Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama | UPSC Mains: World History PDF Download

Bill Clinton (1993-2001)

William J. Clinton. like John F. Kennedy 30 years earlier and Franklin D. Roosevelt 60 years earlier, came into the White House like a breath of fresh air. He had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and the youngest ever Governor of Arkansas, elected in 1978 at the age of 32. As president he immediately caused a stir by appointing more women to top posts in his administration than had ever been seen before. Madeleine Albright became the first woman secretary of state; a woman judge was appointed to the Supreme Court, and three other important positions were given to women .
In the presidential election. Clinton had campaigned on a programme of welfare reform and a system of universal health insurance, together with a change in direction - away from ‘Reaganomics* . Unfortunately he experienced the same problems as Kennedy - how to persuade or manoeuvre the Republicans in Congress into approving his reforms. When his Health Security Bill was published, it was attacked by the insurance industry and the American Medical Association, and Congress refused to pass it. His task became even more difficult after big Republican gains in the Congressional elections of 1994. However, the uncompromising behaviour of some of the Republicans in Congress did not go down well with ordinary Americans, and Clinton's popularity increased. He did have some successes:

• Plans were introduced to reduce the huge budget defieit left over from the Reagan era.
• A complete reorganization and streamlining of the welfare system was begun.
• A minimum wage of $4.75 an hour was introduced ( May 1996 ). and this was to increase to $5.15 in May 1997.
• The North American Free Trade Agreement was signed with Canada and Mexico, setting up a free trade area between the three states.

Clinton could also point to some solid achievements in foreign affairs. He made a positive contribution to peace in the Middle East when he brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together in Washington in 1993; the eventual result was an agreement granting the Palestinians limited self -government in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. In 1995 he worked with President Yeltsin of Russia to try to bring an end to the war in Bosnia, the outcome being the Dayton Accords.
At the same time his presidency was dogged by rumours of shady business deals which he and his wife Hillary were said to have been involved in while he was Governor of Arkansas - the so-called ‘Whitewater scandal'. When two of his former business associates and the current Governor of Arkansas were convicted of multiple fraud ( May 1996 ), the Republicans hoped that Whitewater would do to Clinton what Watergate did to Nixon - drive him from office, or at least help to bring about his defeat in the election of November 1996. However, what seemed to matter to a majority of the American people was the state of the economy; and here too Clinton was successful - the economy began to recover and the budget deficit was reduced to more manageable proportions. The confrontational tactics of some of the Republicans, particularly Newt Gingrich, who constantly held up Clinton’s measures in Congress, probably won him sympathy, so that he was comfortably re-elected.
The great success story of Clinton s second term was the sustained economic growth, which by 1999 had set a new record for the longest period of continuous economic expansion in peacetime. Already in 1998 the budget had been balanced and there was a surplus for the first time since 1969. Other signs of the healthy economy were that the value of the stock market tripled, there was the lowest unemployment rate for almost 30 years, and the highest level of home ownership in the nation’ s history.

Scandal and Impeachment

Rumours of financial and sexual improprieties constantly circulated during Clinton’s first term as president. The attorney-general could not avoid giving the go-ahead for an investigation into the Clintons’ business affairs in Arkansas. The enquiry became known as ‘Whitewater’ , after the housing development company at the centre of the controversy; although it dragged on for several years, no conclusive evidence was found of any illegal dealings. Determined to discredit the president somehow or other, Kenneth Starr, the man conducting the enquiry, extended his investigations and eventually discovered proof that Clinton had been having an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young intern on the White House staff . Having repeatedly denied any such involvement, the president was forced to make a public apology to the American people. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, but in 1999 the Senate found him not guilty. It was a sordid business which to some extent damaged Clinton’ s reputation. On the other hand, his personal popularity remained high; he had achieved a great deal during his presidency, and there was a feeling that he had been the victim of unreasonable harassment at the hands of some Republicans.

The election of November 2000

The presidential election brought surprises, in more ways than one. The Democrat candidate, A1 Gore (Clinton’ s vice-president), started out the favourite in the contest against George W . Bush (Governor of Texas and son of the former president). Yet in spite of the healthy economic situation , the voting was very close. In total votes cast over the nation as a whole, Gore beat Bush by over 500 000. But the final result depended on which candidate won Florida, the last state to declare. Florida had 25 electoral votes, and this meant that whoever won in Florida would become president. After a recount, it looked as though Bush had won, though with a majority of less than 1000. The Democrats challenged the result and demanded a manual recount on the grounds that the machine counts were not reliable. The Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount, and after hand-counted ballots in two counties had been included in the result, Bush’ s lead was reduced to under 200. At this point, the Bush camp appealed to the US Supreme Court, which had a majority of Republican judges; the court reversed the Florida Supreme Court’ s decision and cancelled the manual count, on the grounds that it would take too long - five weeks had passed and the presidency had still not been decided. The Supreme Court decision meant that Bush had won Florida, and with it, the presidency . He was the first president since 1888 to win the election and yet lose the nationwide popular vote. The court’ s action was controversial in the extreme; many people were convinced that if the manual recount had been allowed, Gore would have won.

George W . Bush's first term (2001-5)

During his first year in office, the nature of President Bush’ s administration quickly became clear - he was on the far right, or neo-conservative, wing of the Republican party; one analyst later described him as ‘the most hard-right president since Herbert Hoover’.

Although he had campaigned as a ‘compassionate conservative’ , he began by introducing massive tax cuts amounting to $1.35 trillion for the wealthiest citizens. He also signalled his intention to spend less on social services. He drew criticism from the European Union and other countries when he announced that the USA was withdrawing from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which aimed to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, and from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The president soon faced a testing crisis with the 11 September terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He responded decisively, declaring war on terrorism and building up an international coalition to carry out the campaign . During the next 18 months the Taliban regime was removed from Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein was driven from power in Iraq. However, it proved more difficult to bring peace to these countries; two years after the overthrow of Saddam in April 2003, American soldiers in Iraq were still being killed by terrorists. There were reports that even in Afghanistan the Taliban were creeping back and gaining a hold in certain areas.

Meanwhile, at home the economy began to run into problems. The annual budget published in February 2004 showed that there was a deficit of well over 4 per cent of GDP ( the EU ceiling was 3 per cent). Reasons for this were;

• increasing expenditure on anti-terrorist security measures and the continuing cost of the operations in Iraq ;
• a fall in government revenue because of the huge tax cuts for the wealthy;
• extra credits given to farmers.

The government’ s policies were having mixed effects, the most striking one of which was the ever- widening gap between rich and poor. Statistics published at the end of 2003 showed that the richest one per cent of Americans owned well over 40 per cent of their nation’ s wealth . (For comparison , in the UK the richest 1 per cent owned 18 per cent of the total wealth.) This was not due solely to Bush’ s policies - it had been developing over the previous 20 years; but the trend accelerated after 2001, partly because of the tax cuts. The Centre for Public Integrity reported that every member of the Bush cabinet was a millionaire, and that its total net worth was more than ten times that of the Clinton cabinet.

At the other extreme there was increasing poverty, caused partly by rising unemployment and partly by low wages. Three million people had lost their jobs since Bush took office, and over 34 million, one in eight of the population , were living below the poverty line. Unemployment benefit was only paid for six months, and in some states - Ohio was an outstanding example - thousands of people were surviving with the help of charity food kitchens run by churches. At the end of Bush’s first four years in office, the number of Americans living below the poverty line had increased by 4.3 million since he became president in January 2001.
Why was this happening in the world’ s richest country? The government blamed the closure of so many factories on foreign imports, and singled out China as the main culprit.

The poor received only the minimum of help from the government because, basically, the Bush administration held fast to the traditional conservative American principles of laissez-faire: government should be kept to a minimum and should not have a direct role in alleviating poverty . Social welfare was thought to weaken self -reliance, whereas people should be encouraged to help themselves. Taxation was considered to be an unwarranted interference with individual property , and the wealthy should not feel obliged to help the poor, unless they chose to do so. The main obligation of business was to maximize profits for the benefit of shareholders; to that end, all government interference and regulation should be kept to a minimum .
Unfortunately this approach led to an ‘anything goes’ atmosphere, and some disturbing 

developments took place. In the absence of proper regulation, it was tempting for companies to ‘manipulate’ their accounts to show ever-increasing profits, and thereby keep their share prices rising . But this practice could not continue indefinitely; in November 2001 the energy trading company Enron went bankrupt after a series of secret deals - unknown both to the authorities and to investors - which turned out to be disastrously loss-making.
Enron’ s chief executive and his board members had to face Congressional investigations for fraud. Several other major companies followed ; tens of thousands of people lost their investments, while employees of the companies lost their retirement pensions when the pension funds disappeared.
As the election of November 2004 approached, many analysts believed that these mounting problems would bring about a Republican defeat. However, President Bush won a decisive, though still fairly close victory over his Democrat challenger, Senator John Kerry. Some 58.9 million Americans voted for Bush compared with 55.4 million for Kerry. The Republicans also increased their majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The growing poverty and unemployment in some states had apparently not been widespread enough to win the day for Kerry. Other reasons suggested for the Republican victory include:

• The Democrats failed to produce a clear campaign message setting out what the party stood for. Consequently, many voters decided it was wiser to stick with the tried and tested Bush rather than switch to Kerry, who was perceived as an unknown quantity.
• The Democrats failed to convince enough voters that they could be trusted to keep the country safe and secure.
• The Republicans were seen by the Christian right as the party that stood for moral and family values, whereas the Democrats were thought to be too sympathetic towards abortion and gay marriages.
• The Republicans were more successful than they had been in the 2000 election at galvanizing their supporters into going along to vote.

George W . Bush's second term ( 2005-8 )

• Disaster struck in the first year of President Bush’ s second term, just as it had in the first.
• This time it was Hurricane Katrina which battered the southern coast on 29 August. New Orleans was right at the centre and suffered extensive damage and flooding. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were badly affected and Bush declared a state of emergency in all three states. He toured the area, ordered federal cash to be used in the recovery and rebuilding process and sent the National Guard in to help the locals. The recovery was extremely slow and Bush was criticized for the government response and the apparent incompetence of those appointed to organize the recovery programme. Some observers believe that this flawed response to Hurricane Katrina was one of the reasons for the Republican defeats in the mid -term Congressional elections of 2006, which left Bush as a Tame-duck’ president - a president faced with a hostile Congress. In the area of health and social security, Bush’ s record was mixed. Increased funding introduced in 2003 for the National Institute of Health ( NIF) was withdrawn because of rising inflation - the first time it had been reduced for 36 years. He approved an addition to the Medicare health -insurance scheme to provide assistance towards paying for prescription medicines.
• However, in 2007 he vetoed the State Children’ s Health Insurance Programme (SCHIP), which would have extended the amount of free healthcare for the children of poor families. It was to be funded by an increase in the tax on cigarettes, and had been approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate, both of which had a Democrat majority 
• following the 2006 Congressional elections. Bush opposed the programme because he believed it was too close to socialism.
• In the early part of Bush’ s second term the economic situation seemed to be improving.
• Unemployment fell but the underlying problem was still the huge budget deficit. At a time of reduced taxation, defence and military spending were increasing, thanks to the continued campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency was assuming crisis proportions. In December 2007 the country had slipped into a recession.
• Unemployment rose rapidly and in just one month - February 2008 - 63 000 jobs were lost. The president tried to help by launching an aid programme in which thousands of people received a large tax rebate and some struggling businesses were given tax breaks.
• This was not enough to turn the tide, and all parts of the economy were affected. House sales and prices fell dramatically, and there was a sub-prime mortgage crisis when people were unable to keep up repayments. This threw mortgage lenders into difficulties and by September 2008 the US was on the brink of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. On 15 September 2008 Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the USA, filed for bankruptcy (for full details of the world financial crisis . In November 2008 over half a million jobs were lost. The National Bureau of Labor reported that by the time Bush left office no fewer than 2.9 million jobs had been lost since he came to power in January 2001.
• As the November 2008 presidential election drew near, the Republicans could hardly have faced a more inauspicious situation . When Bush took office in 2001 the USA had a huge budget surplus of $2 trillion . That was not counting the national debt, which stood at $5.7 trillion . However, many economists predicted that if the government - of whichever party - continued on the same path followed by Bill Clinton, the national debt should be paid off in about ten years. Bush decidedly did not continue on the Clinton road . First of all he cut taxes - a very popular move; unfortunately that meant a reduction in government revenue of $1.8 trillion. Next he declared the ‘war on terror’, leading to the invasion of Iraq and the operations in Afghanistan. These were extremely expensive and were financed by borrowing to the tune of $1.5 trillion. The financial crisis and the recession reduced government income still further, so that by November 2008, according to political commentator Corey Robin, ‘Bush had squandered the surplus and nearly doubled the size of the debt, adding more to it than any other president in US history.’
• In the election on 4 November 2008 the Democrat presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, won a comfortable victory over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin . The decisive factors were the unpopularity of the Iraq war, which McCain supported and Obama opposed, and the continuing economic crisis, which was blamed on Bush. Obama campaigned on a slogan of ‘Washington must change’ , promising universal healthcare, full employment, green policies and a USA respected instead of feared by its enemies. He also labelled McCain’ s programme damagingly as ‘more of the same’ , referring to his close association with the unpopular Bush over the previous eight years. This election made history: until 2008 both president and vice-president had always been WASPS; now the president was an African American and the vicepresident was a Roman Catholic.

Barack Obama ( 2009-13 )

• The most pressing problem facing the new president was the sorry state of the economy.
• Wasting no time, in February 2009 he signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This was a plan setting aside $787 billion to rescue the economy by creating new jobs. In June 2009 General Motors filed for bankruptcy, the largest manufacturing collapse in US history. Fortunately the government was able to step in and take over 60 per cent of the business. Then in July 2010 came the Financial Reform Act, designed to reduce the power of the large banks and provide more protection for customers and investors. This was a step in the right direction, but critics argued that it did not go far enough to be certain of preventing another financial crash like that of 2008. Obama was determined to deal with the other source of discontent - the war in Iraq. His first act as president was to ask his military leaders to prepare a plan for what he called a ‘responsible’ withdrawal of troops from Iraq, to be completed by the end of 2011. This was achieved: the war was formally declared to be over, although it was not the end of violence, since Sunnis and Shias continued to fight each other.
• Unfortunately the war in Afghanistan was decidedly not over; by the middle of 2009 the Taliban had been so successful that they controlled many areas and had set up shadow governments and law courts there. Many observers were convinced that it was impossible to defeat the Taliban militarily, and that talks would have to begin. Even President Karzai of Afghanistan thought this was the only way forward. However, Obama decided to have another ‘surge’ , and in December 2009 he ordered an extra 30 000 troops into Afghanistan with orders to ‘seize’ the initiative’.
• Another Obama initiative concerned the Arab-Israeli problem . In a speech in Cairo in June 2009 he had promised to form a new relationship of trust and co-operation between Islam and the USA, putting behind them years of suspicion and discord, and calming the dispute with Iran over nuclear weapons. The Iranian government made no response, but most other countries welcomed the announcement. He even apologized to Muslims for American military strength, the war in Iraq , Guantanamo and colonialism. It was probably because of this initiative that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009. It was a great honour for him, but it drew mixed reactions - critics said it was too early for such an award, as he had not actually achieved anything yet. Then in a speech at the UN General Assembly ( 23 September 2010), he proposed that a separate Palestinian state should be set up within a year and requested President Netanyahu of Israel to stop allowing new Israeli settlements to be built on land destined to be part of Palestine. Predictably, the Israelis were furious: they protested strongly and sought support from the Israeli lobby in the USA. Massive pressure was put on Obama by the conservatives until he felt obliged to change his position . The next demand for statehood by the Palestinians in September 2011 was vetoed at the United Nations - by the USA!
• Understandably they felt betrayed, and the new ‘rapprochement’ between the USA and Islam was looking distinctly shaky. Nor did it help that the Guantanamo Bay prison , which in January 2009 Obama had promised would be closed within the year, was still fully operational. . In domestic affairs Obama also ran into problems: there were great objections to his healthcare reforms designed to bring some 30 million more Americans within the protection of health insurance. Eventually he was able to sign the changes into law (March 2010), but the Republicans were so determined to strike down ‘Obamacare’ that 26 of the states challenged the legality of parts of the legislation via the Supreme Court. This took over two years to reach a decision - in June 2012 the Court ruled that the whole of the legislation was legal. It was due to be introduced piece by piece until it became fully operational in 2018, taking the USA closer than ever before to guaranteed coverage for everybody . In the mid-term elections of November 2010 the Democrats lost 63 seats and control of the House of Representatives, probably because the economy was showing very little sign of improvement and unemployment remained static. Leading the opposition to Obama was the Tea Party movement, a conservative group which advocated reduced taxes, lower government spending and paying off some of the national debt; in other words, a return to general austerity. They took their name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when colonists had protested against the British tax on tea by dumping tea taken from British ships into the harbour. After months of argument, in August 2011 Obama gave way and signed an austerity bill that, among other things, reduced the 
• pay of federal workers, cut defence spending and endorsed a more aggressive austerity programme.
• It was claimed that this had saved the USA from what would have been a disastrous debt default, though others argue that Obama would never have allowed the US to default; there was money in reserve to pay its debts, and there were alternative savings that he could have made, rather than default. Whatever the truth, the euphoria was only short-lived: only four days later the ratings agency, Standard and Poor’ s, cut the US triple-A rating for the first time, reducing it to AA + status. The reason -the USA had failed to tackle its massive budget deficit and its equally massive debts. There were two bright spots among the gloom, though even they were controversial. In December 2010 President Obama signed an historic law repealing the ban on gays serving openly in the military - a largely popular move, but one which appalled the religious right. In May 2011 it was announced that Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, had been killed by American troops in Pakistan. This caused widespread celebrations in the USA but brought relations with Pakistan to an all-time low. As the USA moved towards the next presidential election in November 2012, unemployment was still high and economic recovery very slow. Most commentators predicted a close election, but in the event, Obama won a comfortable victory over his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. One important reason for this was the changing racial makeup of the USA - African Americans and Hispanics make up a steadily increasing proportion of the population, and overwhelmingly, they support the Democrats. The Republicans’ anti-gay and anti-abortion policies lost them votes, and so too did the perception that Romney, a multi-millionaire, cared more for the interests of wealthy plutocrats than for the needs of ordinary people. Controversially, many Christianright voters turned against Romney on the grounds that, since he was a Mormon, he could not be a true Christian. In the end Obama won much support for his demand that the wealthy ( those earning more than $250 000 a year) should pay more in taxes.