42.) Bill Clinton

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.’” — Bill Clinton's inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1993.

Bill Clinton has the highest end-of-term approval rating of any president in modern history - 66%. But that doesn't mean things came easy. It doesn't even mean he succeeded in what he set out to do! Follow along as Clinton rises from Arkansas poverty to become the youngest governor in the country and a dark horse presidential candidate on his way to the White House. Once there, he will contend with a revolution in opposition politics, a government shutdown, and the first presidential impeachment trial since 1868. And then, after all that, he'll try to resolve one of the world's most tragic intractable struggles - the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He won't succeed at that either, but damnit, he'll try.

Bibliography
1. The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House - John Harris
2. Bill Clinton - Michael Tomasky
3. Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush – Jon Meacham
4. Bush - Jean Edward Smith
5. His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life – Jonathan Alter

Transcript

Bill Clinton displayed the largest on the job learning curve of anyone we’ve covered in the presidency.

His first year in office was awful. Defeat after defeat, retreat after retreat, an embarrassing cascade of failures that led to the greatest midterm electoral shellacking in American history. A defeat that put the Republican Party, led by scorched-earth whip Newt Gingrich, in charge of Congress for the first time in 50 years.

But if anyone thought that would send Bill back to Arkansas a failure, they were wrong.

Clinton learned from his mistakes, changed his approach, and began assembling a string of small but respectable wins that, by the end of his two terms, convinced 66% percent of the American people that he was doing a good job and helped him survive the first presidential impeachment trial since 1868.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. How did a former Arkansas governor rebound from one of the worst starts in presidential history to become one of its most popular presidents his last days in office.

Oh. And we’ll talk about Monica. We… have to talk about Monica.

—-

William Jefferson Blythe was born in the town of Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946 . And trust you me, his presidential biographers have never failed to mention that he is the man from Hope.

But what’s that “Bill Blythe” business. Well, Bill’s dad, William Blythe senior, die in a car accident on a rain-slicked highway a few months before young Bill was born. The son was raised by his grandparents while his mother studied to become a nurse and anesthetist in New Orleans. A few years later, she came home with more than just a degree – she’d found a new husband too.

Roger Clinton was a car salesman who was a decent-enough father and husband when he was sober, buuuut he wasn’t always sober. Young Bill, now Bill Clinton, grew up in a house of some domestic violence, and this had a powerful impact on him. Bill became a conciliator by nature who put his energy into academic and musical achievement to escape the pain at home.

And boy did he escape home.

A trip to Washington D.C. when Bill was 16 sealed the deal. He shook president John F. Kennedy’s hand and said, wow, I want to go into politics.

A couple years later, he was bound for Goergetown, where he studied foreign service in the shadow of the nation’s capital. Then he was off to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. And then Yale law.

Clinton was smart. And popular. And apparently handsome. Which might be why he caught the eye of fellow Yale student Hillary Rodham at the library one day. They started talking politics and four years later, they were married. As one of Hillary’s friends put it, Bill was the smartest, coolest kid in class, and both Hillary and Bill thought they were lucky that the other one loved them back.

Which isn’t to say there wouldn’t be… drama in this relationship. If you know one thing about Bill Clinton, it’s probably that later gets impeached for having an affair as president. He will have lots of affairs. So many affairs. And the best explanation I can find for it is a comment he once made in family counseling after his younger brother was arrested for dealing drugs – “I think we’re all addicted to something. Some people are addicted to drugs. Some to power. Some to food. Some to sex. We’re all addicted to something.”

I’ll let you guess what Bill may have been addicted to.

In 1974, 28-year-old Bill Clinton, 1 year-removed from Yale, ran for Congress back home in Arkansas. And that might seem both presumptuous and crazy, running for congress when you’re 28? But there was a compelling reason for Clinton to believe he had a shot – Watergate. 74 was the year of Nixon’s secret tapes went public. The year congress impeached him. The year he resigned. And the year Ford pardoned him. National disgust was about to spawn a blue tsunami, and Bill wanted to ride that tsunami to Congress.

He fell 6,000 votes short, losing to an incumbent Republican 89,000 votes to 83,000. But this wasn’t the end of his career, or his audacity. Heck no. That strong showing was just the beginning. 

Two years later, 30-year-old Bill, seeking his first political office, campaigned to be the next Arkansas Attorney General and, holy smokes, he won! But he wasn’t satisfied. Two years later, he ran for governor, and wouldn’t you believe it, he won that, too! Just like that, Bill became one of the youngest governors in American history.

And then he messed up.

Clinton had campaigned for governor by promising to improve Arkansas’ roads. To build better roads, he needed money, he wanted to raise that money by making folks buy a car tab based on the value of their car – so if you drove an expensive car, you’d pay more toward the improvement of the highways.

But the Arkansas state legislature took another tack. They passed a car tab that was calculated on the weight of the car. This would mean folks driving sports cars would pay a pittance while working men driving heavy trucks would pay out the nose. Clinton was faced with a choice, sign the car tab bill into law so he could get his improved highways, or veto it and don’t get those highways. He signed it, and voters promptly threw him out of office for it.

Yup. After rocketing from congressional runner-up to the governorship in 6 short years, Clinton was back on the outside, voted out of the governor’s mansion.

And he nearly hung up his spurs. But one day a stranger walked up to Clinton at a gas station and boasted that he had been so pissed at Clinton over the car tabs thing that he had convinced 10 people to vote against Clinton that year. 

Bill heard the man out, then asked him, if I ran again, would you consider voting for me? And the man said “Sure I would! We’re even now.”

Before you knew it, Clinton was back in the race, kicking off his candidacy with a television ad in which he said, “my daddy never had to whip me twice for the same thing.” He’d learned his lesson - he promised! And voters believed him. Clinton was elected back to the governorship with 55% of the vote and held onto it for the next 10 years.

But the thing is… Clinton’s ambition was never just Arkansas. He wanted to get back to that place where he’d once shook John F. Kennedy’s hand. He wanted to get to the white house.

And so he started positioning himself for it.

On May 6, 1990, Bill Clinton told a Democratic crowd in Cleveland that, “too many of the people who used to vote for us, the very burdened middle class we are talking about, have not trusted us in national elections to defend our national interests abroad, to put their values into our social policy at home, or to take their tax money and spend it with discipline. We've got to turn these perceptions around or we can't continue as a national party."

That diagnosis… it got folks talking.

And while he had their attention, Bill announced he was a candidate for the 1992 presidential election.

Now. Bill didn’t actually think he could win the 1992 presidential election. George H.W. Bush was sitting around 65% approval the day Clinton announced - unbeatable. Not that it mattered. Clinton didn’t even think he’d reach the general election. Far better known democrats like Ted Kennedy and New York governor Mario Cuomo were known to covet the office. There’s no way he could beat them in a primary.

But then a funny thing happened. None of the favorites in the democratic party ran. They could read a poll as well as Clinton could, and they were convinced that whoever ran against Bush in 92 would get creamed so bad that they’d never be able to run for president again. Saturday Night Live even had a skit about it - “Campaign ‘92: The race to avoid being the guy who loses to Bush.”

And so, as the brightest stars of the Democratic party all decided to stay home, Bill Clinton, the 46-year-old governor of Arkansas, found himself in the unlikely role of frontrunner for the Democratic primary.

But then… the dirt came out.

Allegations of infidelity. A lot of it. Most prominently, Gennifer Flowers, a former tv-journalist who claimed to have been in a secret relationship with Clinton for 12 years.

Backed up against a wall, Bill and Hillary sat down for an interview on 60-minutes to address the controversy head-on.

Bill acknowledged he’d caused, quote “pain in my marriage,” but when the reporter asked if Bill and Hillary were an ‘arrangement,’ Bill interrupted – “Wait a minute. You’re looking at two people who love each other. This is not an arrangement or an understanding. This is a marriage.” 

And that seemed to work. Polls showed the public understood and forgave Clinton … until an even more damning story broke – Had Clinton dodged the draft to avoid serving in Vietnam?

Bill Clinton graduated Georgetown at the height of the Vietnam war. Hundreds of thousands of men were fighting and dying in the jungles of Vietnam, half a world away, and Clinton feared he might become one of them. He hated the war. He protested it and thought it should end. The prospect of being sent there? It was too much. Which might be why he earned that Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, buying a little time, but the war was still raging when his time in England reached its end. How could he avoid the war? Then he thought of it - Clinton applied to law school and the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, which could potentially keep him out of the war for another 4 years. But then Clinton drew a high draft lottery number, realized he likely wouldn’t be drafted, and announced he would not attend Arkansas after all. 

As far as draft dodging goes, this is… pretty tame. Clinton’s actions didn’t actually keep him out of Vietnam, his high draft number did. And even if he’d been drafted, the army probably wasn’t going to send an Oxford student into the mud. They’d probably have put him in intelligence or something like that.

But that didn’t stop the officer who had run Arkansas’ ROTC program from coming public during the 1992 election with a letter claiming Clinton had duped him to evade the war in Vietnam - in the letter, Clinton had thanked the officer, quote, “for saving me from the draft.” - and this time the public wasn’t forgiving. Clinton’s campaign went into a tailspin. Aides were resigning. Advisors were questioning when to drop out of the race.

But Clinton would hear none of it. He wasn’t going to quit. He was going to work harder. Campaign harder. Try harder.

And, wouldn’t you know it, it worked.

Clinton criss-crossed New Hampshire as if his career depended on it to meet as many voters as possible and they responded to his personal charisma, voting him to a surprising second place. In a clever moment, Clinton announced New Hampshire had made him “the comeback kid,” and nobody remembered who won New Hampshire, they just remembered that Clinton was the comeback kid.

From there to the convention, Clinton had a firm grasp on the Democratic nomination. But even as he had that nomination locked up, he could see peril awaiting in the General election. National polls showed him polling third behind President Bush and Texas millionaire-turned-third-party candidate Ross Perot! The bruising primaries had imprinted a none-too-flattering image of Clinton upon the country – he was an untrustworthy politician who would say what it took to charm your vote.

Clinton knew he had to shake up the dynamic of the race. He decided to do it with his pick of running mate.

For about as long as we’ve been doing this podcast, we’ve watched presidents pick vice presidential candidates who were in some ways their opposites shore up support with voters who weren’t in their camps.

The northerner JFK picked the southernor LBJ.

The older Eisenhower picked the younger Nixon.

Shoot, at one point the Republican Lincoln picked the Democrat Johnson!

So it goes. So it had always been.

Which is why the country was shocked when the young, southern moderate, Bill Clinton, picked the young, southern moderate, Al Gore – a senator from Tennessee - to run as his vice presidential candidate.

And wouldn’t you know, it worked.

The image of a young Bill Clinton and Al Gore beaming from the stage of the Democratic National Convention reinforced Clinton’s message of 1992 being a new dawn, a new generation, a new energy that contrasted strongly against 68-year-old George Bush, who was clearly suffering from fatigue on the campaign trail and seemed unreachable to most americans.

When an audience member asked Bush at a town hall debate to explain how the ballooning national debt negatively impacted him, he couldn’t find an answer. He didn’t understand the question. When the moderator gave Bill Clinton a shot, he said talked about how a rising national debt meant folks were paying more in taxes and getting less in services. He talked about how he personally knew people who were losing their jobs. And then he blamed that growing deficit on Bush. He didn’t use the words “I feel your pain,” but this is known as his “I feel your pain” moment.

But what about Ross Perot? Well, the eccentric millionaire dropped out of the race, then jumped back in it, then likely took votes from both candidates in the end, but didn’t win the race.

It was Clinton by a landslide. 45 million votes to 39 million for Bush and 20 million for Perot, a 370 to 168 victory over Bush in the electoral college.

And you may still find yourself wondering, how did Clinton, with all his baggage, overcome an experienced war hero and incumbent president in George H.W. Bush?

Well, an economic recession hurt Bush, that’s for sure. But it was really Clinton’s gift for empathy that shone through.

Here’s my favorite example.

One day, out on campaign, Clinton was walking a rope line, shaking hands with supporters, when he came upon a family with two young boys, the younger of whom was clearly a child with special needs. Clinton thanked the family for coming and knelt down to give the disabled child some extra attention. But then, before he moved on, he turned to the elder boy and said, “Your parents have their hands full, you know that. But don’t ever forget, they love you just as much.” 

That’s the kind of personal touch and charisma that Clinton was a master at. When he told you, I feel your pain. You believed him.

And so, on January 20, 1993, 46-year-old Bill Clinton, Slikwille, the adulterous, charismatic, draft-dodging, 6-time Arkansas Governor was sworn in as the 42nd president of the United States of America. The youngest person to become president since John F. Kennedy and the third youngest of the 46 presidents who have served. But what did the world, and the country, look like when Clinton became president? Let’s look around.

Internationally, the Cold War was over. Soviet Russia was just Russia – the soviet union had collapsed. Sure, communism still existed in China, Cuba, and a few other places, but that struggle seemed so yesterday. One of the best-selling books of 1992 was titled “The end of history,” American democratic capitalism had won! What more history was left ahead?

Well, Quite a lot. As the soviet union collapsed, conflicts that had been frozen in time thawed and erupted. In the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa, wars and atrocities were breaking out apace. And what was America’s responsibility in this new world order? Were we the world police? Destined to right wrongs as Bush had in the Gulf War? Or was that none of our business, and should we just reap the rewards of a Cold War won?

Domestically, the economy was in a tough spot. As far as recessions go, it was a mild one, but it had been enough to cost Bush his job. Clinton had campaigned on middle class tax cuts and spending programs to aid the poor. Now that he was elected, he was going to have to face the facts that the math did not add up. And the media was full of new conservative voices ready to let America hear it. The 1987 abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, which had required broadcasters to air both sides of political issues, had led to the rise of right-wing political shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh, who gleefully taunted Clinton for all of his shortcomings. The decade ahead would only get harder for Clinton, as former Reagan and Nixon aide Roger Ailes launched Fox News in 1996 and the internet led to a proliferation in right-wing news sites, like the Drudge report, which launched in 95’. Fox, Drudge, Limbaugh and others would ride Clinton’s misfortune to ratings bonanza when Monica entered the picture.

And that is coming.

I spent a lot of time pondering what three aspects of Clinton’s presidency I wanted to focus on. And I’ve landed on the following three.

One: Clinton presided over the first Government shutdown, when the first republican house majority in 50 years shut down the government in a showdown with clinton over who held more power in Washington, the president, or Congress.

Two: He was the first president to be tried for impeachment in the senate since 1868 - Nixon had resigned before the senate could try him. We’ll look at the long road that got him there.

Three: Clinton’s presidency is bookended by two efforts at peace in the middle east, as he twice sought to broker peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This one seems topical given the events of the past year, so we’ll dig into it.

But let’s start with that first item, the government shutdown, and the long road that led there.

When Bill Clinton was sworn in in 1993, he was sworn in with a 101-seat Democratic majority in the house, 267 to 166, and a 14-seat advantage in the senate, 57-43.

You might think those Democrats would give him whatever he wanted and accomplish great things.

Instead, Clinton’s first two years… went poorly. 

Republicans and Democrats forced Bill to backtrack on major campaign promises, like allowing gays in the military, healthcare reform, and middle class tax cuts; The deputy white house counsel Vincent Foster, a former law partner and longtime friend of Hillary, became so depressed in D.C. that he committed suicide; and, internationally, American diplomacy was failing to resolve a growing war in the Balkins and American arms were failing to bring peace to Somalia - 18 American soldiers were killed during the 1993 Blackhawk down incident in Mogadishu, with some of the dead being dragged through the streets on international TV.

It all set the stage for Republicans to do something they hadn’t done in 50 years.

Capture the house of representatives.

That’s right, the GOP was down 101 seats to the Democrats entering the midterms, but their insurgent leader, Newt Gingrich, a former history teacher-turned Georgia Congressman with a propensity for bomb-throwing was determined to buck history. And he had a plan to do it: the Contract with America

The Contract with America was Gingrich’s name for 10 bills he promised to pass if the American people gave Republicans a majority in Congress.

But these bills weren’t just red meat. They were the 10 poll-tested issues that most scared or concerned American voters. Think balanced budget amendments, crime bills, tax credits for families, term limits - it had all sorts of stuff. 

And it worked. Republicans clobbered Democrats in the 94’ midterms, capturing 10 governorships, 8 senate seats, and 54 house seats - propelling them to a majority position in the house for the first time since the 40’s.

In the first 100 days of the GOP congress, republicans advanced 9 of their 10 ‘contract with america’ bills across the house floor and Gingrich gave a nationally televised address, drawing the kind of publicity that speakers never enjoy. National press began to ask if the president was relevant anymore.

“The president is relevant,” Clinton declared.

And then he set out to prove it.

Clinton announced the 9 “Contract with america” bills Congress had passed were all dead on arrival, he would not sign them. But he was willing to negotiate compromise bills that gave republicans some of what they wanted if not all of it. A proposed Republican tax cut earned special attention. Clinton declared it was 3 times larger than what the government could afford and stated, “Not gonna happen.”

Which put everyone on a clock. If a tax and spending bill wasn’t passed by November 14 - just a few months away - the government would shut down.

Clinton went on the offensive, arguing, “We shouldn’t cut education or medicare just to make room for a tax cut for people who don’t really need it.”

With the battle lines drawn, both sides settled in for a political war of attrition. Both refused to budge. Both were confident in victory. But as the days, weeks and months passed with little movement, the apparition of a government shutdown began to loom larger and larger.

At the 11th hour, November 13, the last day before a shutdown would go into effect, Gingrich and other congressional leaders met Clinton at the white house. They expected him to cave. Instead, he held firm, saying “I don’t care what happens. I don’t care if I go to 5 percent in the polls. I am not going to sign your budget. It is wrong. It is wrong for the country.”

Hours later, the government shut down.

But who would the public blame? That would determine the ballgame.

And here Clinton might have been saved by an own-goal from Gingrich. Days before the shutdown began, Clinton and Gingrich had flown back from Israel together on AirForce 1. Well, together’s not quite right. Clinton flew in the front of the plane and Gingrich was seated in the back. And Gingrich was ticked that he’d had to sit in the back. He was so ticked that he told reporters that he’d sent Clinton a worse budget bill - contributing to the government shutdown - because of it.

“It’s petty… but I think it’s human,” Gingrich said.

The ridicule was immediate as headlines and front pages depicted Gingrich as a crying baby in diapers with a rattle.

Clinton seized the moment. He asked his department heads to name their most popular programs, and then began highlighting those programs in his speeches. The public may not like government spending in the abstract, but when you got to the particulars - park services, weather forecasts, passports, college grants - the public loves it.

Five days after the shutdown began, Republicans passed enough funding to keep the government open into December, but talks again failed and the government shut back down again after that. Hundreds of thousands of government employees were furloughed through the holidays as popular government services shut down. At the white house, all but cabinet secretaries and unpaid interns were sent home. And again, blame fell on the republican. As 1995 turned to 1996, Republicans realized they may have misjudged Clinton’s mettle. 21 days after the second shutdown began, it ended with complete republican capitulation. Clinton’s budget proposal was passed. The government was reopened. Clinton’s presidency was saved. And his relationship with congress was reset. Henceforth, Clinton and the Republican congress still didn’t like each other, but they were more willing to deal with each other,  better knowing when the other side was bluffing and the costs of collapse.

And Clinton lowered his sights. He gave up on the failed ambitious reforms of his first two years, like universal healthcare or gays in the military, and settled for small, poll-proven initiatives that enjoyed overwhelming, bipartisan public support - think crime bills and balanced budgets. Sometimes, he swallowed his tongue and signed republican bills if they polled well enough, like welfare reform and NAFTA. Clinton left the presidency with the highest end-of-term approval rating of any American president, 66 percent.

But that didn’t stop the republicans from seeking revenge.

And they had the perfect weapon to enact it … the office of the independent counsel.

That’s right, it’s time to talk about the long road to impeachment.

For Clinton, that road began in 1978, in Arkansas, with a real estate investment deal at a little spot called whitewater.

To the Clintons, Whitewater was like any other promising investment opportunity. But this one went bust. The Clinton’s lost $50,000. 

And that’s that when it comes to whitewater.

According to the Clinton’s.

According to their enemies, that was only the beginning! They say Clinton used his powers of governor to shield his whitewater business partner, a man named Macdougal, from federal investigation in the 80’s so Macdougal could take advantage of a $50 million dollar federal bailout of his savings and loan business.

And they claimed the Clinton’s were willing to do anything to cover up the crime.

Remember that deputy white house counsel I mentioned earlier? Vincent Foster? The one who committed suicide? Well, after he died, Hillary Clinton went into his office and removed files relating to WhiteWater.

According to the Clinton’s, this was just Hillary protecting the Clinton’s privacy.

According to their enemies, Foster was about to squeal, so the Clinton’s had him murdered and stole the whitewater files from his office to cover their crimes.

Republicans in Congress and among the press began demanding the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate. Even neutral and liberal voices in the press agreed, if Clinton had nothing to hide, why not appoint an independent counsel to clear the air?

Clinton’s political advisors agreed - the press wasn’t letting go of this story. Appoint a counsel, participate in the investigation, and let them clear your name. Yes, it will be painful and embarrassing, but buffalos know the quickest way to get through an approaching storm is to walk straight through it.

Hillary and the whitehouse lawyers disagreed, with one of the lawyers saying that, once appointed, a special counsel with limitless time and limitless money would keep digging until they found something to nail Clinton with, regardless of the original cause of the investigation.

Clinton ultimately sided with the political advisors. He told his attorney general, Janet Reno, to appoint a special counsel.

It would prove the greatest political mistake of his life.

On January 20, 1994, a straight-shooting republican one-time US Attorney named Bob Fiske was appointed special counsel, tasked with investigating whitewater and the death of Vincent Foster.

Six months later, Fiske signaled his investigation was nearing its end … and the inquiry was going to be dropped. Fiske and 2 congressional inquiries had concluded that extreme depression, not the Clinton’s, had killed foster, and no crime had been committed in whitewater, either.

But then house republicans changed the rules of the game…

They changed the law so special counsels stopped reporting to the Attorney General and started reporting to a 3-judge panel on the D.C. circuit.

And you might think, well, that seems more fair and independent. Which is why Clinton felt he had to sign the bill into law. But Congressional republicans had picked their panel well. Of the 3 judges, 1 was a democrat and 2 were republicans. And I’m not talking moderate republicans. The Republican leader of the panel had called liberals “leftist heretics” in a journal. They were going to play hardball.

When Janet Reno submitted Fiske’s name to the panel for renewal, the panel fired him, saying that the law firm Fiske worked at - though not Fiske himself - had once done work for the Clinton’s whitewater business partner, MacDougal.

The panel then named a new independent counsel.

Former Republican solicitor general, Kenneth Starr.

Instead of closing the investigation as Fiske had intended, Starr expanded it. Weeks turned to months turned to years. 

Whenever Starr would reach a dead end, he’d dynamite open the wall and start digging on something else. 

He was Clinton’s worst nightmare.

$52 million taxpayer dollars were spent by Starr investigating Bill Clinton. But everywhere Starr looked, he found only smoke, but no fire.

Until… he found Monika Lewinsky.

Monika Lewinsky was a 21 year-old white house intern who had the hots for Bill Clinton when she joined the white house in 1995.

But she never had a chance to act on it.

Until the government shut down.

Remember what I said about ‘everyone but the cabinet secretaries and the unpaid interns’ being sent home during the government shut down?

Well, guess who was an unpaid intern?

The second night of the shutdown, Clinton was roaming the nearly-empty white house, looking for chief of staff Leon Panetta, when he found Lewinsky in Panetta’s office instead.

Alone.

Lewinsky didn’t let the opportunity go to waste.

She showed Clinton her thong.

He invited her to a darker office.

She told him she had a crush on him.

He laughed and asked if he could kiss her.

60 minutes later, Lewinsky was performing oral sex on Clinton in a dark office while Clinton phoned 2 members of Congress to demand they help him end the shutdown.

Whoa.

The shutdown ended. But the affair did not. Clinton and Lewinsky never had sex, but they continued to see each other on and off for 2 years. Clinton seemed to think he was keeping himself on the right side of a moral line of his own design by refusing to go all the way. But Lewinsky? She thought they were falling in love.

And the swirling emotions of the affair are what led her to confide in a woman she thought was her friend - Linda Tripp.

Tripp was a former White house aide who held a grudge against Bill Clinton because she’d been reassigned from the White House to the pentagon after he was sworn in.

She had sought to write a tell-all book about the death of Vincent Foster, as she was the last person to speak to Foster before his suicide, but her literary agent told her it wasn’t juicy enough. Bring me something better.

How about a sex scandal between a president and an intern, Tripp asked?

That would do, the publicist replied.

But it couldn’t just be he said she said. The publicist told Tripp she needed proof, adding “Well Bubbaalah, if you’re going to go after the big Cahoona, you’d better kill him.”

And that’s when Tripp began secretly recording her conversations with Lewinsky. The publicist told Tripp this was all entirely legal. It wasn’t. You can’t record someone’s conversation without their permission in many states. But, well, the publicist might have asked for these recordings because she wanted more than just a book. Because as soon as the publicist had proof of the affair, she shared it with Paula Jones’ lawyers.

Who the heck is Paula Jones?

Another woman Clinton inadvisably slept with, of course.

There’s a lot of those!

According to Clinton, Paula Jones was a conservative opportunist who was trying to damage him politically and extort him financially 

According to Clinton’s enemies, which now included Paula Jones, Clinton had spotted 23-year-old Paula back when he had been the governor of Arkansas and she had been a state employee. He’d had a member of his security detail invite her up to his suite for a hookup. He took of his pants, ordered her to ‘kiss it,’ and then harassed her and ordered her state career blocked as punishment when she rebuffed him.

It is true that Paula’s lawsuits were bankrolled by Clinton’s republican rivals.

It’s also true that one of Clinton’s former bodyguards backed up parts of Paula’s story.

Paula filed a sexual harassment suit against Clinton over the ordeal in 1994. Clinton asked the supreme court to block the suit, but the court unanimously agreed presidents are not exempt from civil lawsuits. And so Clinton had had to make a decision, should he fight the case in court, which would require he sit for deposition, or should he settle?

Some advisors urged he settle, some urged he fight. Clinton chose to fight.

And in 1997, Paula Jones’ lawyers, and Ken Starr’s lawyers, and Linda Tripp’s publicist all started talking.

And that’s why January, 1998, became one of the most dramatic months in Clinton’s presidency.

As Clinton spent January 16 preparing his deposition in the Jones lawsuit the following day, Monika Lewinsky arrived at a mall to meet with her supposed friend Linda Tripp. But before she reached their meeting place, agents for Ken Starr surrounded Lewinsky and told her, “Ma’am, you are in serious trouble, but we would like to give you an opportunity to save yourself.” The agents took Lewinsky to a hotel room and spent the next several hours questioning her. When Lewinsky asked for a lawyer, they advised her not to call one. Nobody knew it yet, but Ken Starr had convinced a judge to expand his years-old whitewater investigation to include Clinton’s sexcapades in an attempt to prove a pattern of lying.

And now he had his ace in the hole.

When Clinton arrived for his Paula Jones deposition the following day, he wasn’t just asked about the alleged Jones affair. He was also asked about 7 other women he might have cheated with. A judge presiding over the deposition told Jones’ lawyers to provide a definition for “sexual relations,” so they defined it as, quote “Contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.”

That definition would prove important.

Under oath, Clinton denied having engaged in a sexual relationship with any of the women.

The trap had been set. Clinton had walked into it. He didn’t even realize yet he’d been caught.

Days later, Ken Starr’s lawyers leaked Tripp’s secretly recorded tapes of Lewinsky discussing the Clinton affair to Newsweek, but Newsweek refused to publish without corroboration, so Starr leaked the tapes to the conservative website Drudge Report, which had no such compunctions. Six days before Clinton was to deliver the state of the union, the news broke: Clinton had engaged in an affair with a white house intern and lied about it under oath.

The press went crazy.

Clinton tried to dodge. He tried to escape. But with the state of the union approaching, he couldn’t avoid his media commitments without looking guilty. At the end of a press conference on childcare policy, he clenched his jaw, pointed his fingers, glared at the cameras and said, “I want you to listen to me, I’m going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman - Miss Lewinsky. I never told anyone to lie, not a single time - never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people.”

Clinton quickly realized the danger wasn’t longer legal, it was political - the Washington establishment was talking impeachment. And Clinton shifted his strategy.

Publicly, Clinton would ignore the whole ordeal. He was focused on the presidency - serving the American people.  He left it to his allies to attack Starr in the media. Which helped. But Clinton’s biggest asset was the now booming american economy, which had 6 out of 10 americans saying he was doing a good job.

As one aid put it, “It’s Dow Jones, not Paula Jones, that determines his standing.”

Then, he got a break - an Arkansas court dismissed Paula Jones’ Civil suit.

The only threat left was Starr and Lewinsky.

Lewinsky, under pressure from Starr, agreed to provide all the lurid details of her relationship with Clinton, and a blue dress she claimed Clinton’s semen was on, in exchange for immunity from possible charges.

Clinton had to give blood samples.

And then he had to testify before a grand jury.

And that’s when Clinton started playing with words.

It’s true, Clinton said, there had been inappropriate contact between him and Lewinsky.

But nothing they had done had met the definition of “sexual relations” as defined by Paula Jones’ lawyers. And he’d never told anyone to lie.

Clinton spent the 4 hours of his grand jury deposition running out the clock and walking rhetorical circles around Starr’s prosecutors. When they pointed to a statement by his lawyer during the Jones depositions that “there is no sex if any kind in any manner, shape, or form” Clinton famously retorted “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is… if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.” Which is to say, “is” is current tense. 

The deposition was a solid political and legal defense. It shifted the debate to details most americans cared little about. So Starr tried to refocus the attention on Clinton’s acts by publishing a 445-page report that included a near-pornographic recounting of Clinton’s trysts with Lewinsky. The GOP could have censured Clinton with wide democratic support at that moment, but they wanted more. On October 8, 1998, the house of representatives opened an impeachment inquiry by a vote of 258 to 176, with 31 democrats and all republicans voting in favor - the first presidential impeachment inquiry since Watergate.

One month later, the nation voted in the 1998 midterms. Newt Gingrich was confident that his strategy of opening an inquiry and focusing Republican ire on Clinton’s sex-life would lead republicans to pick up 30-40 seats in the house. Instead, Republicans lost 5 seats. Today’s Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, was swept into office over a republican incumbent in this election. A humiliated Gingrich surrendered the speakership in defeat.

But still, Republicans did not give up.

On December 19, 1998, the lame duck congress formally impeached Clinton, prompting Democrats in the chamber to start chanting ‘you resign! You resign!’ at the new GOP speaker of the house - and then, to everyone’s shock, that new GOP speaker DID resign - days later, Hustler magazine published an expose about the speaker’s own infidelities.

It was madness.

On January 7, 1999, the senate opened the second presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history - the first since Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868. 36 days later, the senate acquitted Clinton on both counts. 66 of 100 senators are needed to impeach. In Clinton’s case, 50 voted guilty on obstruction of justice and 45 voted guilty on perjury.

Thus ended the second presidential impeachment trial in American history. It started with whitewater, Paula Jones, a Republican landslide, and Monika Lewinsky, it turned into a question of whether the president had lied about sex with an intern under oath, and it ended with a political battle in Congress. Clinton ultimately faced zero consequences, aside from his hurt pride and dignity. His popularity at the end of the impeachment was as high as it had ever been, 68%.

With that victory and his troubles seemingly behind him, Clinton entered the final years of his presidency with strong popularity, international respect as a now veteran global leader, and political capital to spend. The only question was what he’d spend it on.

He chose to go all-in on one of the most intransigent challenges of the past century.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Clinton’s interest in resolving the conflict dates back to his earliest days in office. Shortly after being sworn in, the Israelis and Palestinians came to him with a surprise - they had been secretly negotiating in Oslo and thought they had a framework that could lead to peace. They wanted to announce it to the world with a dramatic handshake at the white house. Would Clinton host them?

Heck yeah he would.

On September 13, 1993, israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a former general, and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yassar Arafat, a former terrorist, met for a dramatic Rose Garden ceremony where they shook hands to express commitment to the Oslo peace process:

The PLO would renounce terrorism and recognize israel’s right to exist in exchange for Israel recognizing the PLO as the representative government of the palestinian people.

The PLO-run Palestinian Authority would take responsibility for governing Gaza and the West bank over a 5-year period.

A final agreement on borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem would come with time.

And the United States and European allies would grease the wheels by pouring money on the Israelis and Palestinians to smooth any hard feelings over what they were giving up - for example, both wanted all of Jerusalem, it would have to be shared - compromise.

But while the world cheered, extremists plotted. A new Palestinian faction emerged, Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Hamas’ charter envisions a future where the very rocks and trees call out “here, here! A Jew is hiding behind me here! Come kill them!” And Hamas began kidnapping and murdering Israelis in a bid to block peace.

But they weren’t the only ones on the block. In Israel, the radical settler movement began to embrace violence. These extremists dream of evicting all Muslims from the West Bank and Gaza, destroying their holy sites, reconquering all the lands of historical judea, and overthrowing Israeli democracy to replace it with a jewish monarchy. And the rabbi’s of this movement declared it would be a good deed condoned by god if Rabin were murdered.

And one zealot listened.

On November 4, 1995, a 25-year-old Israeli settler shot and murdered Rabin as Rabin was departing a massive peace rally. Clinton flew to Israel for the funeral and the flight back is the flight that Gingrich was so unhappy about back during the government shutdown.

After Rabin died, his successor called an inadvisable snap election and lost… to Benjamin Netenyahu.

Who promptly put the whole peace process on the back burner. Netenyahu belongs to the right wing of israeli politics. He’d campaigned for office by running against Oslo. Progress slowed to a crawl. 

Until the Israeli election of 1999 swept Netenyahu from power and brought the more liberal Ehud Barack into office.

And Barack wanted peace.

Clinton was in the final years of his administration, and very cognizant that while history may remember him as a good president, it would not remember him as a great president unless he did something great.

Like bring peace to the Middle East.

So when Barack asked Clinton for an American-hosted peace summit with the Palestinians, Clinton was eager to make it happen. And so, on July 11, the three leaders, Bill Clinton, Ehud Barack, and Yassar Arafat, plus their advisors met at Camp David for 9 days to hash out a deal. Everyone knew what the sticking points would be: Borders, palestinian refugees, and the status of Jerusalem, which both peoples wanted for their capital.

For the first seven days of Camp David, nothing happened. Barack and Arafat each waited for the other to cave, aggravating Clinton to no end. But then, on the eighth day, Barack stepped forward with the first concessions, and they were significant. The Palestinian state could have the entire West Bank, minus the existing Jewish Settlements, plus some palestinian settlements in Israel, a roughly 1 for 1 land swap; Jerusalem would be split between the two states, with the palestinians getting the larger Muslim and Christian quarters of the walled ‘old city,’ including the temple mount, and Israel getting the smaller Jewish and Armenian quarters; and Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to the new palestinian state, but not Israel itself. This was far more than anyone thought Israel would offer and an ecstatic Clinton rushed the deal to Arafat. The Palestinians could have their state! All they had to do was say yes! But when Clinton met with Arafat 1 on 1, Arafat not only refused the deal, he refused to even put a counter proposal on the table. Clinton tried every form of persuasion he could muster, urging Arafat, ‘This is the best deal you’re gonna get. For God’s sake, don’t turn this down. It’ll never get better,’ and warning him ‘you are leading your people and the region to a catastrophe’ if he refused, but Arafat remembered what had come of the last camp david summit in 1978, when the Egyptian dictator Anwar Sadat had negotiated peace with Israeli, only to be assassinated by his own people over it a few years later. 

“You’re asking me to sign my death warrant,” Arafat said, convinced that Hamas or other palestinian extremists would murder him if he signed.

Clinton publicly blamed Arafat for the summit’s failure afterward, saying the Palestinians had refused to negotiate in good faith.

Six months later, Clinton tried again, inviting Barack and Arafat back to Camp David in the twilight weeks of his presidency, but again Arafat refused to agree or engage, and the summit ended in failure.

At least, that’s one version of the Camp David story. That’s the version all three sides told back when it happened. But in recent years, the story has changed. Now, Palestinian sources say it was the Israelis who refused to negotiate, the Americans who operated in bad faith, unfairly taking Israel’s side, and it was the Palestinians who had tried to compromise.

But what strikes me most is how the two versions of this story are made for the political moment in which they were told.

In 2000, it was important for Arafat to show to his home audience that he had stood up to Israeli pressure.

Today, it’s important for Palestinian leaders to show the global audience that Israel stands in the way of peace.

So… I’m dubious of the recent narrative.

On September 28, 2000, right between the two summits at camp david, Israeli politician Ariel Sharon visited the temple mount, which is considered the third holiest site in Islam, and the palestinian territories rioted the following day. Thus began the second antifada, 5-years of violence and terrorism that saw Palestinian suicide bombers strike Israeli cafes and buses as the Israeli army, under Sharon’s leadership, responded with deadly force. The intifada didn’t end until after Arafat’s death in 2004, which led to a breakdown of palestinian solidarity and an eventual civil war between Arafat’s old faction, Fatah, and the upstart, Hamas, in 2007.

But that’s well down the road.

On January 17, 2001, Yassar Arafat called Clinton to thank him for attempting to negotiate peace.

“You are a great man,” Arafat said.

“The hell I am,” Clinton replied. “I am a failure, and you made me one.”

Three days later, Bill Clinton left office.

So how had America changed during the eight years of the Clinton administration? Well, the economy had changed quite a lot! The advent of the internet and affordable PC’s transformed the United States into a booming information economy. Unemployment and inflation hit 30-year lows, home ownership rates and family incomes hit record highs, shoot, the federal government produced its first surplus since 1969 - and we’ve never had a surplus since.

In 1996, Clinton signed a Republican overhaul of welfare that was popular at the time, but, like many of his legislative achievements, has become controversial since. The law gave states more power over how welfare benefits are distributed and introduced a 5-year lifetime limit on benefits. It was intended to transition Americans from poverty to employment, but that hasn’t happened. The number of Americans receiving cash assistance has shrunk dramatically and the number of Americans living in extreme poverty has doubled by some estimates. 

Internationally, the 90’s were a period of American global hegemony. No nation came close to challenging American power. It was also a moment of significant strife in the Balkans. As the soviet union collapsed, ancient tensions between the region’s christian and muslim peoples broke out into all-out war and war crimes as nationalist leaders whipped up their followers into a frenzy. At first, Clinton struggled to put a lid on the violence. But, toward the end of his term, he did succeed in getting the various sides to negotiate peace.

As for Clinton’s post presidency, well, even as he was leaving political life, his wife Hillary was entering it. Hillary Clinton won a senate seat in 2000 and sought the presidency in 2008 and 2016. She fell short of the ultimate prize both times, but not for lack of support from her husband.

Bill Clinton stayed active and involved in the world after office through his new venture, the Clinton Foundation. He teamed up with former President George HW Bush to raise relief funds after major natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis. And he campaigned for later Democratic candidates, earning the nickname “explainer in chief” during Obama’s years for his way of simplifying complex issues.

In recent years, Clinton’s old popularity has begun to fade. His womanizing has been put under a new microscope in light of the MeToo movement, his welfare and crime reforms are now deemed failures, and NAFTA is increasingly under attack from former blue collar workers who lost their jobs when manufacturing plants shut down and moved overseas.

Today, Clinton is 78 years old and largely receded from public life. As he expected, historians largely rate him a good president, but not a great one. 

So, in recap, what are the 3 top things I’d remember from the Clinton years

1. He presided over the first major government shutdown in U.S. history during his battles with Newt Gingrich.
2. He’s the first president to face impeachment in the senate since 1868 and only the second president to face impeachment ever.
3. The Clinton years were the last major effort toward negotiating a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the establishment of a 2-state solution. Nobody has come so close since, but I hope somebody will try again.

As for a lesson in leadership from Bill Clinton - empathy will carry you a long way. Clinton was far, far, far from perfect. But when he spoke to people, they felt he genuinely cared about them and their challenges. And that went a long way to them forgiving for his faults and trusting him to be the one who could help.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Abridged Presidential Histories.

If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on your podcast-listening platform of choice.

If you’d like to support the show, you can look it up on Patreon, or go directly towww.patreon.com/abridgedpresidentialhistories. It helps me buy books and pay to host the show.

The music in today’s podcast is a public domain recording of the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. 

The primary biography for today’s episode was The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House - by John Harris 

In our next episode, TBD, but I’m hoping to find a historian to speak with on Clinton’s economic record. NAFTA, tax reform, budget battles, federal surpluses - the 90’s were economically great, but how does that legacy hold up in hindsight. 

That’s next time, maybe! on Abridged Presidential Histories.