Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton,

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton, the twice-elected 42nd president of the United States (1993-2001) was a paradox. While he is frequently counted among the most popular American presidents of the 20th century who presided over the longest period of economic growth and prosperity in the country, he was only the second U.S. president to have been impeached for his personal indiscretions. Although it may still be too early to pass a definitive judgment on his place in history, his political leadership and personal style that he brought to the Oval office offers a fascinating subject for study and analyses. This paper presents an overview of Bill Clinton's political leadership by reviewing glimpses of his leadership qualities during his early life, student days, and his political career, particularly his Presidency.

Early Life

In order to understand the man and how he developed his leadership style, it is necessary to take a brief look at his early life. Bill Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He was originally named William Jefferson Blythe IV, after his father who had died in a car accident before he was born. Bill lived with his grandparents in an African-American neighborhood for a while who instilled strong values in the boy and taught him that segregation was wrong; lessons that he never forgot. ("It All Began...") Bill took the name William Jefferson Clinton when his mother remarried. His step-father, Roger Clinton, was an alcoholic and often beat his wife and verbally abused the sons. At the age of 15, Bill made it clear to his step-father that he would protect his mother and brother from further assaults; he thus demonstrated at a very young age that he had the courage and the character to stand up for himself and others when the chips were down. At a later stage, Bill forgave his step-father, and showed that he had compassion, as he often drove hundreds of miles from his University in Washington to visit his father as he lay dying of cancer in a hospital.

Education

Clinton initially attended a Roman Catholic school and then went to public schools for his primary education. He was an outstanding as well as a popular student from the beginning; got high grades, held several student offices, was elected as a delegate from Arkansas to American Legion Boys' Nation, and even met President John F. Kennedy at a ceremony in the White House in 1963. The event was a memorable one for the young Clinton, and he is said to have decided at the time to enter politics. ("It All Began...")

Realizing that he needed a high quality education to meet his goals, which was expensive, Bill Clinton worked very hard in school. As a result, he got scholarships and loans and was able to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. For his Bachelor of Science degree in International Affairs. During this period, he also worked as an intern in the office of Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, who was a leading opponent of the Vietnam War. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1968, Clinton was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to continue his post graduate studies at the Oxford University.

As a Rhodes scholar in England, he helped organize an anti-war protest rally and in 1969, wrote a letter from Oxford to an army colonel in the University of Arkansas ROTC program concerning his draft eligibility and expressed his opposition to the draft by stating that no government.".. should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they oppose..." ("Bill Clinton's Draft Letter") the letter became an issue during Clinton's bid for the candidacy with his opponents dubbing him a draft dodger; Clinton never denied that he had opposed the Vietnam War as a student but did not accept that he was a "draft dodger" contending that he had subjected himself to a draft lottery and only the luck of the draw - a high lottery number - prevented him from being drafted. Even as a 23-year-old student, Clinton probably had his future political career in mind and did not go overboard in his opposition to the war by an outright rejection of the draft.

After returning from Oxford, he went to Yale law school, where, besides completing his law degree, he met and married a fellow student, Hillary Rodham. At the time, Hillary, a junior staffer on the Senate Watergate Committee is said to have told a fellow staffer and future White House counsel, that he should meet her boy friend [Bill Clinton] because he was going to be president one day (Campbell and Rockman, 345) the incident shows that even at a young age, Clinton was ambitious, had set himself a lofty (some would say 'impossible') goal, and was totally focused in achieving his aim: all hallmarks of a successful leader.

Entering Politics: Baptism of Fire

After getting his law degree from Yale, Clinton returned to his home state to teach law at the University of Arkansas and to enter politics. In 1974, he made his first attempt at seeking public office as a candidate of the Democratic Party by challenging the incumbent Republican congressman in Arkansas, John Paul Hammerschmidt, for a seat in the United States House of Representatives. Hammerschmidt was considered unbeatable and had won all his previous elections by wide margins. At such an early stage of his political career, Clinton had shown that he had the political courage to fight against heavy odds and loved an electoral fight. Although he lost the election, Clinton caught the eye as he gave the veteran Republican his closest-ever fight by running an energetic campaign. Two years later, he was elected attorney-general of Arkansas State and by 1978; he had contested and won the governorship, becoming the one of the youngest persons ever to hold the office at the age of 32 (Dumas).

During his first term as governor, Clinton made efforts to improve Arkansas's economy, which was among the poorest in the country. He focused on improving the state highways as they were in a bad shape but had to raise taxes for meeting the cost, which proved unpopular. Some of his other initiatives such restriction on tree-cutting in national forests were opposed by the lumber and paper-making companies, while bankers were annoyed with his proposal to withhold state funds from banks that did not lend enough money for small businesses. Most of all, his opponents exploited the government's settling of Cuban refugees in Arkansas, by evoking the fear that they would take away jobs from the local workers. All of these factors contributed to Clinton's defeat in his bid for re-election for the governorship in 1980 against the Republican Party candidate (Ibid.)

Perseverance in Defeat

After the defeat, most of his advisers and friends, suggested that he should wait a while before running for office again. Clinton, however, was made of sterner stuff and showed exemplary perseverance in defeat. Ignoring the advice, he again challenged White in the very next gubernatorial election in 1982, winning back the office by polling nearly 55% of the vote.

Apart from perseverance and persistence, Clinton also showed that he had the capacity to learn from his mistakes. He recognized that in his first term as Governor, he had attempted to tackle a wide range of issues in too short a time, and perhaps lost his focus. He learned valuable lessons of politics in his defeat -- to tackle one issue at a time; to choose his fights carefully, to resist the urge to change everything at once, and to prepare people before proposing major changes. These lessons helped Clinton to win consecutive reelection as Governor of Arkansas in 1984, 1986, and 1990 (Dumas).

Political Leadership at the State Level

Clinton demonstrated strong, effective, and compassionate political leadership during his lengthy tenure as Governor of Arkansas and had a number of notable achievements to his credit. Taking one thing at a time, he first resolved to improve the educational standards in the state, which were abysmally low as compared to other states. In the mission, Clinton also used the formidable talents of his wife, Hillary, by appointing her the head of a committee charged with proposing higher standards for Arkansas schools, while he worked tirelessly for winning approval from the state legislature for the proposed reforms. Ultimately, he managed to get the taxes raised in order to pay higher wages to the teachers, offer more courses in schools, provide more college scholarships, and distribute more money to the poorest schools the result was a substantial improvement in college-entrance tests by Arkansas students; significant fall in the dropout rate of high school students, and a corresponding rise in the percentage of students who went to college.

Clinton also tackled the sluggish economy of the state by focusing on promotion of new businesses and job growth. He streamlined banking laws, persuaded them to provide more money for new technology-oriented businesses, and reduced the taxes of large Arkansas companies that expanded their production and created new jobs. As a result, by the late 1980s, the job-creation rate in Arkansas was among the highest in the country.

During all this time, Clinton never left sight of his life-long ambition of getting to the highest political office in the country. He methodically prepared himself for the job by learning the ropes and by gradually assuming a number of national leadership roles, e.g., in 1985 and 1986 he served as chairman of the Southern Growth Policies Board, became chairman of the National Governors Association in 1986 and 1987, led a movement to change the nation's system of providing welfare to poor people, and headed the Democratic Leadership Council 1990 and 1991.

Risk Taking

Calculated risk-taking ability is one of the key characteristic of a successful leader. In 1990 / 91, the incumbent President, George H.W. Bush enjoyed very high approval ratings in the wake of the First Gulf War. Not many politicians were keen to risk their political careers by taking on the President in the upcoming 1992 Presidential elections. Bill Clinton believed that Bush was vulnerable despite the polls due to a weak economy and announced his intention to contest the elections. His lengthy tenure as the governor of Arkansas, chairmanship of the National Governor's Association as well as the leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council had enabled him to develop a network of friends and supporters in important places and he faced little difficulty in raising the required election funds. From then onwards, he ran a campaign which focused on domestic issues, particularly the economy.

It's the Economy, Stupid"

The famous sign "It's the economy, stupid" that adorned the Clinton campaign headquarters and was the primary slogan of his 1992 election campaign; it has since become almost a cliche. At the time, it signified the importance of the economy for the ordinary voter as well as the main thrust of Clinton's campaign strategy, with the candidate further promising the voters that he would concentrate "like a laser beam" on the economy.

Luckily, Clinton's leadership was not just about slogans and promises. He quickly identified two areas of the economy, which he would have to set right. His top priority would be to control the ballooning budget deficit as he realized that once the budget deficit was controlled, other benefits such as low inflation, reduced unemployment and higher economic growth due to availability of low-cost capital would follow. After being elected as the President, Clinton as he had promised indeed "focused like a laser beam" on reducing the budget deficit. In the very first year of office, he presented a balanced budget with a $500 billion price tag and managed to get it passed by the Congress even with every single Republican voting against it. (Fallows and others, 45-46). Balancing the budget proved to be the single biggest achievement of his presidency; one that enabled Clinton to preside over the longest period of economic growth in the country's history. According to Leon Panetta, his economic record with achievements such as "the first balanced federal budget in 30 years, the largest surplus ever, the most new jobs created under a single administration, the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the lowest inflation since the 1960s, the highest homeownership rate on record, the largest U.S. exports ever, the largest drop in poverty in nearly 30 years" reads like "Ripley's Believe it or Not" (Panetta).

Positioning Himself as the New Democrat

Before Clinton's election to the Presidency in 1992, the conservatives had turned the political tide almost decisively in their favor. Since the disastrous Presidency of Jimmy Carter, no Democratic candidate had been able to offer a credible challenge for the Presidency in the United States. Republicans had successfully destroyed the candidacies of Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988, when Democrats were portrayed as the party of high taxes and deficits, flag-burning protesters, and alternative lifestyles (Campbell and Rockman 259). In other developed countries of the world too, the left-liberal ideology was on the retreat. Clinton, therefore, realized that the big-government, high-spending policies of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party did not appeal to most voters. He, therefore, cleverly presented himself as a "New Democrat" -- one who was not addicted to raising taxes or deficit spending; was not hostile to the family; was willing to be critical of their core constituencies such as the African-Americans and trade unions; and was certainly not "unpatriotic" as many left-liberals were painted to be.

Clinton shrewdly realized that the Republicans and the right wing need not have a monopoly over issues such as law and order, being tough on crime, and protecting the institution of the family. Going one step further, Clinton's "third way" or policy of "triangulation" as it was sometimes called, effectively painted both the Republicans as being too far to the right and the "old" Democrats as being too far to the left, with himself (the "new" Democrat) as the sensible moderate in the center. He did so by retaining the most popular of the "big government" initiatives of the left such as the Social Security program while agreeing to cut "welfare" expenditures that were considered as an unacceptable dole out to the "lazy and the poor" from their pockets by the middle class.

This "Clintonian" strategy of a move by the liberal-left to the center, not only took the wind out of the right wing sails in the U.S., but also showed the way to the struggling liberals in other Western democratic countries. Tony Blair, for example, adopted the same "positioning-to-the-center" strategy in the 1997 British elections to out-maneuver the Conservatives (Ibid. 260)

Brilliant Intellect

Everyone who has worked closely with Bill Clinton acknowledges that he possessed a razor sharp mind and brilliant intellect: characteristics of most great leaders of the world. Leon Panetta, who served as Clinton's advisor on economy and later as his chief of staff, recalls that whenever he presented detailed and complex numbers on issues as varied as defense, agriculture, energy, transportation, taxes, health, Social Security, law enforcement or education, Clinton quickly grasped both the policy and political implications of each area. (Panetta) Panetta also recalls "with awe," Clinton's ability to work through full days with little rest and remember every detail "from scheduling, to politics, to who picked what playing card in the staff game of hearts we played on every Air Force One trip." (Ibid) to supplement his brilliant intellect, Clinton also had the rare quality of being open to the "other" viewpoint and the flexibility to accommodate it.