Name | Richard Holbrooke |
---|---|
Order1 | United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan |
Term start1 | January 22, 2009 |
Term end1 | December 13, 2010 |
President1 | Barack Obama |
Predecessor1 | (post created) |
Successor1 | Marc Grossman |
Office3 | 22nd United States Ambassador to the United Nations |
Term start3 | August 25, 1999 |
Term end3 | January 20, 2001 |
Predecessor3 | Bill Richardson |
Successor3 | John D. Negroponte |
President3 | Bill Clinton |
Office4 | Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs |
President4 | Bill Clinton |
Term start4 | September 13, 1994 |
Term end4 | February 21, 1996 |
Preceded4 | Stephen A. Oxman |
Succeeded4 | John C. Kornblum |
Office5 | United States Ambassador to Germany |
Term start5 | October 19, 1993 |
Term end5 | September 12, 1994 |
Predecessor5 | Robert M. Kimmitt |
Successor5 | Charles E. Redman |
President5 | Bill Clinton |
Office6 | 15th Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs |
Term start6 | March 31, 1977 |
Term end6 | January 13, 1981 |
Predecessor6 | Arthur W. Hummel, Jr. |
Successor6 | John H. Holdridge |
President6 | Jimmy Carter |
Birth date | April 24, 1941 |
Birth place | New York City, New York |
Death date | December 13, 2010 |
Death place | Washington, D.C. |
Party | Democrat |
Alma mater | Brown UniversityPrinceton University |
Spouse | Larrine Sullivan (m. 1964)Blythe Babyak (m. 1977)Kati Marton (m. 1995-2010, his death) |
Children | 2 sons }} |
He was the only person to have held the position of Assistant Secretary of State for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977 to 1981 and Europe from 1994 to 1996).
From 1993 to 1994, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Long well known in diplomatic and journalistic circles, Holbrooke achieved great public prominence when he, together with former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, brokered a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1995. Holbrooke was a leading contender to succeed the retiring Warren Christopher as Secretary of State but was passed over as President Bill Clinton chose Madeleine Albright instead. From 1999 to 2001, Holbrooke served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
He was an adviser to the Presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. Holbrooke then joined the Presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and became a top foreign policy adviser. Holbrooke was considered a likely candidate for Secretary of State had Kerry or Hillary Clinton been elected President. In January 2009, Holbrooke was appointed as a special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, working under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a frustrating assignment which was said to have caused his health to deteriorate. He served until he died from complications of an aortic dissection on December 13, 2010.
Holbrooke's unfulfilled ambition was to become Secretary of State; he along with George Kennan and Chip Bohlen, were considered among the most influential U.S. diplomats who never achieved cabinet rank. Several considered Holbrooke's role in the Dayton Accords to merit the Nobel Peace Prize, another honor that he never won.
Holbrooke’s father, a doctor who died of cancer when Richard was 15 years old, was born of Russian Jewish parents in Warsaw and took the name Holbrooke after migrating to the United States in 1939. The original family name was Goldbrajch.
After Scarsdale High School, Holbrooke earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University in 1962, attending on a full-tuition scholarship. He was later a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, leaving in 1970.
Following his time in the White House, Holbrooke served as a special assistant to Under Secretaries of State (then the number-two position in the State Department) Nicholas Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson. In 1968, Holbrooke was asked to be part of the American delegation to the 1968 Paris peace talks, which was led by former New York Governor Averell Harriman and Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance. He also drafted a volume of the now famous Pentagon Papers, a top-secret report on the government’s decision-making in Vietnam. Following these assignments, Holbrooke spent a year as a mid-career fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
Holbrooke also remained deeply engaged in prominent foreign policy issues. He visited Bosnia twice in 1992 as a private citizen and a member of the board of Refugees International, witnessing firsthand the damage and devastating human costs of the conflict. This experience committed Holbrooke to pursuing a more aggressive policy in Balkans and, in a memo to his colleagues, he urged that "Bosnia will be the key test of American policy in Europe. We must therefore succeed in whatever we attempt."
Holbrooke served in Germany during a dramatic moment: only a few years after German reunification, he helped shape U.S. relations with a new Germany. A highlight of his tenure was President Bill Clinton’s visit to Berlin in July 1994, when thousands of Germans crammed the streets to welcome the American leader. While in Germany, Holbrooke also was a key figure in shaping the U.S. policy to promote NATO enlargement, as well as its approach to the war in Bosnia.
In 1994, while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Germany, he conceived the idea of a cultural exchange center between the people of Berlin and Americans. With Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of Germany, and Henry A. Kissinger as co-Chairman, this institution—The American Academy in Berlin—was announced on September 9, 1994, the day after the U.S. Army Berlin Brigade left Berlin. The American Academy in Berlin opened three years later in a villa on the Wannsee once owned by the German-Jewish banker Hans Arnhold. When Holbrooke left the U.S. government in 2001, he became Chairman of The American Academy in Berlin. It is now one of the most important links between Germany and the United States. Its Fellows have included writers (including Pulitzer Prize winning authors Arthur Miller and Jeffrey Eugenides), economists, government officials, and public policy experts such as Dennis Ross and former U.S. Ambassador to The Peoples Republic of China, J. Stapleton Roy. In 2008, The American Academy in Berlin awarded its annual Henry A. Kissinger Award for Transatlantic Relations to George H. W. Bush. In 2007, the Award's first recipient was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
According to Radovan Karadžić and Muhamed Sacirbey, ex-Bosnian Foreign Minister, Holbrooke signed an agreement with Karadžić that if the latter withdrew from politics he would not be sent to the Hague tribunal. Holbrooke denied these terms, saying Karadžić's statement was "a flat-out lie."
Holbrooke's other achievements as UN Ambassador included getting the United Nations Security Council to debate and pass a resolution on HIV/AIDS, the first time that body had treated public health as a matter of global security. In January 2000, Holbrooke used the United States' presidency of the UN Security Council to spotlight a series of crises in Africa, holding six consecutive UN debates that brought together leaders from the region and the across the globe, including former South African President Nelson Mandela and then U.S. Vice President Al Gore, to catalyze more effective UN interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and elsewhere. Holbrooke decried a "double standard" whereby African conflicts received insufficient global attention. In 2000, Holbrooke led a UN Security Council delegation in a series of diplomatic negotiations throughout Africa, including to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Uganda. Holbrooke also secured membership for Israel in the UN's Western European and Others regional group, ending Israel's historic exclusion from regional group deliberations and allowing it to, for the first time, stand for election to leadership positions in UN sub-bodies. During the final weeks of his term, Holbrooke secured consultative status at the United Nations for Hadassah, the Jewish women's service organization, overcoming strenuous objections from certain Arab delegations.
Upon leaving the UN a year later, Holbrooke took over a nearly moribund NGO that was intended to mobilize businesses and corporations in the fight against AIDS. At the time, it had 17 members. Over the next six years, Holbrooke turned this organization—originally called the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS—into a worldwide organization with over 225 members. It expanded to include malaria and tuberculosis and is now known as the ''Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria''. It is now the official focal point for mobilizing the business community in support of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and has grown into an important part of the ongoing war against these three diseases.
"one of the most cost-effective steps Washington could take would be to boost the agriculture sector of Afghanistan, which in years past had been a productive and profitable source of exports. Replicate the past success, he said, and Afghans would have money and jobs—and that, in turn, would create stability in the country. He called for 'a complete rethink' of the drug problem in Afghanistan, suggesting that draconian eradication programs were bound to fail."
However, "Holbrooke's skill set did not lead to much accomplishment in Afghanistan. He never worked out a productive relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai . . . He butted heads with other administration officials and was dismissed by European colleagues. He brokered no breakthroughs."
Richard Holbrooke's dying words were "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan," which he told his Pakistani surgeon moments before he was sedated for surgery to repair his torn aorta. NYDailyNews.com
Holbrooke also served as vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, managing director of Lehman Brothers, managing editor of ''Foreign Policy'', and director of the Peace Corps in Morocco.
He wrote numerous articles and two books: ''To End A War'', and the co-author of ''Counsel to the President'', and one volume of ''The Pentagon Papers''. He received more than a dozen honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Bates College in 1999. He wrote a monthly column for ''The Washington Post'' and Project Syndicate.
On March 20, 2007, he appeared on ''The Colbert Report'' to mediate in what Stephen Colbert (or rather, his television alter-ego) saw as Willie Nelson infringing on his ice cream flavor time. Holbrooke was the 'ambassador on call' and after a short mediation process the two parties agreed to taste each other's Ben and Jerry's ice cream to make amends. He subsequently sang "On the Road Again" in a trio with Colbert and Nelson.
Holbrooke was an Eminent Member of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation until his death.
In June 2008, Conde Nast Portfolio reported that Holbrooke and his son allegedly got multiple below-rate loans at Countrywide Financial because the corporation considered them "FOA's"—"Friends of Angelo" (Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo).
On February 24, 2007, Holbrooke delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address and called for "a new strategy in Iraq", involving "a careful, phased redeployment of U.S. troops" and a "new diplomatic offensive in the Gulf region to help stabilize Iraq."
During the 2008 South Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia, Holbrooke said during a CNN interview that he had predicted the conflict in early 2008.
Holbrooke died on December 13, 2010, from complications of the torn aorta. Holbrooke's last words before being sedated for surgery, which have been clarified to have been a comical interchange with his doctor, were: "You've got to end this war in Afghanistan."
Frank Rich of ''New York Times'' wrote: "His premature death — while heroically bearing the crushing burdens of Afghanistan and Pakistan — is tragic in more ways than many Americans yet realize."
On January 14, 2011, Holbrooke's memorial service was held at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Category:1941 births Category:2010 deaths Category:American International Group Category:American Jews Category:American people of the Vietnam War Category:Brown University alumni Category:Businesspeople from New York Category:Council on Foreign Relations Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Washington, D.C. Category:Deaths from aortic dissection Category:Deaths from surgical complications Category:Democrats (United States) Category:Quebecor Category:Permanent Representatives of the United States to the United Nations Category:People from Scarsdale, New York Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council Category:Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:United States ambassadors to Germany Category:Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton alumni Category:Writers from New York City
ar:ريتشارد هولبروك az:Riçard Holbruk bs:Richard Holbrooke bg:Ричард Холбрук ca:Richard Holbrooke cs:Richard Holbrooke cy:Richard Holbrooke da:Richard Holbrooke de:Richard Holbrooke et:Richard Holbrooke es:Richard Holbrooke fa:ریچارد هولبروک fr:Richard Holbrooke hi:रिचर्ड होलब्रूक hr:Richard Holbrooke id:Richard Holbrooke it:Richard Holbrooke he:ריצ'רד הולברוק jv:Richard Holbrooke ka:რიჩარდ ჰოლბრუკი la:Ricardus Holbrooke hu:Richard Holbrooke nl:Richard Holbrooke ja:リチャード・ホルブルック no:Richard Holbrooke ps:ريچارډ هولبروک pl:Richard Holbrooke pt:Richard Holbrooke ru:Холбрук, Ричард sq:Richard Holbrooke simple:Richard Holbrooke sr:Ричард Холбрук sh:Richard Holbrooke fi:Richard Holbrooke sv:Richard Holbrooke ta:ரிச்சர்ட் ஆல்புரூக் tr:Richard Holbrooke uk:Річард Голбрук vi:Richard C. Holbrooke zh:理查·霍布魯克This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Name | Charlie Rose |
---|---|
Birthname | Charles Peete Rose, Jr. |
Birth date | January 05, 1942 |
Birth place | Henderson, North Carolina, U.S. |
education | Duke University B.A. (1964) Duke University J.D. (1968) |
occupation | Talk show hostJournalist |
years active | 1972–present |
credits | ''Charlie Rose'', ''60 Minutes II'', ''60 Minutes'', ''CBS News Nightwatch'', ''CBS This Morning'' |
url | http://www.charlierose.com/ }} |
Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted ''Charlie Rose'', an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993. He has also co-anchored ''CBS This Morning'' since January 2012. Charlie, along with Lara Logan, has revamped the CBS classic Person to Person, a news program during which celebrities are interviewed in their homes, originally hosted by the legendary Edward R. Murrow.
Rose worked for CBS News (1984–1990) as the anchor of ''CBS News Nightwatch'', the network's first late-night news broadcast. The ''Nightwatch'' broadcast of Rose's interview with Charles Manson won an Emmy Award in 1987. In 1990, Rose left CBS to serve as anchor of ''Personalities'', a syndicated program produced by Fox Broadcasting Company, but he got out of his contract after six weeks because of the tabloid-style content of the show. ''Charlie Rose'' premiered on PBS station Thirteen/WNET on September 30, 1991, and has been nationally syndicated since January 1993. In 1994, Rose moved the show to a studio owned by Bloomberg Television, which allowed for improved satellite interviewing.
Rose was a correspondent for ''60 Minutes II'' from its inception in January 1999 until its cancellation in September 2005, and was later named a correspondent on ''60 Minutes''.
Rose was a member of the board of directors of Citadel Broadcasting Corporation from 2003 to 2009. In May 2010, Charlie Rose delivered the commencement address at North Carolina State University.
On November 15, 2011, it was announced that Rose would return to CBS to help anchor ''CBS This Morning'', replacing ''The Early Show'', commencing January 9, 2012, along with co-anchors Erica Hill and Gayle King.
Rose has attended several Bilderberg Group conference meetings, including meetings held in the United States in 2008; Spain in 2010; and Switzerland in 2011. These unofficial conferences hold guests from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are political leaders and businessmen. Details of meetings are closed off to the public and strictly invitation-only, and critics speculate the controversial nature of these meetings of highly influential people. Accusations from conspiracy theorists against The Charlie Rose show claim that it has become the US media outlet for Bilderberg.
On March 29, 2006, after experiencing shortness of breath in Syria, Rose was flown to Paris and underwent surgery for mitral valve repair in the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital. His surgery was performed under the supervision of Alain F. Carpentier, a pioneer of the procedure. Rose returned to the air on June 12, 2006, with Bill Moyers and Yvette Vega (the show's executive producer), to discuss his surgery and recuperation.
In a 2009 Fresh Dialogues interview Rose described his life as "great and glorious." He added, '"I get up every morning with a new adventure. The adventure is fueled by interesting people. I get a chance to control my own destiny. I do something that is immediately either appreciated or not. I get feedback."
Rose owns a farm in Oxford, North Carolina, an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City, a beach house in Bellport, New York, an apartment in Washington D.C..and an apartment in Paris, France.
Category:American journalists Category:American television talk show hosts Category:New York television reporters Category:CBS News Category:60 Minutes correspondents Category:Duke University alumni Category:New York University alumni Category:People from Henderson, North Carolina Category:1942 births Category:Living people
bg:Чарли Роуз de:Charlie Rose fa:چارلی رز fr:Charlie Rose he:צ'ארלי רוז ro:Charlie Rose ru:Роуз, Чарли sv:Charlie RoseThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Rizwan Khan |
---|---|
birth date | |
birth place | Aden, South Yemen |
education | University of Wales Medical Physiology (B.Sc.) University of Portsmouth Radio Journalism (B.A.) |
occupation | Reporter and Anchor at Al Jazeera |
years active | |
website | }} |
Rizwan "Riz" Khan (born April 1962) is a British television news reporter and interviewer who until April 2011 hosted his own eponymous television show on Al Jazeera English. He first rose to prominence while working for the BBC and CNN.
In 1987 he was selected for the BBC News Trainee scheme - a two-year BBC training system, usually taking only 6 people per course. Khan progressed to jobs as a BBC reporter, producer, and writer, working in both television and radio, and would later become one of the founding News Presenters on BBC World Service Television News. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991. In 1993, he moved to CNN International, where he became a senior anchor for the network's global news shows. Events he covered included the 1996 and 1999 coverage of elections in India; the 1997 historic election in Britain; and in April 1998 the unprecedented live coverage from the Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj.
In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show ''CNN: Q&A; with Riz Khan'', and he has conducted interviews with guests including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and genomic scientist J. Craig Venter. Khan also secured the world exclusive with Pakistan's General Pervez Musharraf following his coup in October 1999. Khan also hosted ''Q&A-Asia; with Riz Khan''. These interactive shows put world newsmakers and celebrities up for viewer questions live by phone, e-mail, video-mail and fax, along with questions and comments taken from the real-time chatroom that opens half-an-hour before each show.
Khan hosted his show, ''Riz Khan'', on Al Jazeera English, interviewing analysts and policy makers and allows viewers to interact with them via phone, email, SMS messages or fax. The show came to an end in April 2011.
Khan speaks Urdu and Hindi and also understands other South Asian languages such as Punjabi and Kutchi. He has studied French, and can understand some other European languages, including Swedish.
In 2005 he authored his first book, ''Al-Waleed: Businessman Billionaire Prince'', published by Harper Collins.
In 2011 he authored a preface for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) annual report "Attacks on the Press 2010", which examined working conditions for journalists in more than 100 countries.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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 (Acting) |
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 date | August 19, 1946 |
Birth place | Hope, Arkansas, U.S. |
Party | Democratic Party |
Spouse | Hillary Rodham (m. 1975) |
Children | Chelsea (b. 1980) |
Alma mater | Georgetown University University College, OxfordYale Law School |
Profession | Lawyer |
Religion | Baptist |
Signature | Signature of Bill Clinton.svg |
Signature alt | Cursive signature in ink |
Website | Clinton Presidential Library }} |
Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas where he grew to become 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 University College, Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since January 21, 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.
As President, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history. The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, during the last three years of Clinton's presidency. After a failed attempt at health care reform by the Clinton administration, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 1994, for the first time in forty years. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton was re-elected and became the first member of the Democratic Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second full term as president. 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.
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 treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS and global warming. In 2004, he released his autobiography ''My Life'', and was involved in his wife Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign and subsequently in that of President Barack Obama. In 2009, he was named United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti. In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Clinton teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
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 operated a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was racially segregated, 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 fourteen 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. Fellow students included the late watercolorist and sculptor, Tonya Bailey. 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.
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, including organizing 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 obtained 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.
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 referrent 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 mandatory 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 was 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.
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. It was the first time this had occurred since Democrats controlled the 95th United States Congress during the Jimmy Carter presidency in the late 1970s.
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 general 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 and could be dismissed 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 of 1994. It was the first major legislative defeat of Clinton's administration.
In November of 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 same month, Clinton implementing 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."
On January 1, 1994, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement into law. Througout 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.
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.
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.
An 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 Children's Health Insurance Program, 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 procedings 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 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.
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 Pharmecutical 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 speak to the use 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.
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 is second in American history, behind Ronald Reagan's. 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.
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%. Although 26% chose "none", and 5% were not sure, Clinton maintained the highest percentage.
Clinton drew strong support from the African American community and made improving race relations a major theme of his presidency. In 1998, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison in The New Yorker 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.
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".
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.
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 bestseller 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 of 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.
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 ever environmental foundation.
Clinton has received many honorary degrees, including Doctorate of Law degrees from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Tulane University, and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Schools have been named for him, 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 magazine's "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.
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Name | Rachel Maddow |
---|---|
birthname | Rachel Anne Maddow |
birth date | April 01, 1973 |
birth place | Castro Valley, California, U.S. |
education | B.A., Stanford UniversityD.Phil, Oxford University |
occupation | News anchorPolitical commentatorTelevision host |
credits | ''The Rachel Maddow Show'' (MSNBC)''The Rachel Maddow Show'' (Air America Radio) |
url | http://www.rachelmaddow.com/ }} |
Rachel Anne Maddow (; born April 1, 1973) is an American television host and political commentator. Her syndicated talk radio program, ''The Rachel Maddow Show'', aired on Air America Radio. Maddow hosts a nightly television show, ''The Rachel Maddow Show'', on MSNBC. She was a guest host of ''Countdown with Keith Olbermann'' and ''Race for the White House''. Maddow is the first openly gay anchor to host a prime-time news program in the United States.
Asked about her political views by the ''Valley Advocate'', Maddow replied, "I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform."
A graduate of Castro Valley High School in Castro Valley, California, Maddow earned a degree in public policy from Stanford University in 1994. At graduation she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was also the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in politics from Oxford University. Her thesis is titled ''HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons'' (supervisor: Dr Lucia Zedner). She was the first openly gay American to win a Rhodes scholarship.
In April 2008, Maddow was the substitute host for ''Countdown with Keith Olbermann'', her first time hosting a program on MSNBC. Maddow described herself on air as "nervous." Keith Olbermann complimented her work and she was brought back to host "Countdown" in May 2008. The day she hosted was the highest rated news program among people 25 to 54 years of age, a demographic key to ratings. For her success, the next Monday Olbermann ranked Maddow third in his show's segment "World's Best Persons". Maddow filled in again on ''Countdown'' for eight and a half broadcasts while Olbermann was on vacation in July 2008 and the second half of the show on July 21. Maddow also filled in for David Gregory as host of ''Race for the White House''.
Early reviews for her show were mostly positive. ''Los Angeles Times'' writer Matea Gold stated Maddow "finds the right formula on MSNBC," and ''The Guardian'' writes Maddow has become the "star of America's cable news." ''Associated Press'' columnist David Bauder said she's "[Keith] Olbermann's political soul mate" and the Olbermann-Maddow shows are a "liberal two-hour block."
Distinguishing herself from others on the left, Maddow said she's a "national security liberal" and in a different interview that she's not "a partisan." ''The New York Times'' called her a "defense policy wonk" who is writing a book on the role of the military in postwar American politics. During the 2008 presidential election, Maddow did not formally support any candidate. Concerning Barack Obama's candidacy, Maddow said during the primaries, "I have never and still don't think of myself as an Obama supporter, either professionally or actually."
As of 2008 Maddow did not own a television set, but was committed to getting one so that Mikula can watch her show.
Category:1973 births Category:Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford Category:American anti–Iraq War activists Category:American people of Canadian descent Category:American political pundits Category:American Rhodes scholars Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television personalities Category:American women journalists Category:LGBT journalists Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:LGBT radio personalities Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:LGBT television personalities Category:Living people Category:MSNBC Category:NBC News Category:People from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:Stanford University alumni
ar:راتشيل مادو bg:Рейчъл Мадау de:Rachel Maddow eo:Rachel Maddow et:Rachel Maddow es:Rachel Maddow fa:ریچل مدو fr:Rachel Maddow ko:레이철 매도우 nl:Rachel Maddow ja:レイチェル・マドー pl:Rachel Maddow simple:Rachel Maddow sh:Rachel MaddowThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.