One reason why Clinton survived was the health of the economy. Few wanted to rock the ship of state when it was stuffed with cash. Until the final months, the Clinton years coincided with the longest economic boom in the nation’s history. Clinton deserves considerable credit for the remarkable prosperity of the era. His reducing the federal deficit drove interest rates down, spurring investment and economic growth. By August 1998 unemployment had fallen to
4.5 percent, the lowest level since the 1960s; inflation had eased to a minuscule 1 percent, the lowest level since the 1950s. In 1998 the federal government operated at its first surplus since 1969. In the 2000 fiscal year, the surplus hit $237 billion.
Clinton also supported globalization of the economy. He successfully promoted the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to reduce tariff barriers; Congress approved NAFTA in 1993. During the last half of the 1990s, the United States led all industrial nations in the rate of growth of its real gross domestic product. But the new global economy harmed many. Some union leaders bitterly asked how their members could compete
In 1993, Clinton succeeded in brokering a deal between Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. It was supposed to lead to the formation of a Palestinian state. The assassination of Rabin by a Jewish extremist shattered the agreement.
Against convict labor in China or sweatshop workers in Indonesia or Malaysia. Others complained that the emphasis on worldwide economic growth was generating an environmental calamity. International protests against the World Trade Organization culminated in the disruption of its 2000 meeting in Seattle, when thousands of protesters went on a rampage, setting fires and looting stores.
Clinton’s record in foreign affairs was mixed. In 1993 he failed in an effort to assemble an international force to prevent “ethnic cleansing” by Serbian troops against Muslims in Bosnia, formerly part of Yugoslavia. In 1999 critics predicted another debacle when Clinton proposed a NATO effort to prevent General Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia from crushing the predominantly Muslim province of
Kosovo, which was attempting to secede. But after several months of intense NATO bombing of Serbia, Milosevic withdrew from Kosovo. Within a year, he was forced out of office and into prison, awaiting trial for war crimes before a UN tribunal.
Clinton labored, as had his predecessors in the White House, to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians; like his predecessors, he failed. In 1993 Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli prime minister, and Yassir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, signed an agreement preparing for a Palestinian state. But extremists on both sides shattered the fragile accord. In 1995 Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish zealot. Palestinians, enraged by the construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, stepped up their campaign of suicide bombings.
Israel retaliated with tank and helicopter attacks on suspected terrorist strongholds. The negotiations collapsed. Arafat unleashed a new wave of uprisings, and hardliners, headed by Ariel Sharon, took charge of Israel. Violence intensified on both sides.
Whatever the successes and shortcomings of his administration, the Clinton presidency will always be linked to his relationship with a White House intern and the impeachment proceedings that ensued. Though by no means the first president to stray from matrimonial propriety, Clinton’s behavior, in an era when the media thrived on scandal, was symptomatic of an almost willful self-destructiveness.
World History
