Coordinates	29°25′″N98°30′″N
Name	Sheila Bair
Office	Chairperson of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
President	George W. BushBarack Obama
Term start	June 26, 2006
Term end	July 8, 2011
Predecessor	Martin Gruenberg (Acting)
Successor	Martin Gruenberg (Acting)
Office2	Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets
President2	George W. Bush
Term start2	2001
Term end2	2002
Predecessor2	Richard Carnell
Successor2	Wayne Abernathy
Office3	Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading CommissionActing
President3	Bill Clinton
Term start3	August 21, 1993
Term end3	December 21, 1993
Predecessor3	William Albrecht (Acting)
Successor3	Barbara Holum (Acting)
Birth date	April 03, 1954
Birth place	Wichita, Kansas, U.S.
Party	Republican Party
Spouse	Scott Cooper
Alma mater	University of Kansas, Lawrence
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Lutheranism }}

Sheila Colleen Bair (born April 3, 1954) was the 19th Chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). She was appointed to the post for a five-year term on June 26, 2006 by George W. Bush. Bair served as a member of the FDIC Board of Directors through July 8, 2011.

Early life

Bair is a native of Independence, Kansas. Her father, Albert, was a surgeon. Her mother, Clara, was a nurse and housewife. She received her bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Kansas, and worked as a bank teller for a brief period, before receiving a J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1978. In 1981, she was recruited by Senator Bob Dole, a Republican from her state, to serve as counsel on his staff in Washington.

Career

Prior to her appointment at the FDIC, Bair was the Dean's Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy for the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a post she had held since 2002. She also served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury (2001 to 2002), Senior Vice President for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange (1995 to 2000), a Commissioner and Acting Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (1991 to 1995), and Research Director, Deputy Counsel and Counsel to Kansas Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (1981 to 1988). While an academic, Bair also served on the FDIC's Advisory Committee on Banking Policy. Bair also pursued a seat in the U.S. Congress (she lost the 1990 Republican nomination in the 5th Kansas district by 760 votes to Dick Nichols). Bair began her career in the General Counsel's office of the former US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Ms. Bair left the FDIC on July 8, 2011, when her five year term expired.

Bair has published two books for children: ''Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock'' (2006) and ''Isabel's Car Wash'' (2008). Both titles show children good examples of money management.

Bair is married to Scott P. Cooper and has two children, Preston and Colleen.

2008 financial crisis

Bair has played a key role in the management of the 2008 financial crisis. Bair was one of the first government officials to recognize the problem of subprime loans, as reported in numerous publications including ''Time'' magazine and ''The New Yorker''. Bair assumed a prominent role in the government’s response to the crisis, including bolstering public confidence and system stability that resulted in no runs on bank deposits. The FDIC did not turn to taxpayer borrowing to manage its losses and liquidity needs, instead funding them through its traditional means of assessing banks for the cost of insuring their deposits. The FDIC’s resolution practice of selling failing banks to healthier institutions, while providing credit support of future losses from failed banks’ troubled loans, saved the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund $40 billion over losses it would have incurred if the FDIC had liquidated those banks.

During the congressional effort to reform the financial regulatory system, Bair successfully pushed to establish tools to end the doctrine of “too big to fail” by extending the FDIC’s resolution process to large, systemically-important financial institutions. The FDIC was also given joint authority to order the restructuring of an entity that cannot demonstrate, though a continually-monitored “living will,” that it can be unwound.

Bair is active on the international front, and pressed the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision to adopt strong capital and leverage standards, as Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported.

In regards to a fictional TV movie about the crises, Patricia Randell played Bair in the 2011 HBO movie ''Too Big to Fail'', which was based on the popular book of the same name by ''New York Times'' journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Opinion

In 2009, Bair was named one of ''Time'' magazine’s “Time 100” most influential people. In 2008, Bair topped ''The Wall Street Journal’s'' annual 50 “Women to Watch List.” In 2008 and 2009, ''Forbes'' ranked her as the second most powerful woman in the world behind German chancellor Angela Merkel. ''Forbes'' described her FDIC office as "the last stop for capital-starved banks (and their insured customers) before going under."

Criticism

Bair has received criticism for her outspoken style and what some saw as her single-minded defense of the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund in the heat of the response to the financial meltdown in 2008. The FDIC was sued by Judicial Watch twice seeking information regarding the FDIC decision jointly with the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to “bailout” Citi. The litigants say the FDIC was refusing to provide any information on the reasons for its support of the bailouts of certain banks stemming from the Financial Crisis of 2008, and continues to do so. Judge Emmett G. Sullivan of the US District Court (DC) said the case was not moot because the litigants continued to contest whether the FDIC reasonably interpreted the scope of his request. The FDIC says the court specifically gave the FDIC the option to submit additional evidence demonstrating that its original search was complete. The FDIC says it has done so, and the issue of the scope of the search is now before the Court.

In addition to the legal proceedings, Bair has made the following remark, which spoke to the FDIC’s lack of statutory authority pre Dodd-Frank. In a response to the Inspector General for the TARP program, Bair remarked, "We were told by the New York Fed that problems would occur in the global markets if Citi were to fail. We didn't have our own information to verify this statement, so I didn't want to dispute that with them." In 2008, the FDIC did not have the legal authority to put large holding companies into its bank receivership process and little authority to access information outside of the insured institutions. Since these were holding companies, and not banks, the FDIC had to rely on information from other regulators. That is no longer the case. In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted, expressly prohibiting bank bailouts by extending the FDIC’s resolution authority to close the largest financial firms and make their shareholders and creditors bear the losses without creating a systemic disruption. Dodd-Frank also gave the FDIC new authority to directly access information from large bank holding companies which are not in sound condition.

Awards

Bair has received many awards, including the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award.

References

External links

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation website

FDIC Biography of Bair

New Yorker profile

Sheila Bair "exit interview" by Joe Nocera, NY Times, July 9, 2011.

|- |-

Category:1954 births Category:Commodity Futures Trading Commission Category:Chairs of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Category:Living people Category:New York Stock Exchange Category:People from Montgomery County, Kansas Category:University of Kansas alumni Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty

da:Sheila C. Bair de:Sheila Bair el:Σίλα Μπερ fr:Sheila Bair it:Sheila Bair no:Sheila C. Bair

Coordinates	29°25′″N98°30′″N
Name	Bill Clinton
Office	42nd President of the United States
Vicepresident	Al Gore
Term start	January 20, 1993
Term end	January 20, 2001
Predecessor	George H. W. Bush
Successor	George W. Bush
Order2	40th and 42nd Governor of Arkansas
Lieutenant2	Winston BryantJim Tucker
Term start2	January 11, 1983
Term end2	December 12, 1992
Predecessor2	Frank White
Successor2	Jim Tucker
Lieutenant3	Joe Purcell
Term start3	January 9, 1979
Term end3	January 19, 1981
Predecessor3	Joe Purcell as Acting Governor
Successor3	Frank White
Office4	50th Attorney General of Arkansas
Governor4	David PryorJoe Purcell (Acting)
Term start4	January 3, 1977
Term end4	January 9, 1979
Predecessor4	Jim Tucker
Successor4	Steve Clark
Birth name	William Jefferson Blythe III
Birth date	August 19, 1946
Birth place	Hope, Arkansas, U.S.
Party	Democratic
Spouse	Hillary Rodham (m. 1975-present)
Children	Chelsea (b. 1980)
Alma mater	Georgetown UniversityUniversity College, OxfordYale Law School
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Baptist
Signature	Signature of Bill Clinton.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
Website	Clinton Presidential Library }}

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.

Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was the Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.

Clinton was elected president in 1992, defeating incumbent president George H.W. Bush. As president, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. He signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. He implemented Don't ask, don't tell, a controversial intermediate step to full gay military integration. After a failed health care reform attempt, Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, for the first time in forty years. Two years later, the re-elected Clinton became the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term as president. He successfully passed welfare reform and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. Later, he was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in a scandal involving a White House intern, but was acquitted by the U.S. Senate and served his complete term of office. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clinton's presidency.

Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U.S. president since World War II. Since then, he has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. Based on his philanthropic worldview, Clinton created the William J. Clinton Foundation to promote and address international causes such as prevention of AIDS and global warming. In 2004, he released his autobiography ''My Life'', and was involved in his wife's and then Barack Obama's campaigns for president in 2008. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, and after the 2010 earthquake he teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U.S. presidents.

Early life and career

Bill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe, III, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas. His father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was a traveling salesman who died in an automobile accident three months before Bill was born. His mother Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923–1994) traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after he was born. She left Bill in Hope with grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, Bill's grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races. In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton, Sr., who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas with his brother. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950.

Although he assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Billy (as he was known then) turned fifteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. Clinton says he remembers his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who regularly abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton, Jr., to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them.

In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School – where he was an active student leader, avid reader, and musician. He was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section. He briefly considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography ''My Life'':

Clinton has named two influential moments in his life that contributed to his decision to become a public figure, both occurring in 1963. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to the White House to meet President John F. Kennedy. The other was listening to Martin Luther King's 1963 ''I Have a Dream'' speech, which impressed him enough that he later memorized it.

College and law school years

With the aid of scholarships, Clinton attended the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., receiving a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (B.S.) degree in 1968. He spent the summer of 1967, the summer before his senior year, interning for Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. While in college, he became a brother of Alpha Phi Omega and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Clinton was also a member of the Order of DeMolay, a youth group affiliated with Freemasonry, but he never became a Freemason. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi honorary band fraternity.

Upon graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, though because he had switched programs and had left early for Yale University, he did not receive a degree there. He developed an interest in rugby union, playing at Oxford and later for the Little Rock Rugby club in Arkansas. While at Oxford he also participated in Vietnam War protests and organized an October 1969 Moratorium event.

Clinton's political opponents charge that to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War during his college years, he used the political influence of a U.S. Senator, who employed him as an aide. Col. Eugene Holmes, an Army officer who was involved in Clinton's case, issued a notarized statement during the 1992 presidential campaign: "I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to Senator Fullbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be admitted to the ROTC program... I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his induction and get a new draft classification." Although legal, Clinton's actions were criticized by conservatives and some Vietnam veterans during his presidential campaign in 1992.

After Oxford, Clinton attended Yale Law School and earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1973. In a Yale library in 1971 he met fellow law student Hillary Rodham, who was a year ahead of him. They began dating and soon were inseparable. After only about a month, Clinton proposed to Rodham and postponed his plans to be a coordinator for the McGovern campaign for the 1972 United States presidential election in order to move in with her in California. They later married on October 11, 1975, and their only child, Chelsea, was born on February 27, 1980.

Clinton did eventually move to Texas with Rodham to take a job leading McGovern's effort there in 1972. He spent considerable time in Dallas, at the campaign's local headquarters on Lemmon Avenue, where he had an office. There, Clinton worked with future two-term mayor of Dallas, Ron Kirk, future governor of Texas, Ann Richards, and then unknown television director (and future filmmaker), Steven Spielberg.

Political career 1978–1992

Governor of Arkansas

After graduating from Yale Law School, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. A year later, he ran for the House of Representatives in 1974. The incumbent, Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt, defeated Clinton in the general election by a 52% to 48% margin. With only minor opposition in the primary and no opposition at all in the general election, Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976.

Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas in 1978, having defeated the Republican candidate Lynn Lowe, a farmer from Texarkana. He became the youngest governor in the country at 32. Due to his youthful appearance, Clinton was often called the "Boy Governor", a referent that continues to be used to refer to him during his gubernatorial era on occasion. He worked on educational reform and Arkansas's roads, with wife Hillary leading a successful committee on urban health care reform. However, his term included an unpopular motor vehicle tax and citizens' anger over the escape of Cuban refugees (from the Mariel boatlift) detained in Fort Chaffee in 1980. Monroe Schwarzlose of Kingsland in Cleveland County, polled 31% of the vote against Clinton in the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1980. Some suggested Schwarzlose's unexpected voter turnout foreshadowed Clinton's defeat in the general election that year by Republican challenger Frank D. White. As Clinton once joked, he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation's history.

Clinton joined friend Bruce Lindsey's Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings. In 1982, he was again elected governor and kept this job for ten years. He helped Arkansas transform its economy and significantly improve the state's educational system. He became a leading figure among the New Democrats. The New Democrats, organized as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), were a branch of the Democratic Party that called for welfare reform and smaller government, a policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans. He gave the Democratic response to President Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address and served as Chair of the National Governors Association from 1986 to 1987, bringing him to an audience beyond Arkansas. Clinton made economic growth, job creation and educational improvement high priorities. For senior citizens, he removed the sales tax from medications and increased the home property-tax exemption.

In the early 1980s, Clinton made reform of the Arkansas education system a top priority. The Arkansas Education Standards Committee, chaired by Clinton's wife, attorney and Legal Services Corporation chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, succeeded in reforming the education system, transforming it from the worst in the nation into one of the best. Many have considered this the greatest achievement of the Clinton governorship. Clinton and the committee were responsible for state educational improvement programs, notably more spending for schools, rising opportunities for gifted children, an increase in vocational education, raising of teachers' salaries, inclusion of a wider variety of courses, and compulsory teacher testing for aspiring educators. He defeated four Republican candidates for governor: Lowe (1978), White (1982 and 1986), and businessmen Woody Freeman of Jonesboro, (1984) and Sheffield Nelson of Little Rock (1990).

The Clintons' personal and business affairs during the 1980s included transactions that became the basis of the Whitewater investigation that dogged his later presidential administration. After extensive investigation over several years, no indictments were made against the Clintons related to the years in Arkansas.

According to some sources, Clinton was in his early years a death penalty opponent who switched positions. During Clinton's term, Arkansas performed its first executions since 1964 (the death penalty had been re-enacted on March 23, 1973). As Governor, he oversaw four executions: one by electric chair and three by lethal injection. Later, as president, Clinton was the first President to pardon a death-row inmate since the federal death penalty was reintroduced in 1988.

Democratic presidential primaries of 1988

In 1987, there was media speculation Clinton would enter the race after then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo declined to run and Democratic front-runner Gary Hart withdrew owing to revelations of marital infidelity. Clinton decided to remain as Arkansas governor (following consideration for the potential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton for governor, initially favored – but ultimately vetoed – by the First Lady). For the nomination, Clinton endorsed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. He gave the nationally televised opening night address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, which at 33 minutes was criticized for being too long. Presenting himself as a moderate and a member of the New Democrat wing of the Democratic Party, he headed the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in 1990 and 1991.

1992 presidential campaign

In the first primary contest, the Iowa caucus, Clinton finished a distant third to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin. During the campaign for the New Hampshire primary, reports of an extramarital affair with Gennifer Flowers surfaced. As Clinton fell far behind former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas in the New Hampshire polls, following Super Bowl XXVI, Clinton and his wife Hillary went on ''60 Minutes'' to rebuff the charges. Their television appearance was a calculated risk, but Clinton regained several delegates. He finished second to Tsongas in the New Hampshire primary, but after trailing badly in the polls and coming within single digits of winning, the media viewed it as a victory. News outlets labeled him "The Comeback Kid" for earning a firm second-place finish.

Winning the big prizes of Florida and Texas and many of the Southern primaries on Super Tuesday gave Clinton a sizable delegate lead. However, former California Governor Jerry Brown was scoring victories and Clinton had yet to win a significant contest outside his native South. With no major Southern state remaining, Clinton targeted New York, which had many delegates. He scored a resounding victory in New York City, shedding his image as a regional candidate. Having been transformed into the consensus candidate, he secured the Democratic Party nomination, finishing with a victory in Jerry Brown's home state of California.

During the campaign, questions of conflict of interest regarding state business and the politically powerful Rose Law Firm, at which Hillary Rodham Clinton was a partner, arose. Clinton argued the questions were moot because all transactions with the state had been deducted before determining Hillary's firm pay. Further concern arose when Bill Clinton announced that, with Hillary, voters would be getting two presidents "for the price of one".

While campaigning for U.S. President, the then Governor Clinton returned to Arkansas to see that Ricky Ray Rector would be executed. After killing a police officer and a civilian, Rector shot himself in the head, leading to what his lawyers said was a state where he could still talk but did not understand the idea of death. According to Arkansas state and Federal law, a seriously mentally impaired inmate cannot be executed. The courts disagreed with the allegation of grave mental impairment and allowed the execution. Clinton's return to Arkansas for the execution was framed in a ''The New York Times'' article as a possible political move to counter "soft on crime" accusations.

Because Bush's approval ratings were in the 80% range during the Gulf War, he was described as unbeatable. However, when Bush compromised with Democrats to try to lower Federal deficits, he reneged on his promise not to raise taxes, hurting his approval rating. Clinton repeatedly condemned Bush for making a promise he failed to keep. By election time, the economy was souring and Bush saw his approval rating plummet to just slightly over 40%. Finally, conservatives were previously united by anti-communism, but with the end of the Cold War, the party lacked a uniting issue. When Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson addressed Christian themes at the Republican National Convention – with Bush criticizing Democrats for omitting God from their platform – many moderates were alienated. Clinton then pointed to his moderate, "New Democrat" record as governor of Arkansas, though some on the more liberal side of the party remained suspicious. Many Democrats who had supported Ronald Reagan and Bush in previous elections switched their support to Clinton. Clinton and his running mate, Al Gore, toured the country during the final weeks of the campaign, shoring up support and pledging a "new beginning".

Clinton won the 1992 presidential election (43.0% of the vote) against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush (37.4% of the vote) and billionaire populist Ross Perot, who ran as an independent (18.9% of the vote) on a platform focusing on domestic issues; a significant part of Clinton's success was Bush's steep decline in public approval. Clinton's election ended twelve years of Republican rule of the White House and twenty of the previous twenty-four years. The election gave Democrats full control of the United States Congress, the first time one party controlled both the executive and legislative branches since Democrats held the 95th United States Congress during the Jimmy Carter presidency in the late 1970s.

Presidency, 1993–2001

During his presidency, Clinton advocated for a wide variety of legislation and programs, much of which was enacted into law or was implemented by the executive branch. Some of his policies, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and welfare reform, have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance, while on other issues his stance was left-of-center. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. The Congressional Budget Office reported budget surpluses of $69 billion in 1998, $126 billion in 1999, and $236 billion in 2000, during the last three years of Clinton's presidency. At the end of his presidency, Clinton moved to New York and helped his wife win election to the U.S. Senate there.

First term, 1993–1997

Clinton was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993. Shortly after taking office, Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 on February 5, which required large employers to allow employees to take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. This action had bipartisan support, and proved quite popular with the public.

On February 15, 1993, Clinton made his first address to the nation, announcing his plan to raise taxes to cap the budget deficit. Two days later, in a nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress, Clinton unveiled his economic plan. The plan focused on reducing the deficit rather than on cutting taxes for the middle class, which had been high on his campaign agenda. Clinton's advisers pressured him to raise taxes on the theory that a smaller federal budget deficit would reduce bond interest rates.

On May 19, 1993, Clinton fired seven employees of the White House Travel Office, causing a controversy even though the Travel Office staff served at the pleasure of the President, who could dismiss them without cause. The White House responded to the controversy by claiming the firings were done because of financial improprieties that had been revealed by a brief FBI investigation. Critics contended the firings had been done to allow friends of the Clintons to take over the travel business and that the involvement of the FBI was unwarranted.

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Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 in August of that year, which passed Congress without a Republican vote. It cut taxes for fifteen million low-income families, made tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses, and raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers. Additionally, through the implementation of spending restraints, it mandated the budget be balanced over a number of years. Clinton made a major speech to Congress regarding a health care reform plan on September 22, 1993, aimed at achieving universal coverage through a national health care plan. This was one of the most prominent items on Clinton's legislative agenda, and resulted from a task force headed by Hillary Clinton. Though at first well received in political circles, it was eventually doomed by well-organized opposition from conservatives, the American Medical Association, and the health insurance industry. However, John F. Harris, a biographer of Clinton's, states the program failed because of a lack of coordination within the White House. Despite the Democratic majority in Congress, the effort to create a national health care system ultimately died when compromise legislation by George J. Mitchell failed to gain a majority of support in August 1994. It was the first major legislative defeat of Clinton's administration.

In November 1993, David Hale, the source of criminal allegations against Bill Clinton in the Whitewater affair, alleged that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, pressured him to provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the partner of the Clintons in the Whitewater land deal. A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation did result in convictions against the McDougals for their role in the Whitewater project, but the Clintons themselves were never charged, and Clinton maintains innocence in the affair.

Clinton signed the Brady Bill into law on November 30, 1993, which imposed a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases. He also expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low-income workers.

In December of that year, allegations by Arkansas state troopers Larry Patterson and Roger Perry were first reported by David Brock in the American Spectator. Later known as Troopergate, the allegations by these men were that they arranged sexual liaisons for Bill Clinton back when he was governor of Arkansas. The story mentioned a woman named ''Paula'', a reference to Paula Jones. Brock later apologized to Clinton, saying the article was politically motivated "bad journalism" and that "the troopers were greedy and had slimy motives."

That month, Clinton implemented a Department of Defense directive known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which allowed gay men and women to serve in the armed services provided they kept their sexuality a secret, and forbade the military from inquiring about an individual's sexual orientation. This move garnered criticism from the left (for being too tentative in promoting gay rights) and from the right (who opposed any effort to allow gays to serve). Some gay-rights advocates criticized Clinton for not going far enough and accused him of making his campaign promise to get votes and contributions. Their position was that Clinton should have integrated the military by executive order, noting that President Harry Truman used executive order to racially desegregate the armed forces. Clinton's defenders argue that an executive order might have prompted the Senate to write the exclusion of gays into law, potentially making it harder to integrate the military in the future. Later in his presidency, in 1999, Clinton criticized the way the policy was implemented, saying he did not think any serious person could say it was not "out of whack." The policy remained controversial, and was finally repealed in 2011, removing open sexual preference as a reason for dismissal from the armed forces.

On January 1, 1994, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law. Throughout his first year in office, Clinton consistently supported ratification of the treaty by the U.S. Senate. Clinton and most of his allies in the Democratic Leadership Committee strongly supported free trade measures; there remained, however, strong disagreement within the party. Opposition came chiefly from anti-trade Republicans, protectionist Democrats and supporters of Ross Perot. The bill passed the house with 234 votes against 200 opposed (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor; 156 Democrats, 43 Republicans, and 1 independent against). The treaty was then ratified by the Senate and signed into law by the President.

Clinton's 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill made many changes to U.S. law, including the expansion of the death penalty to include crimes not resulting in death, such as running a large-scale drug enterprise. During Clinton's re-election campaign he said, "My 1994 crime bill expanded the death penalty for drug kingpins, murderers of federal law enforcement officers, and nearly 60 additional categories of violent felons."

The Clinton administration also launched the first official White House website, whitehouse.gov, on October 21, 1994. It was followed by three more versions, resulting in the final edition launched in 2000. The White House website was part of a wider movement of the Clinton administration toward web-based communication. According to Robert Longley, "Clinton and Gore were responsible for pressing almost all federal agencies, the U.S. court system and the U.S. military onto the Internet, thus opening up America's government to more of America's citizens than ever before. On July 17, 1996, Clinton issued Executive Order 13011 – Federal Information Technology, ordering the heads of all federal agencies to utilize information technology fully to make the information of the agency easily accessible to the public."

After two years of Democratic Party control, the Democrats lost control of Congress in the mid-term elections in 1994, for the first time in forty years. Law professor Ken Gromley's book ''The Death of American Virtue'' reveals that Clinton escaped a 1996 assassination attempt in the Philippines by terrorists working for Osama bin Laden. During his visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Manila in 1996, he was saved shortly before his car was due to drive over a bridge where a bomb had been planted. Gromley said he was told the details of the bomb plot by Louis Merletti, a former director of the Secret Service. Clinton was scheduled to visit a local politician in central Manila, when secret service officers intercepted a message suggesting that an attack was imminent. A transmission used the words "bridge" and "wedding", supposedly a terrorist's code words for assassination. The motorcade was re-routed and the US agents later discovered a bomb planted under the bridge. The report said the subsequent US investigation into the plot "revealed that it was masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden". Gromley said, "It remained top secret except to select members of the US intelligence community. At the time, there were media reports about the discovery of two bombs, one at Manila airport and another at the venue for the leaders' meeting".

The White House FBI files controversy of June 1996 arose concerning improper access by the White House to FBI security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, head of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background report files without asking permission of the subject individuals; many of these were employees of former Republican administrations. In March 2000, Independent Counsel Robert Ray determined that there was no credible evidence of any crime. Ray's report further stated, "there was no substantial and credible evidence that any senior White House official was involved" in seeking the files.

On September 21, 1996, barely three years after the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", imbroglio, and further straining relations with the LGBT community, Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman. Paul Yandura, speaking for the White House gay and lesbian liaison office said that Clinton's signing of DOMA "was a political decision that they made at the time of a re-election." Administration spokesman Richard Socarides said, "... the alternatives we knew were going to be far worse, and it was time to move on and get the president re-elected." Clinton himself stated that DOMA was somehing "which the Republicans put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it’s obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican Congress from presenting that." Others were more critical. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) called these claims "historic revisionism”. In a July 2, 2011 editorial the New York Times opined, "The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 as an election-year wedge issue, signed by President Bill Clinton in one of his worst policy moments."

As part of a 1996 initiative to curb illegal immigration, Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) on September 30, 1996. Appointed by Clinton, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people a year to about 550,000.

The 1996 United States campaign finance controversy was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to influence the domestic policies of the United States, before and during the Clinton administration, and involved the fundraising practices of the administration itself. The Chinese government denied all accusations.

Second term, 1997–2001

In the 1996 presidential election, Clinton was re-elected, receiving 49.2% of the popular vote over Republican Bob Dole (40.7% of the popular vote) and Reform candidate Ross Perot (8.4% of the popular vote), becoming the first Democratic incumbent since Lyndon Johnson to be elected to a second term and the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected President more than once. The Republicans lost a few seats in the House and gained a few in the Senate, but retained control of both houses of the 105th United States Congress. Clinton received 379, or over 70% of the Electoral College votes, with Dole receiving 159 electoral votes.

In the January 1997 State of the Union address, Clinton proposed a new initiative to provide coverage to up to five million children. Senators Ted Kennedy – a Democrat – and Orrin Hatch – a Republican – teamed up with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her staff in 1997, and succeeded in passing legislation forming the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the largest (successful) health care reform in the years of the Clinton Presidency. That year, Hillary Clinton shepherded through Congress the Adoption and Safe Families Act and two years later she succeeded in helping pass the Foster Care Independence Act.

In a lame-duck session of Congress after the 1998 elections, the House voted to impeach Clinton, based on the results of the Lewinsky scandal. This made Clinton only the second U.S. president to be impeached (the first being Andrew Johnson). Impeachment proceedings were based on allegations that Clinton had lied about his relationship with 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky in a sworn deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit. After the Starr Report was submitted to the House providing what it termed "substantial and credible information that President Clinton Committed Acts that May Constitute Grounds for an Impeachment", the House began impeachment hearings against Clinton before the mid-term elections. Although the mid-term elections held in November 1998 were at the 6-year point in an 8-year presidency (a time in the electoral cycle where the party holding the White House usually loses Congressional seats), the Democratic Party gained several seats. To hold impeachment proceedings, the Republican leadership called a lame-duck session in December 1998.

While the House Judiciary Committee hearings ended in a straight party-line vote, there was lively debate on the House floor. The two charges passed in the House (largely with Republican support, but with a handful of Democratic votes as well) were for perjury and obstruction of justice. The perjury charge arose from Clinton's testimony about his relationship to Lewinsky during a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. The obstruction charge was based on his actions during the subsequent investigation of that testimony.

The Senate later voted to acquit Clinton on both charges. The Senate refused to meet to hold an impeachment trial before the end of the old term, so the trial was held over until the next Congress. Clinton was represented by Washington law firm Williams & Connolly. The Senate finished a twenty-one-day trial on February 12, 1999, with the vote (55 Not Guilty/45 Guilty) on both counts falling short of the Constitutional two-thirds majority requirement to convict and remove an officeholder. The final vote was generally along party lines, with no Democrats voting guilty, and only a handful of Republicans voting not guilty.

Clinton controversially issued 141 pardons and 36 commutations on his last day in office on January 20, 2001. Most of the controversy surrounded Marc Rich and allegations that Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, accepted payments in return for influencing the president's decision-making regarding the pardons. Some of Clinton's pardons remain a point of controversy.

Military and foreign events

Many military events occurred during Clinton's presidency. The Battle of Mogadishu also occurred in Somalia in 1993. During the operation, two U.S. helicopters were shot down by rocket-propelled grenade attacks to their tail rotors, trapping soldiers behind enemy lines. This resulted in an urban battle that killed 18 American soldiers, wounded 73 others, and one was taken prisoner. There were many more Somali casualties. Some of the American bodies were dragged through the streets – a spectacle broadcast on television news programs. In response, U.S. forces were withdrawn from Somalia and later conflicts were approached with fewer soldiers on the ground.

In 1995, U.S. and NATO aircraft attacked Bosnian Serb targets to halt attacks on U.N. safe zones and to pressure them into a peace accord. Clinton deployed U.S. peacekeepers to Bosnia in late 1995, to uphold the subsequent Dayton Agreement.

Capturing Osama bin Laden had been an objective of the United States government from the presidency of Bill Clinton until bin Laden's death in 2011. It has been asserted by Mansoor Ijaz that in 1996 while the Clinton Administration had begun pursuit of the policy, the Sudanese government allegedly offered to arrest and extradite Bin Laden as well as to provide the United States detailed intelligence information about growing militant organizations in the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas, and that U.S. authorities allegedly rejected each offer, despite knowing of bin Laden's involvement in bombings on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. However, the 9/11 Commission found that although "former Sudanese officials claim that Sudan offered to expel Bin Laden to the United States", "we have not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim." In 1998, two years after the warning, the Clinton administration ordered several military missions to capture or kill bin Laden that failed.

In response to the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed a dozen Americans and hundreds of Africans, Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. First was a Sudanese Pharmaceutical company suspected of assisting Osama Bin Laden in making chemical weapons. The second was Bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Clinton was subsequently criticized when it turned out that a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan (originally alleged to be a chemical warfare plant) had been destroyed.

To stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Albanians by nationalist Serbians in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's province of Kosovo, Clinton authorized the use of American troops in a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, named Operation Allied Force. General Wesley Clark was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and oversaw the mission. With United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, the bombing campaign ended on June 10, 1999. The resolution placed Kosovo under UN administration and authorized a peacekeeping force. NATO announced that its forces had suffered zero combat deaths, and two deaths from an Apache helicopter crash. Opinions in the popular press criticized pre-war genocide statements by the Clinton administration as greatly exaggerated. A U.N. Court ruled genocide did not take place, but recognized, "a systematic campaign of terror, including murders, rapes, arsons and severe maltreatments". The term "ethnic cleansing" was used as an alternative to "genocide" to denote not just ethnically motivated murder but also displacement, though critics charge there is no difference. Slobodan Milošević, the President of Yugoslavia at the time, was eventually charged with the "murders of about 600 individually identified ethnic Albanians" and "crimes against humanity."

In Clinton's 1998 State of the Union Address, he warned Congress of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's possible pursuit of nuclear weapons: }}

To weaken Saddam Hussein's grip of power, Clinton signed H.R. 4655 into law on October 31, 1998, which instituted a policy of "regime change" against Iraq, though it explicitly stated it did not provide for direct intervention on the part of American military forces. The administration then launched a four-day bombing campaign named Operation Desert Fox, lasting from December 16 to December 19, 1998. For the last two years of Clinton's presidency, U.S. aircraft routinely attacked hostile Iraqi anti-air installations inside the Iraqi no-fly zones.

Clinton's November 2000 visit to Vietnam was the first by a U.S. President since the end of the Vietnam War. Clinton remained popular with the public throughout his two terms as President, ending his presidential career with a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-term approval rating of any President since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Further, the Clinton administration signed over 270 trade liberalization pacts with other countries during its tenure. On October 10, 2000, Clinton signed into law the U.S.–China Relations Act of 2000, which granted permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) trade status to People's Republic of China. The president asserted that free trade would gradually open China to democratic reform. Clinton also oversaw a boom of the U.S. economy. Under Clinton, the United States had a projected federal budget surplus for the first time since 1969.

After initial successes such as the Oslo accords of the early 1990s, Clinton attempted to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat together at Camp David. Following the peace talk failures, Clinton stated Arafat "missed the opportunity" to facilitate a "just and lasting peace." In his autobiography, Clinton blames Arafat for the collapse of the summit. The situation broke down completely with the start of the Second Intifada.

Judicial appointments

Clinton appointed the following justices to the Supreme Court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg – 1993 Stephen Breyer – 1994

Along with his two Supreme Court appointments, Clinton appointed 66 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 305 judges to the United States district courts. His 373 judicial appointments are the second most in American history behind those of Ronald Reagan. Clinton also experienced a number of judicial appointment controversies, as 69 nominees to federal judgeships were not processed by the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee. In all, 84% of his nominees were confirmed.

Public opinion

Clinton's job approval rating fluctuated in the 40s and 50s throughout his first term. In his second term, his rating consistently ranged from the high-50s to the high-60s. After his impeachment proceedings in 1998 and 1999, Clinton's rating reached its highest point. He finished with an approval rating of 68%, which matched those of Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt as the highest ratings for departing presidents in the modern era.

As he was leaving office, a CNN/USA TODAY/Gallup poll revealed 45% said they would miss him. While 55% thought he "would have something worthwhile to contribute and should remain active in public life", 68% thought he would be remembered for his "involvement in personal scandal", and 58% answered "No" to the question "Do you generally think Bill Clinton is honest and trustworthy?" Forty-seven percent of the respondents identified themselves as being Clinton supporters. The same percentage said he would be remembered as either "outstanding" or "above average" as a president, while 22% said he would be remembered as "below average" or "poor".

The Gallup Organization published a poll in February 2007, asking respondents to name the greatest president in U.S. history; Clinton came in fourth place, capturing 13% of the vote. In a 2006 Quinnipiac University poll asking respondents to name the best president since World War II, Clinton ranked 3% behind Ronald Reagan to place second with 25% of the vote. However, in the same poll, when respondents were asked to name the worst president since World War II, Clinton placed 1% behind Richard Nixon and 18% behind George W. Bush to come in third with 16% of the vote.

In May 2006, a CNN poll comparing Clinton's job performance with that of his successor, George W. Bush, found that a strong majority of respondents said Clinton outperformed Bush in six different areas questioned. ABC News characterized public consensus on Clinton as, "You can't trust him, he's got weak morals and ethics and he's done a heck of a good job." Clinton's 66% Gallup Poll approval rating was also the highest Gallup approval rating of any postwar President leaving office, three points ahead of Reagan.

In March 2010, a Newsmax/Zogby poll asking Americans which of the current living former presidents they think is best equipped to deal with the problems the country faces today, found that a wide margin of respondents would pick Bill Clinton. Clinton received 41% of the vote, while former President George W. Bush received 15%, former President George H. W. Bush received 7%, and former President Jimmy Carter received 5%. 26% of respondents chose "none", and 5% were not sure.

Public image

As the first baby boomer president, Clinton was the first president in a half-century not to have been alive during World War II. Authors Martin Walker and Bob Woodward state Clinton's innovative use of sound bite-ready dialogue, personal charisma, and public perception-oriented campaigning was a major factor in his high public approval ratings. When Clinton played the saxophone on ''The Arsenio Hall Show'', he was described by some religious conservatives as "the MTV president." Opponents sometimes referred to him as "Slick Willie", a nickname first applied while he was governor of Arkansas and lasting throughout his presidency. Standing at a height of (1.88 m), Clinton is tied with five others as the fourth-tallest president in the nation's history. His folksy manner led him to be nicknamed "Bubba", especially in the Southern U.S.

Clinton drew strong support from the African American community and made improving race relations a major theme of his presidency. In 1998, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison called Clinton "the first Black president", saying, "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas". Noting that Clinton's sex life was scrutinized more than his career accomplishments, Morrison compared this to the stereotyping and double standards that blacks typically endure.

Allegations of sexual misconduct

Throughout his career, Clinton has been subject to various allegations of sexual misconduct, though he has only admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers. For alleged misconduct during his governorship, Paula Jones brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton while he was president. The case was initially dismissed, but Jones appealed the dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. During the deposition for the Jones lawsuit, which was held at the White House, Clinton denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky a denial that became the basis for the impeachment charge of perjury. On November 18, 1998, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, and agreed to pay Jones and her attorneys a sum of $850,000. Clinton denies ever engaging in a sexual affair with her

In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton sexually assaulted her four years previously. In 1998, Juanita Broaddrick alleged Clinton raped her some twenty years previously. The accusations by Willey and Broaddrick were never brought before a court. The independent counsel determined Willey gave "false information" to the FBI and inconsistent sworn testimony related to the Jones allegation. Gennifer Flowers, Elizabeth Ward Gracen, Sally Perdue, and Dolly Kyle Browning each have reported having adulterous sexual relations with Clinton during or before his service as governor. Gracen later apologized to Hillary Clinton.

His ability to survive multiple scandals and maintain high approval ratings led to a nickname of "Teflon Bill", in imitation of Ronald Reagan's nickname "Teflon Ron".

Post-presidential career

Bill Clinton continues to be active in public life, giving speeches, fundraising, and founding charitable organizations. Altogether, Clinton has spoken at the last six Democratic National Conventions, dating to 1988.

Activities up until 2008 campaign

In 2002, Clinton warned that pre-emptive military action against Iraq would have unwelcome consequences. In 2005, Clinton criticized the Bush administration for its handling of emissions control, while speaking at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas was dedicated in 2004. Clinton released a best-selling autobiography, ''My Life'' in 2004. In 2007, he released ''Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World'', which also became a ''The New York Times'' Best Seller and garnered positive reviews.

In the aftermath of the 2005 Asian tsunami, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Clinton to head a relief effort. After Hurricane Katrina, Clinton joined with fellow former President George H. W. Bush to establish the Bush-Clinton Tsunami Fund in January 2005, and the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund in October of that year. As part of the tsunami effort, these two ex-presidents appeared in a Super Bowl XXXIX pre-game show, and traveled to the affected areas. They also spoke together at the funeral of Boris Yeltsin in 2007.

Based on his philanthropic worldview, Clinton created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address issues of global importance. This foundation includes the Clinton Foundation HIV and AIDS Initiative (CHAI), which strives to combat that disease, and has worked with the Australian government toward that end. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), begun by the Clinton Foundation in 2005, attempts to address world problems such as global public health, poverty alleviation and religious and ethnic conflict. In 2005, Clinton announced through his foundation an agreement with manufacturers to stop selling sugared drinks in schools. Clinton's foundation joined with the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2006 to improve cooperation among those cities, and he met with foreign leaders to promote this initiative. The foundation has received donations from a number of governments all over the world, including Asia and the Middle East. In 2008, Foundation director Inder Singh announced that deals to reduce the price of anti-malaria drugs by 30% in developing nations. Clinton also spoke in favor of California Proposition 87 on alternative energy, which was voted down.

2008 presidential election

During the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, Clinton vigorously advocated on behalf of his wife, Hillary Clinton. Through speaking engagements and fundraisers, he was able to raise $10 million toward her campaign. Some worried that as an ex-president, he was too active on the trail, too negative to Clinton rival Barack Obama, and alienating his supporters at home and abroad. Many were especially critical of him following his remarks in the South Carolina primary, which Obama won. Later in the 2008 primaries, there was some infighting between Bill and Hillary's staffs, especially in Pennsylvania. Considering Bill's remarks, many thought that he could not rally Hillary supporters behind Obama after Obama won the primary. Such remarks lead to apprehension that the party would be split to the detriment of Obama's election. Fears were allayed August 27, 2008, when Clinton enthusiastically endorsed Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, saying that all his experience as president assures him that Obama is "ready to lead". After Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was over, Bill Clinton continued to raise funds to help pay off her campaign debt.

After the 2008 election

In 2009, Clinton travelled to North Korea on behalf of two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea. Euna Lee and Laura Ling had been imprisoned for illegally entering the country from China. Jimmy Carter had made a similar visit in 1994. After Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Kim issued a pardon.

Since then, Clinton has been assigned a number of other diplomatic missions. He was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti in 2009. In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Clinton and George W. Bush would coordinate efforts to raise funds for Haiti's recovery. Clinton continues to visit Haiti to witness the inauguration of refugee villages, and to raise funds for victims of the earthquake. In 2010, Clinton announced support of, and delivered the keynote address for, the inauguration of NTR, Ireland's first environmental foundation.

Post-presidential health concerns

In September 2004, Clinton received a quadruple bypass surgery. In March 2005, he underwent surgery for a partially collapsed lung. On February 11, 2010, he was rushed to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City after complaining of chest pains, and had two coronary stents implanted in his heart. It has been widely reported that Clinton has become a vegan for health reasons, but he still occasionally eats fish.

Honors and accolades

Various colleges and universities have awarded Clinton honorary degrees, including Doctorate of Law degrees and Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. Schools have been named for Clinton, and statues do homage him. The Clinton Presidential Center was opened in Little Rock, Arkansas in his honor on December 5, 2001. He has been honored in various other ways, in countries that include the Czech Republic, New Guinea, Germany, and Kosovo. U.S. states where he has been honored include Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, and New York. He was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in 2001.

In 1993, Clinton was selected as ''Time'' "Man of the Year", and again in 1998, along with Ken Starr. From a poll conducted of the American people in December 1999, Clinton was among eighteen included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century. He has been honored with a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, a J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, a TED Prize (named for the confluence of technology, entertainment and design), and many other awards and honors.

Authored books

See also

List of richest American politicians

References

Further reading

Primary sources

Clinton, Bill. (with Al Gore). ''Science in the National Interest.'' Washington, D.C.: The White House, August 1994.

--- (with Al Gore). ''The Climate Change Action Plan.'' Washington, D.C.: The White House, October 1993.

Taylor Branch ''The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President.'' (2009) Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781416543336

''Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, William J. Clinton.'' Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 1994–2002.

S. Daniel Abraham ''Peace is Possible'', foreword by Bill Clinton

Popular books

Peter Baker ''The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton'' (2000) ISBN 0-684-86813-X

James Bovard ''Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years'' (2000) ISBN 0-312-23082-6

Joe Conason and Gene Lyons ''The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton'' (2003) ISBN 0-312-27319-3

Elizabeth Drew ''On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency'' (1994) ISBN 0-671-87147-1

David Gergen ''Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership.'' (2000) ISBN 0-684-82663-1

Nigel Hamilton ''Bill Clinton: An American Journey'' (2003) ISBN 0-375-50610-1

Christopher Hitchens ''No One Left to Lie to: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton'' (1999) ISBN 1-85984-736-6

Michael Isikoff ''Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story'' (1999) ISBN 0-609-60393-0

Mark Katz ''Clinton and Me: A Real-Life Political Comedy'' (2004) ISBN 978-0-7868-6949-7

David Maraniss ''The Clinton Enigma: A Four and a Half Minute Speech Reveals This President's Entire Life'' (1998) ISBN 0-684-86296-4

Dick Morris with Eileen McGann ''Because He Could'' (2004) ISBN 0-06-078415-6

Richard A. Posner ''An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton'' (1999) ISBN 0-674-00080-3

Mark J. Rozell ''The Clinton Scandal and the Future of American Government'' (2000) ISBN 0-87840-777-4

Michael Waldman ''POTUS Speaks: Finding the Words That Defined the Clinton Presidency'' (2000) ISBN 0-7432-0020-9

Ivory Tower Publishing Company. Achievements of the Clinton Administration: the Complete Legislative and Executive. (1995) ISBN 0-88032-748-0

Academic studies

Cohen; Jeffrey E. "The Polls: Change and Stability in Public Assessments of Personal Traits, Bill Clinton, 1993–99" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 31, 2001

Cronin, Thomas E. and Michael A. Genovese; "President Clinton and Character Questions" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' Vol. 28, 1998

Davis; John. "The Evolution of American Grand Strategy and the War on Terrorism: Clinton and Bush Perspectives" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 3, 2003

Edwards; George C. "Bill Clinton and His Crisis of Governance" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly,'' Vol. 28, 1998

Fisher; Patrick. "Clinton's Greatest Legislative Achievement? the Success of the 1993 Budget Reconciliation Bill" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 1, 2001

Glad; Betty. "Evaluating Presidential Character" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 28, 1998

William G. Hyland. ''Clinton's World: Remaking American Foreign Policy'' (1999) ISBN 0-275-96396-9

Jewett, Aubrey W. and Marc D. Turetzky; " Stability and Change in President Clinton's Foreign Policy Beliefs, 1993–96" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 28, 1998

Johnson, Fard. "Politics, Propaganda and Public Opinion: The Influence of Race and Class on the 1993–1994 Health Care Reform Debate", 2004. ISBN 1-4116-6345-4

Laham, Nicholas, ''A Lost Cause: Bill Clinton's Campaign for National Health Insurance'' (1996)

Lanoue, David J. and Craig F. Emmert; "Voting in the Glare of the Spotlight: Representatives' Votes on the Impeachment of President Clinton" ''Polity'', Vol. 32, 1999

Maurer; Paul J. "Media Feeding Frenzies: Press Behavior during Two Clinton Scandals" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly,'' Vol. 29, 1999

Nie; Martin A. It's the Environment, Stupid!': Clinton and the Environment" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 27, 1997

O'Connor; Brendon. "Policies, Principles, and Polls: Bill Clinton's Third Way Welfare Politics 1992–1996" ''The Australian Journal of Politics and History'', Vol. 48, 2002

Poveda; Tony G. "Clinton, Crime, and the Justice Department" ''Social Justice'', Vol. 21, 1994

Renshon; Stanley A. ''The Clinton Presidency: Campaigning, Governing, and the Psychology of Leadership'' Westview Press, 1995

Renshon; Stanley A. "The Polls: The Public's Response to the Clinton Scandals, Part 1: Inconsistent Theories, Contradictory Evidence" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 32, 2002

Rushefsky, Mark E. and Kant Patel. ''Politics, Power & Policy Making: The Case of Health Care Reform in the 1990s'' (1998) ISBN 1-56324-956-1

Schantz, Harvey L. ''Politics in an Era of Divided Government: Elections and Governance in the Second Clinton Administration'' (2001) ISBN 0-8153-3583-0

Wattenberg; Martin P. "The Democrats' Decline in the House during the Clinton Presidency: An Analysis of Partisan Swings" ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Vol. 29, 1999

Wattier; Mark J. "The Clinton Factor: The Effects of Clinton's Personal Image in 2000 Presidential Primaries and in the General Election" ''White House Studies'', Vol. 4, 2004

Smithers, Luken J. "The Miracle Whip"

External links

;Official

White House biography

Clinton Presidential Materials Project Press releases and speech transcripts from the administration.

Clinton School of Public Service

;Organizations

William J. Clinton Foundation official website

;Books and movies

;Interviews, speeches and statements

Oral History Interview with Bill Clinton from Oral Histories of the American South

President Clinton: The Youtube Interview

Full audio of a number of Clinton speeches via the Miller Center of Public Affairs (UVa)

''The Wanderer'' Profile in ''The New Yorker'', September 2006, the most extensive interview post-presidency

;Media coverage

;Other

Extensive essays on Bill Clinton and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs

Armigerous American Presidents Series article from the American Heraldry Society.

Bill Clinton at C-SPAN's ''American Presidents: Life Portraits''

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Coordinates	29°25′″N98°30′″N
Name	Mark R. Warner
Jr/sr	Junior Senator
State	Virginia
Term start	January 3, 2009
Alongside	Jim Webb
Preceded	John Warner
Order2	69th
Office2	Governor of Virginia
Term start2	January 14, 2002
Term end2	January 14, 2006
Lieutenant2	Tim Kaine
Predecessor2	Jim Gilmore
Successor2	Tim Kaine
Office3	Chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia
Term start3	1993
Term end3	1995
Residence	Alexandria, Virginia
Party	Democratic
Birth date	December 15, 1954
Birth place	Indianapolis, Indiana
Alma mater	George Washington University (B.A.)Harvard University (J.D.)
Profession	Telecommunications Executive
Spouse	Lisa Collis
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature	Mark Warner Signature.svg
Website	Senator Mark Warner }}

Mark Robert Warner (born December 15, 1954) is an American politician and businessman, currently serving in the United States Senate as the junior senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Warner was the 69th governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006 and is the honorary chairman of the Forward Together PAC. Warner delivered the keynote address before the nation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Mark Warner's experience as a congressional staffer and Democratic Party fundraiser in the 1980s prompted his involvement in telecommunications venture capital; he founded the firm Columbia Capital.

In 2006 he was widely expected to pursue the Democratic nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections; however, he announced in October 2006 that he would not run, citing a desire not to disrupt his family life. Warner was considered to be a potential vice presidential pick, but upon receiving the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate he announced that he "will not accept any other opportunity." He is expected to become the state's senior senator when Jim Webb retires from the Senate in January 2013. He currently serves on the board of National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

Early life, education, and career

Warner was born in Indianapolis, Indiana; he is the son of Robert and Marge Warner, and is the older brother of Lisa Warner. He grew up in Illinois, and later in Vernon, Connecticut, where he graduated from Rockville High School. He attributes his interest in politics to his eighth grade social studies teacher, Jim Tyler, who "inspired him to work for social and political change during the tumultuous year of 1968." Warner was class president for three years at Rockville High School and hosted a weekly pick-up basketball game at his house, "a tradition that continues today."

Warner later went on to major in political science at The George Washington University (GW), earning his B.A. in 1977 with a 4.0 GPA. He was valedictorian of his class at GW and the first in his family to graduate from college. At GW he had worked on Capitol Hill to pay for his tuition, riding his bike early mornings to the office of U.S. Senator Abe Ribicoff, Democrat from Connecticut. When his parents visited him at college, he obtained two tickets for them to tour the White House; when his father asked him why he didn't get a ticket for himself, he replied, "I'll see the White House when I'm president." After graduation, Warner attended Harvard Law School, where he coached the school's first intramural women's basketball team and received his Juris Doctor in 1980. Warner has never practiced law.

In the early 1980s, Warner served as a staff member to U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, also a Democrat from Connecticut. He later used his knowledge of federal telecommunication law and policies as a broker of mobile phone franchise licenses, making a significant fortune. According to one source, this knowledge was gained while working as fundraiser for Democrats. As founder and managing director of Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm, he helped found or was an early investor in a number of technology companies. He was one of the early investors in Nextel, co-founded Capital Cellular Corporation, and built up an estimated net worth of more than $200 million.

Warner married Lisa Collis, whom he had met in 1984 at a keg party in Washington, D.C., in 1989. While on their honeymoon in 1989 in Egypt and Greece, Warner became ill; upon returning home, doctors discovered he had suffered a near-fatal burst appendix. Warner spent two months in the hospital recovering from the illness. During her husband's tenure as governor, Collis was the first Virginia first lady to use her maiden name. Warner and Collis have three daughters, Madison, Gillian, and Eliza.

Warner involved himself in public efforts related to health care, telecommunications, information technology and education. He managed Douglas Wilder's successful 1989 gubernatorial campaign, served as chairman of the state Democratic Party and ultimately made his own bid for public office, unsuccessfully running for the U.S. Senate in 1996 against incumbent Republican John Warner (no relation) in a "Warner versus Warner" election. Mark Warner performed strongly in the state's rural areas, making the contest much closer than many pundits expected.

69th Governor of Virginia

2001 election

In 2001 Warner campaigned for governor as a moderate Democrat after years of slowly building up a power base in rural Virginia, particularly Southwest Virginia.

He defeated Republican candidate Mark Earley, the state attorney general, in "Mark versus Mark" election, with 52.16 percent, a margin of 96,943 votes. Warner had a significant funding advantage, spending $20 million compared with Earley's $10 million. Warner also benefited from dissension in Republican ranks after a heated battle for the nomination between Earley, backed by religious conservatives, and then-lieutenant governor John H. Hager, some of whose supporters later openly backed Warner. In the same election, Republican Jerry Kilgore was elected attorney general, and Democrat Tim Kaine was elected lieutenant governor. In his campaign for governor in 2001, Warner said that he would not raise taxes.

Tenure

After he was elected, in 2002, Warner drew upon a $900 million "rainy day fund" left by his predecessor, James S. Gilmore, III. and, in 2002, Warner campaigned in favor of two regional sales tax increases (Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads) to fund transportation. Virginians rejected both regional referendums to raise the sales tax in 2002. In 2004 Warner worked with Democratic and moderate Republican legislators and the business community to reform the tax code, lowering food and some income taxes, and increasing the sales and cigarette taxes. Warner's tax package effected a net tax increase of approximately $1.5 billion annually. Warner credited the additional revenues with saving the state's AAA bond rating, held at the time by only five other states, and allowing the single largest investment in K-12 education in Virginia history. Warner also entered into an agreement with Democrats and moderate Republicans in the Virginia Senate to cap state car tax reimbursements to local governments, which had the effect of increasing car taxes in many localities.

Warner's popularity may have helped Democrats gain seats in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2003 and again in 2005, reducing the majorities built up by Republicans in the 1990s. Warner chaired the National Governors Association in 2004-05 and led a national high school reform movement. He also chaired the Southern Governors' Association and was a member of the Democratic Governors Association. In January 2005, a two-year study the Government Performance Project, in conjunction with ''Governing'' magazine and the Pew Charitable Trust graded each state in four management categories: money, people, infrastructure and information. Virginia and Utah received the highest ratings average with both states receiving an A- rating overall, prompting Warner to dub Virginia "the best managed state in the nation."

Kaine and Kilgore both sought to succeed Warner as governor of Virginia. (The Virginia Constitution forbids any governor from serving consecutive terms; so Warner could not have run for a second term in 2005.) On November 8, 2005, Kaine, the former mayor of Richmond, won with 52% of the vote. Kilgore, who had resigned as attorney general in February 2005 to campaign full time and who had previously served as Virginia secretary of public safety, received 46% of the vote. Russ Potts, a Republican state senator, also ran for governor as an independent, receiving 2% of the vote. Warner had supported and campaigned for Kaine, and many national pundits considered Kaine's victory to be further evidence of Warner's political clout in Virginia, as well as a signal of his viability as a presidential candidate.

On November 29, 2005, Warner commuted the death sentence of Robin Lovitt to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Lovitt was convicted of murdering Clayton Dicks at an Arlington pool hall in 1999. After his trial in 2001, a court clerk illegally destroyed evidence that was used against Lovitt during his trial, but that could theoretically have exonerated him upon further DNA testing. Lovitt's death sentence would have been the 1,000th carried out in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment as permissible under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution in 1976. In a statement, Warner said, "The actions of an agent of the commonwealth, in a manner contrary to the express direction of the law, comes at the expense of a defendant facing society's most severe and final sanction." Warner denied clemency in 11 other death penalty cases that came before him as governor.

Warner also arranged for DNA tests of evidence left from the case of Roger Keith Coleman, who was put to death by the state in 1992. Coleman was convicted in the 1981 rape and stabbing death of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. Coleman drew national attention, even making the cover of ''Time,'' by repeatedly claiming innocence and protesting the unfairness of the death penalty. However, DNA results announced on January 12, 2006, seemed to confirm Coleman's guilt.

In July 2005, his approval ratings were at 74% and in some polls reached 80% range. Warner left office with a 71% approval rating in one poll.

U.S. Senate

2008 election

While on October 12, 2006, Warner ruled out a 2008 presidential bid, Warner declared on September 13, 2007 that he would run for Senate in 2008, following an announcement nearly two weeks prior by then-current senator John Warner (no relation) that he would not seek reelection.

Warner immediately gained the endorsement of most national Democrats. He held a wide lead over his Republican opponent, fellow former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, for virtually the entire campaign.

Warner delivered the keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

In a Washington Post/ABC News Poll dated Wednesday, September 24, Warner was up 30 points over Gilmore.

In the November election, Warner defeated Gilmore, taking 65 percent of the vote to Gilmore's 34 percent. Warner carried all but four counties in the state—Rockingham, Augusta, Powhatan and Hanover. In many cases, he ran up huge margins in areas of the state that have traditionally voted Republican. This was the most lopsided margin for a contested Senate race in Virginia since Chuck Robb took 72 percent of the vote in 1988.

Warner's victory means Virginia has two Democratic Senators for the first time since Harry Byrd, Jr. left the Democrats to become an independent (while still caucusing with the Democrats) in 1970.

Committee assignments

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

*Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development

*Subcommittee on Security and International Trade and Finance

*Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment

Committee on the Budget

Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation

*Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security

*Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet

*Subcommittee on Competitiveness, Innovation, and Export Promotion

*Subcommittee on Science and Space

*Subcommittee on Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security

Committee on Rules and Administration

Joint Economic Committee

Electoral history

Personal life

Warner grows of grapes for Ingleside Vineyards at his Virginia farm; Ingleside bottles a private label that Warner offers at charity auctions.

References

External links

Senator Mark Warner ''official U.S. Senate site''

Forward Together PAC

;Archival Records

Archived Web Site of Virginia Governor Mark R. Warner, 2005-2006 part of Virginia's Political Landscape 2005 Web Archive Collection at Virginia Memory

A Guide to the Governor Mark R. Warner, Executive Office, Records, 2001-2006 at The Library of Virginia

A Guide to the Records of the Policy Office of Governor Mark R. Warner, 2002-2006 at The Library of Virginia

A Guide to the Governor Mark R. Warner, Press Office records, 2001-2006 (bulk 2002-2006) at The Library of Virginia

A Guide to the Governor Mark R. Warner, Transition Office, Records, 2001 at The Library of Virginia

A Guide to the Governor Mark R. Warner, Virginia Liaison Office, Records, 2002-2005 at The Library of Virginia

{{U.S. Senator box |before=John Warner |state=Virginia |class=2 |start=January 3, 2009 |alongside=Jim Webb}}

Category:1954 births Category:American Presbyterians Category:Democratic Party of Virginia chairs Category:Democratic Party state governors of the United States Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:George Washington University alumni Category:Governors of Virginia Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Living people Category:People from Alexandria, Virginia Category:People from Connecticut Category:People from Indianapolis, Indiana Category:United States Senators from Virginia Category:Virginia Democrats

cs:Mark Warner de:Mark Warner es:Mark Warner fr:Mark Warner it:Mark Warner (politico) la:Marcus Robertus Warner nl:Mark Warner no:Mark Warner pl:Mark Warner pt:Mark Warner sh:Mark Warner fi:Mark Warner sv:Mark Warner zh:马克·沃纳

Coordinates	29°25′″N98°30′″N
name	Tavis Smiley
birthname	Tavis Smiley
birth date	September 13, 1964
birth place	Gulfport, MississippiUnited States
age	46
education	Indiana University (B.A., public affairs, 2003)
occupation	Talk show host Author Entrepreneur Advocate Philanthropist
ethnicity	African-American
religion	Christian
credits	''Tavis Smiley'' host (2004–present)''The Tavis Smiley Show'' from PRI (radio) host(2005-present)"Smiley & West" co-host (2010-present)''BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley'' host (1996–2001)
url	http://www.tavistalks.com/ }}

Tavis Smiley (; born September 13, 1964) is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles. Smiley became a radio commentator in 1991, and starting in 1996 he hosted the talk show ''BET Talk'' (later renamed ''BET Tonight'') on BET. Controversially, after Smiley sold an exclusive interview of Sara Jane Olson to ABC News in 2001, BET declined to renew Smiley's contract that year. Smiley then began hosting ''The Tavis Smiley Show'' on NPR from 2002 to 2004 and currently hosts ''Tavis Smiley'' on PBS on the weekdays and "The Tavis Smiley Show" from PRI. Most recently, he and close friend Dr. Cornel West have joined forces for their own radio talk show, "Smiley & West". They were featured together interviewing musician Bill Withers in the 2009 documentary film ''Still Bill''.

Early years

Tavis Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, the son of Joyce Marie Roberts, a single mother who first became pregnant at age 18. On September 13, 1966, just shy of his second birthday, his mother married Emory Garnell Smiley, a non-commisioned officer in the U.S. Air Force. It would not be until a few years later that Tavis would learn the identity of his biological father, whom he identifies in his autobiography, ''What I Know For Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America'' only as "T."

His family soon moved to Indiana because his stepfather had been transferred to Grissom Air Force Base near Peru, Indiana. Upon arriving in Indiana, the Smiley family took up residence in a crowded mobile home in the small town of Bunker Hill, Indiana. Smiley's immediate family size was increased following the homicide of his aunt, whose death left five children with no stable home. Smiley's parents agreed to take in and raise their five orphaned nieces and nephews. Joyce and her husband also had eight children of their own over the years, resulting at one point in 13 children and Mr. and Mrs. Smiley all living in the trailer-home. Smiley's mother was a very religious person, and the family attended the local New Bethel Tabernacle Church, part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. The Smiley children were forbidden from listening to secular music at home and going to the movie theater and could watch television shows that their parents felt were family-friendly. When Tavis Smiley was in seventh grade, New Bethel pastor Elder Rufus Mills accused Tavis and his siblings of "running wild, disobeying their teacher, disrespecting their teacher, disrespecting the sanctity of this building, and mocking the holy message being taught" during Sunday School. According to Smiley's account of the incident, Smiley's Sunday School teacher became more confused as she was asking questions about the Book of John, and while other students "responded by giggling and acting a little unruly," he and his sister Phyllis "remained quiet". Garnell whipped Tavis and Phyllis with an extension cord, wounding the two children. The next day at school, administrators found out about the children's injuries. The local newspaper in Kokomo reported on the beating and the legal proceedings against Garnell, and Tavis and Phyllis were sent to foster care temporarily, Garnell told his children that the judge decided that he had "overreacted" and found he and Joyce as "concerned parents who were completely involved in our children's lives and well-being".

Smiley became interested in politics at age 13 after attending a fundraiser for U.S. Senator Birch Bayh. At Maconaquah High School in Bunker Hill, Indiana, a school that Smiley described as "98 percent white", Smiley was active in student council and the debate team, even though his parents were "skeptical of all non-church extracurricular activities."

College and political career

In 1982, Smiley enrolled in Indiana University Bloomington (IU). Because Smiley's parents refused to complete financial aid papers, Smiley entered Indiana University with only $50 and a small suitcase. Administrators let Smiley complete the paperwork to become a full-time student. The summer after his freshman year, Smiley worked, attended summer classes, and lived off campus with Indiana Hoosiers men's basketball players, then being coached by Bobby Knight. Smiley was accepted into the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity during his sophomore year and became business manager of his dormitory, a member of the student senate, and director of minority affairs. After his friend Denver Smith was killed by Indiana police officers who claimed to have acted in self-defense, Smiley helped lead protests to defend Smith, whom he believed had been wrongfully killed. Those protests led Smiley to a work-study internship at the office of Bloomington mayor Tomilea Allison. Being paid $5 an hour, Smiley wrote letters to local residents, researched for Mayor Allison, and helped write positions on local issues. Mayor Allison rebuked Smiley for padding his time sheets and had Smiley work off the extra hours without pay. During his first semester of junior year, Smiley was under academic probation and blamed his extracurricular activities for interfering with his studies. When Smiley visited Los Angeles to attend a national student leaders' convention, the cousin of his roommate introduced Smiley to football star Jim Brown. Brown introduced Smiley to fellow football player George Hughley, who worked for Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and connected Smiley to Mayor Bradley's staff. Every week since meeting Bradley's staff, Smiley wrote a letter to the mayor's office asking for an internship and once personally flew to Los Angeles to appeal. However, by summertime he received a letter from the city stating that all internship positions were filled. Smiley then handwrote a letter to the mayor that he said represented his feeling "from the heart", and Bradley called Smiley to say that he had a position available for Smiley. As the internship was unpaid but counted for college credit, the Bloomington Community Progress Council funded Smiley with $5,000 for living expenses in Los Angeles, and Brown allowed Smiley to live as a houseguest during September 1985. Starting the next month, Smiley lived in the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity house in the University of Southern California. At City Hall, Smiley worked at the Office of Youth Development on the 22nd floor.

Twice, Smiley considered quitting college, first during junior year, and then after finishing his internship with Mayor Bradley. Bradley successfully convinced Smiley to return to college, and Smiley did. Smiley took the LSAT twice, as he was considering attending Harvard Law School. However, in his senior year, he failed a test in a computer class after being accused of copying another student's, so he failed that class and several others and lacked nine hours of credits and thus did not graduate from IU. Following a hiring freeze by the government of Los Angeles, Smiley served as an aide to Mayor Bradley until 1990. A 1988 article in the ''Los Angeles Times'' identified Smiley as "a Bradley administrative assistant who works in South Los Angeles." In 2003, Smiley officially received his degree from Indiana University in public affairs.

Radio and television career

Campaigning for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 1991 against incumbent Ruth Galanter, Smiley finished fourth among 15 candidates. Smiley became a radio commentator, broadcasting one-minute daily radio segments called ''The Smiley Report'' on KGFJ radio. With Ruben Navarrette, Jr., Smiley co-hosted a local talk show in Los Angeles where his strongly held views on race and politics, combined with his arguments regarding the impact of institutional racism and substandard educational and economic opportunities for inner-city black youth, earned him attention on the ''Los Angeles Times''. His commentaries focused on local and national current-affairs issues affecting the African-American community. For six months, Smiley worked on a community news program on a local cable network and spent six more months working on television in Montreal.

In 1996, Smiley became a frequent commentator on the ''Tom Joyner Morning Show'', a nationally syndicated radio show broadcast on black and urban stations in the United States. He developed a friendship with host Joyner; together they began hosting annual town hall meetings beginning in 2000 called "The State of the Black Union" which were aired live on the C-SPAN cable television network. These town hall meetings each focused on a specific topic affecting the African-American community, featuring a panel of African-American leaders, educators, and professionals assembled before an audience to discuss problems related to the forum's topic, as well as potential solutions. Smiley also used his commentator status on Joyner's radio show to launch several advocacy campaigns to highlight discriminatory practices in the media and government and to rally support for causes such as the awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Smiley also began building a national reputation as a political commentator with numerous appearances on political discussion shows on MSNBC, ABC, and CNN.

Also in 1996, Smiley began hosting and executive producing ''BET Tonight'' (originally ''BET Talk'' when it first premiered), a public affairs discussion show on the Black Entertainment Television (BET) network. Smiley interviewed major political figures and celebrities and discussed topics ranging from racial profiling and police brutality to R&B; music and Hollywood gossip. Smiley hosted ''BET Tonight'' until 2001, when in a controversial move, the network announced that Smiley's contract would not be renewed. This sparked an angry response from Joyner, who sought to rally his radio audience to protest BET's decision. Robert L. Johnson, founder of BET, defended the decision, stating that Smiley had been fired because he had sold an exclusive interview to ABC News without first offering the story to BET, even though Smiley's contract with BET did not require him to do so. Smiley countered with the assertion that he had offered the story — an interview with Sara Jane Olson, an alleged former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army — to CBS, which, along with BET, was owned by Viacom. Smiley ultimately sold the interview to rival network ABC, he said, only after CBS passed on the interview, and suggested that his firing was payback for the publicity he gained as a result of providing an exclusive interview to ABC. Ultimately BET and Viacom did not reverse their decision to terminate Smiley's contract.

Smiley was then offered a chance to host a radio talk show on National Public Radio. He served as host of ''The Tavis Smiley Show'' on NPR until December 2004 when he announced that he would be leaving his NPR show, citing the network's inability to reach a more diverse audience. Smiley launched a weekly version of his radio program ''The Tavis Smiley Show'' on April 29, 2005, distributed by NPR rival Public Radio International. On October 1, 2010, Tavis Smiley turned the second hour of his PRI program into Smiley & West co-hosted by his longtime collaborator Dr. Cornel West. Smiley also hosts ''Tavis Smiley'', a late night talk show televised on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network and produced in association with WNET in New York.

Smiley moderated two live presidential candidate forums in 2007: a Democratic forum on June 28 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a Republican forum on September 27 at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Smiley appears on the ''Democracy Now!'' show.

Controversy over Presidential Candidate Barack Obama

On April 11, 2008, Tavis Smiley announced that he would resign in June 2008 as a commentator on the ''Tom Joyner Morning Show''. He cited fatigue and a busy schedule in a personal call to Joyner. However Joyner—referring to several commentaries in which Smiley was critical of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama—indicated otherwise on his program, stating: "The real reason is that he can't take the hate he's been getting regarding the Barack issue—hate from the black people that he loves so much." Prior to the public controversy and being elected President, Obama had been on Smiley's PBS show six times.

''The Covenant with Black America''

In March 2006, ''The Smiley Group'' and Third World Press published ''The Covenant with Black America'', a collection of essays by black scholars and professionals edited by Smiley. The book covers topics ranging from education to healthcare as discussed in several "State of the Black Union" forums.

Described by the publisher as a national plan of action to address the primary concerns of African-Americans related to social and economic disparities but seen by others as a self-promoting rehash of old ideas, the book became the first non-fiction book by a Black-owned publisher to be listed as the number-one non-fiction paperback in America by The New York Times Best Seller list.

Awards and contributions

Smiley was honored with the NAACP Image Award for best news, talk, or information series for three consecutive years (1997–99) for his work on ''BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley''.

Smiley's advocacy efforts have earned him numerous awards and recognitions including the recipient of the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association of Minorities in Communications.

In 1999, he founded the Tavis Smiley Foundation, which funds programs that develop young leaders in the black community. Since its inception, more than 6,000 young people have participated in the foundation's Youth to Leaders Training workshops and conferences.

His communications company, The Smiley Group, Inc., serves as the holding company for various enterprises encompassing broadcast and print media, lecturers, symposiums, and the Internet.

In 1994, ''Time'' named him one of America's 50 Most Promising Young Leaders. ''Time'' would later honor him in 2009 as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." In May 2007, Smiley gave a commencement speech at his alma mater, Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana. In May 2008, he gave the commencement address at Connecticut College, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate. In May 2009, Smiley was awarded an honorary doctorate at Langston University after giving the commencement address there.

On December 12, 2008, Smiley received the Du Bois Medal from Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

He would also be awarded the 2009 Interdependence Day Prize from Demos in Istanbul, Turkey.

Indiana University recently honored Smiley by naming the atrium of its School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) building, The Tavis Smiley Atrium.

Smiley would be named No. 2 change agent in the field of media behind Oprah Winfrey in EBONY magazine's POWER 150 list.

Bibliography

''Just a Thought: The Smiley Report'' (ISBN 0-963-69523-1)

''Doing What's Right: How to Fight for What You Believe—And Make a Difference'' (ISBN 0-385-49931-0)

''Hard Left'' (ISBN 0-385-48404-6)

''Keeping the Faith: Stories of Love, Courage, Healing, and Hope from Black America'' (ISBN 0-385-72169-2)

''How to Make Black America Better: Leading African Americans Speak Out'' (ISBN 0-385-72087-4)

''On Air:The Best of Tavis Smiley on the Tom Joyner Morning Show'' (ISBN 1-890194-33-6)

''The Covenant with Black America'' (ISBN 0-88378-277-4)

''What I Know for Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America'' (ISBN 978-0-385-50516-1; ISBN 0-388-50516-7)

''Accountable: Making America As Good As Its Promise

''Fail Up'' (ISBN 1-401-93390-4)

References

Further reading

LaRue, William. "Tavis Smiley: NPR Host Brings Latenight Talk to PBS." ''Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard'', 1 February 2004, STARS section, pp. 4–6.

Slade, Scott. "Author Issues Wakeup Call." ''Kokomo (IN) Tribune'', 20 June 1996, p. 7.

External links

www.tavistalks.com Official web site

Tavis Smiley on WNET/PBS

Tavis Smiley at NPR

Tavis Smiley: The State of the Black Union Interview

Tavis Smiley on Rev. Martin Luther King and His Opposition to the Vietnam War - video by ''Democracy Now!''

Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:African American radio personalities Category:American journalists Category:American memoirists Category:American Pentecostals Category:American philanthropists Category:American political writers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Indiana University alumni Category:National Public Radio personalities Category:People from Gulfport, Mississippi Category:People from Kokomo, Indiana Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:People from Montreal Category:People from Peru, Indiana Category:Public Radio International personalities

de:Tavis Smiley fa:تویس سمایلی sv:Tavis Smiley