Bill Clinton in My Life, by Bill Clinton
On Principles & Values:
Born in 1946 in Hope Arkansas to a widowed mother
Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border
at Texarkana. My mother named me William Jefferson Blythe III after my father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr., one of nine children of a poor farmer in Sherman, Texas.My father met my mother at Tri- State Hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1943, when
she was training to be a nurse. Two months later, they were married and he was off to war. He served in a motor pool in the invasion of Italy, repairing jeeps and tanks. After the war, he returned to Hope for Mother and they moved to Chicago, where he
got back his old job as a salesman for the Manbee Equipment Company.
On May 17, 1946, [my father died in a traffic accident] drowned, only twenty-eight years old, married two years and eight months, only seven months of which he had spent with Mother.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, First Chapter
Jun 23, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Father’s death in traffic accident drove Bill to achieve
On May 17, 1946, my father was driving from Chicago to Hope to fetch his wife. Late at night, he lost control of his car, when the right front tire blew out on a wet road. He was thrown clear of the car but landed in, or crawled into, a drainage ditch.
He drowned, only 28 years old, married 2 years & 8 months, only 7 months of which he had spent with Mother.When I was about 12, sitting on my uncle’s porch in Hope, a man walked up the steps, looked at me, & said, “You’re Bill Blythe’s son. You look
just like him.“ I beamed for days.
My father left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people, and that if I did it well enough, somehow I could make up for the life he should have had. And his memory infused me, at a younger age than most,
with a sense of my own mortality. The knowledge that I, too, could die young drove me both to try to drain the most out of every moment of life and to get on with the next big challenge. Even when I wasn’t sure where I was going, I was always in a hurry.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, First Chapter
Jun 23, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Discovered a half-brother in 1993
In 1993, on Father’s Day, my first as President, [several newspapers ran] investigative stories on my father. The stories turned up a lot we didn’t know, including the fact that my father had probably been married three times before he met Mother,
and apparently had at least two more children.My father’s other son was identified as Leon Ritzenthaler, a retired owner of a janitorial service, from northern California. He said he had written me during the ‘92 campaign but had received no reply.
I got in touch with him and later met him & his wife, Judy. We had a happy visit and since then we’ve corresponded in holiday seasons. He and I look alike, his birth certificate says his father was mine, and I wish I’d known about him a long time ago.
Somewhere around this time, I also received information about a daughter, born Sharon Lee Blythe in Kansas City in 1941, to a woman my father later divorced. I’m sorry to say that, for whatever reason, I’ve never met her.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, First Chapter
Jun 23, 2004
On Abortion:
Roe v. Wade was the right decision
Everyone knows life begins biologically at conception. No one knows when biology turns into humanity. Most abortions that don’t involve the life or health of the mother are chosen by scared young women and girls who don’t know what else to do. It’s hard
to apply the criminal law to acts that a substantial portion of the citizenry doesn’t believe should be labeled crimes, (as with Prohibition). I thought then [in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision] and still believe that the Court reached the right conclusion.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.229
Jun 21, 2004
On Corporations:
Investment capital over nonproductive corporate debt
[One of the principles of the New Democrat philosophy is that] waste is going to be punished. It appears to me that we are spending billions of dollars of investment capital increasing the debt of (corporations) without increasing their productivity.
More debt should mean increased productivity, growth, and profitability. More debt means too often, less employment, less investment for research and development, and forced restructuring to service nonproductive debt.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.327
Jun 21, 2004
On Drugs:
Work with Mexico to address drug smuggling problems
Some Mexican border police were offered five times their annual salary to look the other way on just one drug shipment. One honest prosecutor in northern Mexico had been shot more
than one hundred times right in front of his house. These were the tough problems, but I thought the implementation of our agreements [between the US and Mexico] would help.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.756
Jun 21, 2004
On Education:
Reasonable range of religious expression in schools
I signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was intended to protect a reasonable range of religious expression in public areas like schools and workplaces. The bill was designed to reverse a 1990 Supreme Court decision giving states more
authority to regulate religious expression in such areas. America is full of people deeply committed to their very diverse faiths. I thought the bill struck the right balance between protecting their rights and the need for public order.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.558
Jun 21, 2004
On Education:
$15B in education aid to ‘support what works’
I proposed a large package of education reforms, arguing that we should change the way we spend the more than $15 billion a year of education aid to ‘support what works and stop supporting what doesn’t work,’ by requiring states to end social promotion,
turn around failing schools or shut them down. I again asked Congress to provide funds to build or modernize 5000 schools and to approve a six-fold increase in the number of college scholarships for students who commit to teaching in under-served areas.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.843
Jun 21, 2004
On Families & Children:
A strong America requires strong community
[One of the principles of the New Democrat philosophy is that] a strong America requires a resurgent sense of [community],
a strong sense of mutual obligations, and a conviction that we cannot pursue our individual interests independent of the needs of our fellow citizens.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.327
Jun 21, 2004
On Foreign Policy:
1992: Helped refugees from Haiti, but only in Haiti
On Jan.5, I announced that I'd temporarily continue Pres. Bush's policy of intercepting & returning Haitians who were trying to reach the US by boat, a policy I had strongly criticized during the election. After Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, was overthrown by Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras in 1991, [many refugees fled].When the Bush administration, which appeared to be more sympathetic to Cedras than I was, began to return the refugees, there were loud protests from the human rights
community. I wanted to make it easier for Haitians to seek and obtain political asylum in the US, but was concerned that large numbers of them would perish in trying to get here, as about 400 had done just a week earlier. So, I said that, instead of
taking in all the Haitians who could survive the voyage to America, we would beef up our official presence in Haiti and speed up asylum claims there. In the meantime, for safety reasons, we would continue to stop the boats and return the passengers.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.463-464
Jun 21, 2004
On Foreign Policy:
1993: Pushed $1.6B Russia aid package despite unpopularity
In March 1993, I got an assistance program I could support: $1.6 billion in direct aid to help Russia stabilize its economy, including money to provide housing for decommissioned military officers, positive work programs for now underemployed & frequentl
unpaid nuclear scientists, and more assistance in dismantling nuclear weapons under the recently enacted Nunn-Lugar program; food and medicine for those suffering from shortage; aid to support small business, independent media outlets, non-governmental
organizations, political parties, and labor unions; and an exchange program to bring tens of thousands of student and young professionals to the United States. The aid package was four times what the previous administration had allocated and three times
what I had originally recommended.We agreed to institutionalize our cooperation, with a commission headed by Vice President Gore and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who worked through a host of difficult, contentious problems.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.506-507
Jun 21, 2004
On Foreign Policy:
Advocate for Tibet-China discussion on human rights
When I advocated more freedom and human rights in China, [Chinese President] Jiang responded that America was highly developed, while China still had a per capita income of $700 a year.
He emphasized our different histories, cultures, ideologies, and social systems. When I urged Jiang to meet with the Dalai Lama, he said the door was open if the Dalai Lama would first state that Tibet and Taiwan were part of China,
and added that there were already “several channels of communication” with the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. I got a laugh from the Chinese audience when I said I thought that if Jiang and the Dalai lama did meet, they would like each other very much.
I also tried to make some practical suggestions to move forward on human rights. For example, there were still Chinese citizens in prison for offenses no longer on the books. I suggested they be released.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.793
Jun 21, 2004
On Foreign Policy:
Bush’s unilateralism strains international partnerships
[In thinking about Bush taking over], I thought that the international partnerships that we had developed in the aftermath of the Cold War could be strained by the more unilateral approach of the Republicans - they were opposed to the test ban treaty,
the climate change treaty, the ABM Treaty, and the International Criminal Court.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.951
Jun 21, 2004
On Free Trade:
1993: NAFTA passed, but at a high price of dividing Dems
November offered two examples of sound policy and questionable politics. After Al Gore plainly bested Ross Perot in a heavily watched TV debate in NAFTA, it passed the House, 234-200. Three days later the Senate followed suit, 61-38.
Al and I had called or seen two hundred members of Congress, and the cabinet had made nine hundred calls. President Carter also helped, calling members of Congress all day long for a week.
We also had to make deals on a wide range of issues; the lobbying effort for NAFTA looked even more like sausage making than the budget fight had. Our whole team had won a great economic and political victory for
America, but like the budget, it came at a high price, dividing our party in Congress and infuriating many of our strongest supporters in the labor movement.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.557
Jun 21, 2004
On Health Care:
Loosen eligibility for disability benefits
[As Arkansas Governor], I was upset with the Reagan administration. It had just dramatically tightened the eligibility rules for federal disability benefits. There had been abuses of the disability program, but the Reagan cure was worse than the problem.
The regulations were so strict they were ridiculous. In Arkansas, a truck driver with a ninth-grade education had lost his arm in an accident. He was denied disability benefits on the theory that he could get a desk job doing clerical work.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.313
Jun 21, 2004
On Health Care:
Security,simplicity,savings,choice,quality, & responsibility
I was scheduled to present the health-care plan to a joint session of Congress on Sep. 22. I explained the problem--that one system cost too much and covered too few--and outlined the basic principles of our plan: security, simplicity, savings, choice,
quality, and responsibility. Everyone would have coverage, through private insurers, that would not be lost when there was an illness or a job change; there would be far less paperwork because of a uniform minimum-benefit package; we would reap large
savings through lower administrative costs.Under our plan, Americans would be able to choose their own health plan and keep their own doctors, choices that were vanishing for more and more Americans whose insurance was carried by health maintenance
organizations (HMOs).
If the system I had proposed had been adopted, it would have reduced inflation in health-care costs, spread the burden of paying for health care more fairly, and provided health security to millions of Americans who didn't have it.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.547-549
Jun 21, 2004
On Health Care:
Universal coverage would reduce bureaucratic costs
I was beginning to believe we [Hillary and Bill] might actually have honest debate that would produce something close to universal coverage.
The bureaucratic costs imposed by insurance companies were a big reason Americans paid more for health care but still didn’t have the universal coverage that citizens in
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.555
Jun 21, 2004
On Homeland Security:
Proposed more funding for terrorism defense
I asked for funds to guard computer networks against terrorists, and to protect communities from chemical and biological attacks and to reverse the decline in military spending that had begun at the end of the Cold War.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.843
Jun 21, 2004
On Homeland Security:
2000: Warned Bush that biggest problem was Al Qaeda & Osama
President-elect Bush came to the White House for the same meeting I had had with his father 8 years earlier. We talked about the campaign, White House operations, and national security. He was putting together an experienced team from past Republican
administrations who believed that the biggest security issues were the need for national missile defense and Iraq. I told him that based on the last 8 years, I thought his biggest security problems, in order, would be Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda; the
absence of peace in the Middle East; the standoff between nuclear powers in India and Pakistan; and the ties of the Pakistanis to the Taliban and al Qaeda; North Korea; and then Iraq. I said that my biggest disappointment was not getting bin Laden,
that we still might achieve an agreement in the Middle East, and that we had almost tied up a deal with North Korea to end its missile program.He listened to what I had to say without much comment, then changed the subject to how I did the job.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.935
Jun 21, 2004
On Immigration:
Assure Mexico: no mass deportations
Immigration was a big issue [in discussions between myself and the president of Mexico]. Many Central Americans and people from the Caribbean nations were working in the US and sending money back home to their families, providing a major source of income
in the smaller nations. The leaders were worried about the anti-immigration stance Republicans had taken and wanted my assurances that their would be no mass deportations. I gave it to them, but also said we had to enforce our immigration laws.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.756
Jun 21, 2004
On Jobs:
1990: AFL-CIO refused endorsement; Locals endorsed anyway
In April, the AFL-CIO refused for the first time to endorse me. Bill Becker, their president, had never really liked me. He thought the sales tax increase was unfair to working people, opposed the tax incentives I'd supported to lure new jobs to
Arkansas, and blamed me for the failure of the tax-reform referendum of 1988. He was also furious that I had supported a $300,000 loan guarantee to a business involved in a labor dispute.
Within two weeks, 18 local unions defied Becker and endorsed me anyway. They didn't fall into the classic liberal trap of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
If the people who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 hadn't made the same mistake, Al Gore would have been elected President.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.357-8&928-9
Jun 21, 2004
On Jobs:
$15B for jobs in poor communities
I recommended a minimum wage increase, expanded family leave, a child-care tax credit, and trigger locks on guns. I also asked Congress to pass the Equal Pay and Employment Non-Discrimination acts;
to establish a new American Private Investment Corporation to help raise $15 billion to create new businesses and jobs in poor communities.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.843
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Learn from Creation what one must be
According to Ernest Becker [a philosopher who wrote The Denial of Death], as we grow up, at some point we become aware of death, then the fact that people we know and love die, then the fact that someday we, too, will die. Most of us do what we
can to avoid it. Meanwhile, we embrace identities and the illusion of self-sufficiency. We pursue activities, both positive and negative, that we hope will lift us beyond the chains of ordinary existence and perhaps endure after we are gone.
Whether we succeed or fail ,we are still going to die. The only solace, of course, is to believe that since we are created, there must be a Creator, one to whom we matter and will in some way return. Becker seemed to have met Immanuel Kant’s test of life
: ‘How to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man.’ I’ve spent a life time trying to do that. Becker’s book helped convince me it was an effort worth making.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.235
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Developed the New Democrat Philosophy for 1992 campaign
By the end of 1986, I had formed some basic convictions about the nature of the modern world, which was later developed into the so-called New Democrat philosophy that was the backbone of my 1992 campaign for President. These are the new rules that
I believe should provide the framework within which we make policy today:- Change may be the only constant in today’s American economy
- [Human capital] is probably more important than physical capital now.
- A more constructive partnership
between business and government is far more important than the dominance of either.
- As we try to solve problems which arise out of the internationalization of American life and the changes in our own population, cooperation in every area is far more
important than conflict. We have to share responsibilities and opportunities--we’re going up or down together.
- Waste is going to be punished [especially corporate debt].
- A strong America requires a resurgent sense of community.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.326-7
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Asks forgiveness from Monica and her family
I said that I was sorry for all who had been hurt--Monica Lewinsky and her family; that I had asked for their forgiveness:-- a willingness to give the very forgiveness I seek.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.810
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Cites John 8:7 as defense against impeachment
I have two stones with the New Testament verse John 8:7 inscribed on them. In what many people believe was Jesus’ last encounter with his critics, the Pharisees, they brought to him a woman caught in the act of adultery
and said the law of Moses commanded them to stone her to death. Jesus responded ‘He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ My sense of my own mortality and human frailty and the unconditional love
I’d had as a child had spared me the compulsion to judge and condemn others. And I believed my personal flaws, no matter how deep, were far less threatening to our democratic government than the power lust of my accusers.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.846-7
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Right wing ideology trumps compassionate conservatism
I had watched the Washington Republicans for eight years and imagined that President Bush would, from the outset of his term, be under pressure to abandon compassionate conservatism by the more right-wing leaders and interest groups now in
control of his party. They believed in their ways as deeply as I believed in mine, but I thought the evidence, and the weight of history, favored our side (democratic liberalism).
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.951
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Bush believes in his way, but history favors Clinton’s
I thought about the note to President Bush I would write and leave behind in the Oval Office, just as his father had done for me eight years earlier. I wanted to be gracious and encouraging, as George Bush had been to me. Soon George W. Bush would be
President of all the people, and I wished him well. I had paid close attention to what Bush and Cheney had said in the campaign. I knew they saw the world very differently from the way I did and would want to undo much of what I had done,
especially on economic policy and the environment. But those were not my calls to make anymore. I had watched the Washington Republicans for eight years and imagined that President Bush would, from the outset of his term, be under pressure to abandon
compassionate conservatism by the more right-wing leaders and interest groups now in control of his party. They believed in their way as deeply as I believed in mine, but I thought the evidence, and the weight of history, favored our side.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.951
Jun 21, 2004
On Social Security:
Proposed a small portion of Trust Fund be in mutual funds
[During the 1990s] the state of our union was stronger than ever, and I outlined a program, a series of initiatives to create a secure retirement for the baby boom generation.
I proposed to commit 60 percent of the surplus over the next fifteen years to extend the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund until 2055, a small portion of it to be invested in mutual funds.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.842
Jun 21, 2004
On Tax Reform:
Republican tax cut was too big & too bloated
I vetoed the Republican tax cut because it was “too big, too bloated,” and put too great a burden on America’s economy. Under the budget rules, the bill would have forced large cuts on education, health care, and environmental protection. It would have
prevented us from extending the Social Security trust funds, & from adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. We were going to have a surplus this year of about $100 billion, but the proposed GOP tax cut would cost nearly $1 trillion over a decade
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.870
Jun 21, 2004
On Technology:
1996: Parents control kids' TV access with V-chip
In February 1996, I signed the Telecommunication Act, a sweeping overhaul of the laws affecting an industry that was already one-sixth of our economy. The act increased competition, innovation, and access to what
Al Gore had dubbed the "information superhighway." We reached what I thought was a fair compromise, and in the end the bill was passed almost unanimously. It also contained a requirement that new television sets include the V-chip, which
I had first endorsed at the Gores' annual family conference, to allow parents to control their children's access to programs; by the end of the month, executives from most of the television networks would agree to have a rating system for their
programs in place by 1997. Even more important, the act mandated discounted Internet access rates for schools, libraries, and hospitals; the so-called E-rate would eventually save public entities about $2 billion a year.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.699-700
Jun 21, 2004
On War & Peace:
1992: Bombed Iraq to retaliate for Bush assassination plot
In June 1992, I ordered the military into action for the first time, firing twenty-three Tomahawk missiles into Iraq's intelligence headquarters, in retaliation for a plot to assassinate President George H. W. Bush during a trip he had made to Kuwait.
More than a dozen people involved in the plot had been arrested in Kuwait on April 13, one day before the former President had been scheduled to arrive. The materials in their possession were conclusively traced to Iraqi intelligence, and on
May 19 one of the arrested Iraqis confirmed to the FBI that the Iraqi intelligence service was behind the plot. Most of the Tomahawks hit the target, but four of them overshot, three landing in an upscale
Baghdad neighborhood and killing eight civilians. It was a stark reminder that no matter how careful the planning and how accurate the weapons, when that kind of firepower is unleashed, there are usually unintended consequences.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.525-526
Jun 21, 2004
On War & Peace:
Unexpextedly, Kosovo bombing worked
After the raids on Kosovo succeeded, John Keegan, perhaps the foremost living historian of warfare, wrote a fascinating article in the British press about the Kosovo campaign. He admitted frankly that he had not believed the bombing would work
and that he had been wrong. He said the reason such campaigns had failed in the past is that most bombs had missed their targets. The weaponry used in Kosovo was more precise than that used in the first Gulf War; and though some bombs went
astray in Kosovo and Serbia, far fewer civilians were killed than in Iraq. I’m also still convinced that fewer civilians died than would have perished if we had put in ground troops, a bridge I would have nevertheless
have crossed rather than let Milosevic prevail. The success of the air campaign in Kosovo marked a new chapter in military history.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p.859
Jun 21, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Father brought date to hospital where he met mother, a nurse
Early on the morning of Aug. 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about 6,000 in southwest Arkansas. My mother named me William Jefferson Blythe III after
my father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr., 1 of 9 children of a poor farmer in Sherman, Texas, who died when my father was 17. According to his sisters, my father always tried to take care of them, and he grew up to be a handsome, hardworking, fun-loving
man.He met my mother at Tri-State Hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1943, when she was training to be a nurse. He brought a date with some kind of medical emergency into the ward where she was working, and they flirted while the other woman was
being treated. The next day he sent the other woman flowers and Mother's heart sank. Then he called Mother for a date, explaining that he always sent flowers when he ended a relationship. Two months later, they were married and he was off to war.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p. 4
Jun 1, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Knew his father only through stories from family
After serving in the war in Italy, he returned to Hope for Mother and they moved to Chicago, where he got back his old job as a salesman. They bought a little house in the suburb of Forest Park but couldn't move in for a couple of months, and since
Mother was pregnant with me, they decided she should go home to Hope.On May 17, 1946, my father was driving from Chicago to Hope to fetch his wife. Late at night on Highway 60 outside of Sikeston, Missouri, he lost control of his car when the right
front tire blew out. He was thrown into a drainage ditch. The ditch held three feet of water. When he was found, after a two-hour search, his hand was grasping a branch above the waterline. He had tried but failed to pull himself out. He drowned, only
28 years old.
That brief sketch is about all I ever really knew about my father. All my life I have been hungry to fill in the blanks, clinging eagerly to every photo or story or scrap of paper that would tell me more of the man who gave me life.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p. 4-5
Jun 1, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Father had two children from three previous secret marriages
In 1993, on Father's Day, the Washington Post ran a long investigative story on my father, which was followed by other investigative pieces. The stories turned up a lot we didn't know, including the fact that my father had probably been married three
times before he met Mother, and apparently had at least two more children.My father's other son was identified as Leon Ritzenthaler, a retired owner of a janitorial service, from northern California. I got in touch with him and later met him and his
wife, Judy. Since then we've corresponded in holiday seasons. He and I look alike, his birth certificate says his father was mine, and I wish I'd known about him a long time ago.
Somewhere around this time, I also learned about Sharon Pettijohn, born
Sharon Lee Blythe in Kansas City in 1941, to a woman my father later divorced. She sent copies of her birth certificate; her parents' marriage license; a photo of my father. I'm sorry to say that, for whatever reason, I've never met her.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p. 5
Jun 1, 2004
On Principles & Values:
Father's early death left me with sense of my own mortality
My father [who died at age 28] left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people, and that if I did it well enough, somehow I could make up for the life he should have had. And his memory infused me, at a younger age than most, with a sense
of my own mortality. The knowledge that I, too, could die young drove me both to try to drain the most out of every moment of life and to get on with the next big challenge. Even when I wasn't sure where I was going, I was always in a hurry.
Source: My Life, by Bill Clinton, p. 7
Jun 1, 2004
Page last updated: Feb 19, 2019