In 1993, Clinton sent American troops on a peacekeeping mission in Somalia, a small war-torn African nation. In September, a Somali war-lord attacked U.S. forces, killing fifteen. Clinton failed to find a definitive goal for the mission, and he withdrew American forces in 1994. That same year, Clinton dispatched troops to Haiti with the goal of restoring Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Haiti had suffered a military coup that displaced the leader in 1991, resulting in thousands of Haitian refugees trying to sail to the United States to seek asylum. The U.S. military successfully returned Aristide to power in 1994. In 1995, Clinton called on the American military to join NATO forces on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, one of the new states resulting from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The timeline for the mission became indefinite as the need for NATO forces persisted, so peacekeeping forces remained in the area.

Violence, also found its way inside the U.S. borders. In 1993, a bomb exploded in the parking garage of New York City's World Trade Center, killing six and wounding over 1,000. An investigation soon showed that members of an extremist Muslim group had committed the assault in response to U.S. aid to Israel. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and three others were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the attack. Yousef, who was suspected of being the mastermind behind the attack, expressed disappointment that the explosion had not destroyed either of the towers and that more people had not been killed.

The nation was stunned on April 19, 1995, when an explosion ripped through a federal office building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring more than 600 others. Investigators arrested Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols and soon learned that the bombing had been carried out in retaliation for two events that had occurred years earlier. The first event took place in 1992 in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Randy Weaver, a white supremacist, had failed to report to court for weapons charges. Federal agents surrounded his home and in the ensuing crossfire, Weaver's wife and son and a U.S. Marshall were killed. The second event occurred in Waco, Texas, exactly two years prior to the Oklahoma City bombing. A standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians, a fundamentalist sect led by David Koresh, ended in tragedy. Federal agents served a warrant on the sect, gunfire broke out, and four agents and two Branch Davidians were killed. This fight led to a 51-day standoff that ended when agents attacked the compound with tear gas, and the building caught fire killing approximately 70 sect members. McVeigh and Nichols were tried and convicted in federal court. McVeigh was executed in 2001, and Nichols was sentenced to life in prison.

After a first term filled with domestic and international challenges, President Clinton faced re-election in 1996. Although the Republicans had regained the House and the Senate, Clinton had earned back some esteem as a leader. In 1995, government offices had to shutdown when President Clinton and the Republican-dominated Congress became deadlocked over the budget. The lack of an approved budget left many federally funded offices with no operating money, and employees had to be sent home as a result. The shut down created a backlash against the Republicans. Additionally, the economy had entered an upswing, boosting people's satisfaction with the Clinton administration.

In the race, President Clinton faced Senate majority leader and World War II veteran Bob Dole of Kansas. Dole chose fellow Republican primary candidate Jack Kemp as his running mate. During the campaign, Dole promised to shrink the deficit and cut taxes, while Clinton promised to decrease the deficit by a smaller amount so that he could maintain funding for many social programs. Clinton was re-elected, receiving 379 electoral votes to Dole's 159.

Much of President Clinton's second term in office was mired by scandal. Even before Clinton ran for the presidency, he was beset with accusations of wrongdoing in a failed real estate development named Whitewater. In 1998 a much larger scandal ensued when a judge required Clinton to testify in a lawsuit filed by Paula Jones, who alleged that Clinton had sexually harassed her while she was a state employee in Arkansas. Jones' lawyers called Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, to testify, hoping to use her testimony to show a pattern of sexual misconduct by Clinton. Both Lewinsky and Clinton denied having an affair when questioned as part of the lawsuit.

When allegations of the Lewinsky and Clinton affair broke in January of 1998, a media frenzy ensued. For eight months, Clinton strongly denied the accusations, saying in one news conference, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." However, Lewinsky had confided details of her relationship with the president to former White House employee Linda Tripp, who taped many of their conversations. When Tripp turned the tapes over to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr, originally appointed to investigate the Whitewater mess, Lewinsky confessed her relationship with the president. In September, Starr charged President Clinton with lying under oath and asking Lewinsky to lie as well. These charges fell within the impeachable acts listed in the Constitution.

The Republican-led House of Representatives quickly began the impeachment process, and in December 1998 they impeached President Clinton for committing perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton became just the second president in U.S. history to be impeached; the first was Andrew Johnson, who was impeached in 1868 for violating the Tenure of Office Act when he dismissed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The Senate trial began in January of 1999 with Chief Justice William Rehnquist presiding. In February, Clinton was found not guilty of both charges. The senators voted 50-50 on the obstruction of justice charge and 45-55 on the perjury charge, both falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to force the president from office.

The scandal and the impeachment trial created a backlash against the Republicans in Congress. While many Americans did not approve of Clinton's behavior, they did approve of his performance as president. Clinton's job approval ratings remained high throughout the scandal and impeachment trial. In the 1998 congressional elections, the Republican's lost control of the House.

While the Clinton administration was weathering the scandals at home, old problems re-emerged abroad. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein, who remained in power after the Gulf War, stopped cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors, and in 1998 the chief inspector reported that Hussein was not complying with U.N. rules. To encourage compliance, Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered air strikes at military targets in Iraq.

In 1999, problems in the former Yugoslavia reignited as Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic waged war on ethnic Albanians in Serbia. NATO forces, including Americans, bombed Serbia to stop the "ethnic cleansing" campaigns. However, the attempt failed and NATO peacekeeping forces eventually took up positions within Kosovo.

Amidst the scandal at home and problems abroad, Clinton's second presidential term was coming to an end, and Vice President Al Gore became the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Copyright 2006 The Regents of the University of California and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education