In Clinton became the youngest governor in the country when he was elected governor of Arkansas. Elected U. Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in following the revelation of his affair with Monica Lewinsky but was acquitted by the Senate in Since leaving office, Clinton has worked with the Clinton Foundation and campaigned for his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton , in the and presidential elections. To provide for her son, Virginia moved to New Orleans, Louisiana to study anesthesiology, while Clinton stayed with his grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy.
While opposites in many ways — Eldridge was easygoing and Edith the disciplinarian — both lavished attention on the young boy, instilling in him the importance of a good education.
I was reading little books when I was 3. Clinton's mother returned to Arkansas with her nursing degree in Later that year she married an automobile salesman named Roger Clinton, who soon moved the family back to his hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. Clinton then took the last name of his stepfather. Although neither his parents nor his grandparents were religious, Clinton became a devoted Baptist from a very young age.
On Sunday mornings, he woke himself up, put on his best dress clothes and walked the mile to Park Place Baptist Church to attend services alone.
Throughout his childhood, Clinton grew increasingly disturbed by his stepfather's drinking and abusive behavior toward his mother and younger half-brother. At the age of 14, already standing more than 6 feet tall, Clinton finally snapped. He told his stepfather, "If you want them, you'll have to go through me. Clinton attended Hot Springs High School, a segregated all-white school, where he was a stellar student and a star saxophonist for the school band.
The principal of Hot Springs High, Johnnie Mae Mackey, placed a special emphasis on producing students devoted to public service, and she developed a strong bond with the smart and politically-inclined Clinton. In late spring , Clinton attended Boys State, an American Legion program designed to introduce students to government service.
Kennedy at the White House Rose Garden. A photograph of the young Clinton shaking hands with President Kennedy has become an iconic image symbolizing a passing of the baton between generations of modern Democratic leadership. William Fulbright. Upon graduating from high school in , Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University to study international affairs. He immediately thrust himself into university politics, serving as the president of his freshman and sophomore classes, though he lost the election for student body president as a junior.
The political hopeful also began working as a clerk for the Foreign Relations Committee under Senator Fulbright, one of Congress' most outspoken critics of the Vietnam War. Clinton came to share Fulbright's view that the war was both immoral and contrary to the country's best interests.
Before graduating from Georgetown in , Clinton won a highly prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study for two years at Oxford University. However, in the spring of , Clinton received his draft notice and was forced to return to Arkansas.
Clinton avoided military service by enrolling in the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas Law School, but instead of attending law school that fall, he returned to Oxford and later claimed he had permission to do so. Feeling guilty about his decision to avoid the draft, Clinton resubmitted his name to the draft board, but he received a high enough lottery number to assure that he would not have to serve in Vietnam.
Clinton returned to the U. After graduating from Yale, the Clintons moved to Arkansas. Clinton began teaching at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville and thrust himself into politics. House of Representatives. Clinton lost the race, but it was closer than expected, and the campaign marked him as a rising star of the Arkansas Democratic Party. Two years later, Clinton was elected state attorney general.
Two years later, he was elected governor. In , at the age of 32, Clinton easily defeated Republican Lynn Lowe in the Arkansas gubernatorial race to become the youngest governor in the country.
He served one term before he was defeated by the incumbent; he was voted again to the governorship in and served for four consecutive terms. Working closely with his wife, Hillary, in his first term as governor Clinton set out on an ambitious agenda to reform the state's education and health care systems. However, hampered by his youth and political inexperience, he made several blunders as governor. Clinton mishandled the riots by Cuban refugees interned at Fort Chaffee and instituted a highly unpopular fee hike on auto licenses.
At the time, Arkansas governors served only two-year terms, and at the conclusion of Clinton's term in a little-known Republican challenger named Frank White shockingly knocked him out of office. Although the loss devastated Clinton, he refused to let it put an end to his promising political career.
Freely admitting his past mistakes and beseeching voters to give him a second chance, Clinton swept back into office, this time for four consecutive terms. As governor, Clinton took a centrist approach, championing a mix of traditionally liberal and conservative causes. While in England, Clinton received his draft notice. Instead he returned to Oxford, although the evidence is unclear as to whether this was done with the approval of his ROTC contacts. Back in England, Clinton evidently remained conflicted about his decision to avoid the draft, torn between his moral convictions that the war was wrong and his sense of kinship with former classmates who were serving and dying in Vietnam.
In the fall of , he chose to re-subject himself to the draft—doing so, however, at a time when Nixon administration policy seemed to suggest that future call-ups of combat troops would significantly decline. In any event, Clinton's luck held when his birth date in the lottery drew the high number of , distant enough to ensure that he would never be called.
Clinton then wrote a letter to the director of the Arkansas ROTC program thanking him for "saving" him from the draft, explaining that he still loved his country while nevertheless despising the war. In England, Clinton participated in numerous antiwar demonstrations, and both his antiwar activities and his ROTC letter resurfaced years later during his bid for the presidency in Although Clinton remained in the Rhodes Scholar program, making many contacts with students who would later become part of his administration, his Oxford coursework never added up to a degree.
In , Clinton entered Yale Law School, earning his degree in and meeting his future wife, Hillary Rodham, whom he married in During this period he also worked on the U. Senate campaign of Joe Duffy in Connecticut, and toward the end of his studies he managed the Texas campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern who lost Texas in the Nixon landslide.
After graduation, Clinton moved back to Arkansas with a job teaching law at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Almost as soon as he arrived home, Clinton threw himself into politics, running for a seat in the U.
Although Clinton lost this race, it was the closest election for Hammerschmidt in his twenty-six years in Congress, marking Clinton as a rising political star. Two years later, Arkansas voters elected Clinton state attorney general. Then in , at age thirty-two, Clinton ran for governor, winning an easy victory and becoming one of the nation's youngest governors ever. However, his youth and inexperience quickly left Arkansans unimpressed.
Governor Clinton had several missteps, including difficulties in handling rioting among Cuban refugees temporarily interned by the federal government at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. He also raised auto license fees to pay for road construction and alienated the state's powerful timber interests by an unsuccessful intervention in the controversy over the practice of clear-cutting. Consequently, the voters turned him out in favor of Frank White, a little known, freshly minted Republican savings and loan executive.
Clinton became the youngest former governor in American history. Shocked by his defeat, Clinton went to work for a Little Rock law firm but spent most of his time campaigning for reelection. In the race, Clinton admitted his mistakes and used his incredible charm and well-honed TV ads to convince the voters to give him another chance. He won in and again in Voters then supported him for two, four-year terms in and As governor, Clinton championed centrist issues. He strongly advocated educational reform, appointing Hillary Clinton to lead a committee to draft higher standards for Arkansas schools.
One of the administration's proposals called for competence tests for all teachers, a policy development that stirred up a national debate. Governor Clinton's sweeping education reforms positively impacted Arkansas schools, which experienced a decrease in dropout rates and an increase in college-entrance exam test scores under his watch, although the state's overall rankings moved very little.
During Clinton's tenure as governor of Arkansas, he favored capital punishment. He promoted welfare reforms aimed at pushing welfare recipients into the workforce and moved decisively to promote affirmative action—appointing more African Americans to state boards, commissions, and agency posts than all of his predecessors combined. Additionally, he initiated a style of government that resembled a permanent election campaign.
Using the talents of the political consultant Dick Morris, Clinton pushed legislative agendas based upon public opinion polls. The governor and his strategist then built support for their policies through well-orchestrated sales campaigns that used television, leaflets, and telephone banks to pressure state lawmakers.
Setting his sights higher, Clinton used his five terms as Arkansas governor to cultivate a national profile for himself. He soon emerged as one of the leading reform governors in the Democratic Party. In and , Clinton served as chairman of the National Governors Association, speaking on behalf of the nation's governors.
There are many foursquare houses in towns and cities across the country, most built during the early years of the 20th century. The Clinton house dates from The Cassidy family moved into the home in , when Virginia was in high school, and purchased the house in The restored interior still has much of its original detail, including the staircase in the living room, with its turned balusters and massive, paneled newel post. A small pantry features built-in cupboards.
Virtually all of the second floor finishes are original, including the flooring and the beaded board in the hallway and nursery. Virginia received her R. He was a traveling salesman from Sherman, Texas. In , Bill Blythe and Virginia lived briefly with her parents before moving to Chicago for his work. Virginia was already expecting; she and Bill wanted to return to Hope for the birth of their child. He insisted she fly back and he would drive to meet her.
Tragically, he died in an auto accident en route to Hope. Lionel train set Bill received from his stepfather in the s. Exhibit at the 13th St. Clinton Birthplace Foundation, Inc. Young Billy lived with his widowed mother in the comfortable frame home with his grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Grisham Cassidy.
He remembers playing in the yard with friends and cousins. In , Virginia, a registered nurse, went to New Orleans for her certification as a nurse-anesthetist. She left her two-year-old son in the care of her parents. They visited back and forth during the months Virginia was away.
His grandmother taught him his numbers using playing cards pinned to the kitchen curtains. Virginia finished her schooling and returned to Hope in They moved a short distance away to a house of their own at E. Bill enjoyed his Lionel trains and was keen on Hopalong Cassidy.
0コメント