United States

Despite these early missteps, the Clinton administration had numerous policy and personnel successes. Although Perot had spoken vividly of the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he said would produce a “giant sucking sound” as American jobs were lost to Mexico, Congress passed the measure and Clinton signed it into law, thereby creating a generally successful free-trade zone between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. During Clinton’s first term, Congress enacted with Clinton’s support a deficit reduction package to reverse the spiraling debt that had been accrued during the 1980s and ’90s, and he signed some 30 major bills related to women and family issues, including the Family and Medical Leave Act and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Clinton also changed the face of the federal government, appointing women and minorities to significant posts throughout his administration, including Janet Reno as the first woman attorney general, Donna Shalala as secretary of Health and Human Services, Joycelyn Elders as surgeon general, Madeleine Albright as the first woman secretary of state, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a justice on the Supreme Court.

With Clinton’s popularity sagging after the health care debacle, the 1994 elections resulted in the opposition Republican Party winning a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. This historic victory was viewed by many—especially the House Republicans led by Speaker Newt Gingrich—as the voters’ repudiation of the Clinton presidency. A chastened Clinton subsequently accommodated some of the Republican proposals—offering a more aggressive deficit reduction plan and a massive overhaul of the nation’s welfare system—while opposing Republican efforts to slow the growth of government spending on popular programs such as Medicare. Ultimately the uncompromising and confrontational behaviour of the congressional Republicans produced the opposite of what they intended, and after a budget impasse between the Republicans and Clinton in 1995 and 1996—which forced two partial government shutdowns, including one for 22 days (the longest closure of government operations to date)—Clinton won considerable public support for his more moderate approach.

Clinton’s foreign policy ventures included a successful effort in 1994 to reinstate Haitian Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted by a military coup in 1991; a commitment of U.S. forces to a peacekeeping initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and a leading role in the ongoing initiatives to bring a permanent resolution to the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis. In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who was later assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to territorial concessions to the Palestinians) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat to Washington to sign a historic agreement that granted limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

During the Clinton administration the United States remained a target for international terrorists with bomb attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City (1993), on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), and on the U.S. Navy in Yemen (2000). The domestic front, though, was the site of unexpected antigovernment violence when on April 19, 1995, an American, Timothy McVeigh, detonated a bomb in a terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 and injuring more than 500.

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., in the wake of the terrorist bombing on April 19, 1995.David Glass/AP

Although scandal was never far from the White House—a fellow Arkansan who had been part of the administration committed suicide; there were rumours of financial irregularities that had occurred while Clinton was governor of Arkansas; opponents charged that the first lady engineered the firing of staff in the White House travel office (“Travelgate”); former associates were indicted and convicted of crimes; and rumours of sexual impropriety persisted—the economy made a slow but steady recovery after 1991, marked by dramatic gains in the stock market in the mid-1990s. Buoyed by the economic growth, Clinton was easily reelected in 1996, capturing 49 percent of the popular vote to 41 percent for Republican challenger Bob Dole and 8 percent for Perot. In the electoral college Clinton won 379 votes to Dole’s 159.