(born 1946) Bill Clinton, first baby-boomer US president (1993–2001) and three-time Arkansas governor, defeated incumbent George Bush and the eccentric Ross Perot in the 1992 campaign, despite controversies concerning extra-marital affairs (Gennifer Flowers), charges of financial corruption (Whitewater) and allegations about draft evasion. Clinton presented himself as “a different kind of Democrat,” a New Democrat, more in line with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, which he had headed.

Clinton’s campaign mantra—“It’s the economy stupid”—embodies his administration’s strengths and accomplishments as the United States’ economy has adapted to globalization more successfully than its competitors in terms of economic growth, low inflation and low unemployment. Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, succeeded in dominating domestic policy over more liberal voices like Robert Reich in implementing moderately progressive tax increases, significant cuts in the budget and, following the 1994 Republican congressional victories, the achievement of budget surpluses.

Clinton, a superlative politician with a seemingly infinite capacity to come to the brink of selfimposed disaster and then rebound and even flourish, began his first administration with impressive appointments to establish “a government which looks like America.” Despite retreats on gays in the military and immigrant-bashing sections on welfare reform, Clinton has remained a cultural liberal, “mending but not ending” affirmative action, making moderate to progressive court appointments, initiating a race dialogue and passing a modest Family Leave Act.

As a “New” Democrat, he has sought to woo white, middle-class, suburban voters with tougher positions on crime, including subsidies for more police, targeted programs in education and protection of middle-class entitlements. In addition, in foreign policy he has attempted to combine a human rights agenda—which led him to send US troops into Haiti—with military responses to Iraq’s evasion of inspections and Serbia’s ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. At the same time he remains haunted, as were his predecessors, by the Vietnam War legacy of an aversion to risking significant US lives in combat and, consequently is subject to charges of inconsistency and ineffectiveness.

The 1994 congressional elections, which produced Republican majorities in both Houses and led to the speakership of Newt Gingrich and his “Contract With America,” brought Clinton to his lowest point, as did in part a response to the defeat of his efforts to pass universal, or at least more comprehensive, healthcare. However, the Grand Old Party (GOP) threat of a government shutdown, skillfully manipulated by Clinton, revitalized his political fortunes, although at the cost of the passage of a welfare reform bill, which recklessly eliminated federal entitlements to the poor in devolving most decision-making to the states through block grants, caps on spending, more stringent work requirements and ceilings on eligibility Clinton’s second term has been a rollercoaster driven by his impeachment following the revelation of an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, his continuing popularity as the US economy’s boom continues and a series of international crises, most notably in the former Yugoslavia. Clinton’s “bridge to the twenty-first century” seemed to rest on a not always consistently framed, often opportunistic, blending of old New Deal and “Great Society” economic liberalism with modified, calibrated versions of identity politics, a determination to appear strong both domestically and internationally, a laser-like attention to the now majoritarian suburbs and a comfort with a multi-national, global, confident capitalism, tempered with not “big,” but government nevertheless. His legacy remains problematic: a resilient, if not great, politician with a seriously flawed character.