Bill Clinton #6

In this last section of Bill Clinton's "My Life", Clinton is now President and is hard at work creating new domestic policies and keeping up with America's foreign relations. High on his list of foreign priorities is helping the new president of Russia reestablish his country. Clinton wanted to go to Russia to meet with the president, Yeltslin, but felt that "Moscow shouldn't be my first foreign stop (as president)...but the United States had a big stake in Russia's success and we sure didn't want hard-liners, either Communists or ultranationalists in control there" (504). Clinton knew that the eyes of the world were upon him and if he slipped up, it could lead to terrible consequences like another mad-man running Russia. As a result of good policy and aid for Russia, "a large majority of Russian voters supported Yeltsin, his politics and his desire for a new Duma. After a little more then one hundred days in office, we had made great strides in bolstering Yeltsin and Russian democracy" (508). Through the actions of Clinton and other leaders of major countries, the Soviets were able to prop up a new system of government without great commotion.

When we come to the end of the first one hundred days of a new presidency, the media assesses it to see how the new president has done in terms of keeping thei campaign promises and rising to meet new challenges. On the positive side, Clinton had done lots of work on the economy doing things such as "put together an ambitious economic program to reverse twelve years of trickle-down economics...and to dramatically cut the cost of college loans, saving billions of doallars for both students and taxpayers" (513). One of Clinton's major campaign promises was to work to help the economy, which is something he certainly seemed to be doing. On the negative side, he "maintained the Bush policy of forcibly returning Haitian refugees...and failed to convince Europe in taking a stronger stand against the Bosnians" (514). As far as human rights went, Clinton's administration was having a tough time, particularly with the Bosnian-Serb conflict that eventually left 250,000 dead over two years. For the first one hundred days in office, Clinton had mixed reviews, but what could be seen was that he was doing his best.

Clinton Post #5.5 (Making up for a 1 paragraph post from earlier)

Just months after taking office, Clinton was confronted with a crisis in Waco, Texas. The FBI had been camped outside the compound of a group of members of a religious cult for almost two months. Clinton recieved a distressing report saying that the leader might be planning a mass suicide and the FBI wanted to storm the building but needed Clinton's okay first. Clinton, drawing from a similar experience he'd had as governor, wanted to try what had worked in Arkansas. His attorney general, Janet Reno, countered "that the standoff was costing the government a million dollars a week and tying up law-enforcement resources needed elsewhere; that the Branch Davidians could hold out longer than the Arkansas people had and that the possibilities of child sexual abuse and mass suicide were real" (498). Faced with these arguements, Clinton gave the go-ahead, even though it went against his instincts. The next day Clinton watched the compound burn on television as his actions killed 80 people. Clinton was infuriated at himself "for agreeing to the raid against my better judgement...Nobody can be right all the time, but it's a lot easier to live with bad decisions you believed in when you made them" (499). He had allowed himself to be talked out of something he thought would have worked and had ended up with fatal consequences. Clinton learned that in order to be an effective leader, he had to make his own choices and not allow himself to be overly influenced by other people's opinions.

Clinton #5

As the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Bill Clinton was now striving to prove to the public that he was their best choice to become president of the United States. In a number of debates Clinton backed his convictions against Ross Perot and George H. W. Bush. In a debate at Washington University, the candidates were asked to say why made them different then the others running. As responses to the question, "Ross said he was supported by the people, not parties or special interests... I said I represented change. The President said he had experience" (434). The fact that Clinton was eventually elected shows that the public was tired of conservative voices on the hill and desired change. The parallels to the recent election are also clear, even extending to the results. In the second debate, in Virginia, a town hall style debate helped to strongly set Clinton in the lead. A woman set a question to the three candidates about how the national debt had personally affected them. The answers she received were very enlightening. Perot answered first, saying that the debt forced him to "disrupt my private life and my business to get involved in this activity... strangly, Bush said he'd been to a black church and read in the bullitin about teen pregnancies... I said I'd been governor of a small state for twelve years. I knew people by name who had lost their jobs and businesses" (437). The out-of-touch responses from the other two candidates were clear to the public and a post-debate poll indicated 53% of 1,145 surveyed thought Clinton was the victor of the debate. Clinton's knowledge of the issues he and the American public faced helped him to win the votes he needed to succeed.

After winning the election, Clinton set to work on transitioning the cabinet and the white house. As the Democrats hadn't been in power for twelve years which meant a lot of work for Clinton. He writes that "we had to replace a lot of people, we were committed to casting a wide net for diversity, and there were a great number of people with a claim to be considered" (467). Clinton knew that the people he chose were going to have a large effect on the way the country would run for the next four years and he wanted to make sure that he got the best people for the jobs. In the end, there were some problems with his appointments but on the whole the transition went smoothly enough. Clinton summarized the results saying "we did a good job picking a cabinet and sub-cabinet officials who were able and reflected the diversity of America, but I made a mistake in not appointing a prominent Republican to a cabinet post" (466). Though he succeded in creating an ethically diverse team of individuals, a lack of political diversity conveyed a message to conservatives of lack of bi-partisanship that was not overly helpful to his presidency. A president can't do all the jobs that need to be done, so the people who help him must be skilled enough to aid him well and Clinton took great care in picking those he chose although in retrospect could have given more consideration to other factors when selecting his cabinet.