William J. Clinton | Academy of Achievement

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Clinton | Academy of Achievement</title> <meta name="description" content="During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the United States enjoyed more peace and economic well-being than at any time in its history. Prior to his election as president, Bill Clinton served five consecutive terms as Governor of Arkansas, a position to which he was first elected at the age of 32. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. In foreign affairs, he helped bring about the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and facilitated an unprecedented degree of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. His influence also helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military troops to enforce agreements restoring the democratically elected government in Haiti, ending the civil war in Bosnia, and averting imminent genocide in Kosovo. On his orders, American military power was also used to disrupt terrorist activities in Sudan and Afghanistan. Throughout the course of the Clinton administration, the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses, enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, plummeting crime rates, and the highest home ownership rate in history — the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history."/> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"/> <meta name="googlebot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <meta name="bingbot" content="index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1"/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="William J. Clinton | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the United States enjoyed more peace and economic well-being than at any time in its history. Prior to his election as president, Bill Clinton served five consecutive terms as Governor of Arkansas, a position to which he was first elected at the age of 32. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office. In foreign affairs, he helped bring about the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and facilitated an unprecedented degree of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. His influence also helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military troops to enforce agreements restoring the democratically elected government in Haiti, ending the civil war in Bosnia, and averting imminent genocide in Kosovo. On his orders, American military power was also used to disrupt terrorist activities in Sudan and Afghanistan. Throughout the course of the Clinton administration, the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses, enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, plummeting crime rates, and the highest home ownership rate in history — the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history."/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2019-09-30T15:05:26+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/header-2800x1120-Clinton-William-Getty-735018.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@achievers1961"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/header-2800x1120-Clinton-William-Getty-735018.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/","name":"William J. 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Throughout the course of the Clinton administration, the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses, enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, plummeting crime rates, and the highest home ownership rate in history \u2014 the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.","inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"]}]}]}</script>  <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://s.w.org/"/> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20200917235223cs_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/dist/styles/main-fb4131a9f6.css"> <script>if (document.location.protocol != "https:") {document.location = document.URL.replace(/^http:/i, "https:");}</script><script 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<div class="icon-bar bottom-bar"></div> </div> <div class="search-toogle icon-icon_search" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#searchModal" data-gtm-category="search" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Header Search Icon"></div> </div> </div> </header> <div class="" role="document"> <div class="content"> <main class="main"> <div class="feature-area__container"> <header class="feature-area feature-area--has-image ratio-container ratio-container--feature"> <figure class="feature-box"> <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image feature-area__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/header-2800x1120-Clinton-William-Getty-735018.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/header-2800x1120-Clinton-William-Getty-735018-1400x560.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/header-2800x1120-Clinton-William-Getty-735018.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">William J. Clinton</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">42nd President of the United States</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-40927 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-attorney careers-politician"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/WhatItTakes_clinton-256-190x190.png" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">I realize there just are no permanent victories. You have to keep fighting for freedom. There is always an impulse to degrade people who are different from you, to diminish them, to demean them and it never seems to go away, even when there is ample evidence that when we work together, we do better.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">The Man from Hope</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> August 19, 1946 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_41743" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41743" style="width: 629px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41743 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41743 lazyload" alt="" width="629" height="898" data-sizes="(max-width: 629px) 100vw, 629px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5.jpg 629w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5-266x380.jpg 266w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5-532x760.jpg 532w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41743" class="wp-caption-text">1952: 6-year-old William Jefferson Clinton in Hot Springs, Arkansas. (Credit: William J. Clinton Presidential Library)</figcaption></figure> <p>The 42nd President of the United States was born William Jefferson Blythe III, in Hope, Arkansas. Three months before his birth, his father, William Jefferson Blythe, Jr., was killed in a car accident.  His mother, Virginia Cassidy, left him with her parents in Hope while she went to nursing school. When her child was four, Virginia Cassidy married Roger Clinton, an automobile dealer. William, called Bill, moved with his mother and stepfather to Hot Springs, Arkansas and soon had a younger stepbrother, Roger Clinton, Jr. When he was 15, Bill officially changed his name to William Jefferson Clinton. All was not peaceful in the Clinton household. Roger Clinton, Sr. was an alcoholic with a violent temper, and on occasion, the teenage Bill had to intervene physically to prevent his stepfather from beating his mother and brother. Despite turmoil at home, Bill Clinton did well in school, taking a special interest in history, public speaking and music. Outgoing and gregarious, he threw himself into a wide variety of extracurricular activities. He sang in his church choir, played first saxophone in the state youth band, and joined the American Legion Boys Nation program.</p> <figure id="attachment_41758" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41758" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41758 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41758 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2839" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1-305x380.jpg 305w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1-610x760.jpg 610w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41758" class="wp-caption-text">July 24, 1963: 16-year-old Bill Clinton shook hands with President John F. Kennedy in the Rose Garden of the White House. Clinton was attending the American Legion Boys Nation program. (Photo by: Arnold Sachs/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>President John F. Kennedy was one of Clinton’s boyhood heroes, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose “I Have a Dream” speech he memorized after seeing Dr. King on television. In 1963, Clinton was one of two boys elected to represent Arkansas in a Boys Nation mock-Senate session in Washington, D.C. At the time, President Kennedy’s proposed Civil Rights Act was stalled in the Senate. In their deliberations, the Boys Nation assembly passed the measure. President Kennedy invited the boys to the White House, and the 16-year-old Bill Clinton was thrilled to be photographed shaking hands with the president. Increasingly interested in a career in public service, Clinton volunteered for political campaigns in Arkansas. He won scholarships to the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and entered the university in the autumn of 1964. Professor Carroll Quigley’s course “The History of Civilizations” made a great impression on Clinton, with its emphasis on the Western ideal of progress. Another powerful influence on the young Clinton was the U.S. senator from Arkansas, J. William Fulbright. While he was attending Georgetown, Clinton secured a part-time position in Senator Fulbright’s Washington office. Although Clinton disagreed with Fulbright’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, he was impressed by the senator’s courage in investigating the progress of the Vietnam War, a decision that brought the senator into conflict with the leader of his own party, President Lyndon Johnson.</p> <figure id="attachment_41750" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41750" style="width: 1312px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41750 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41750 lazyload" alt="" width="1312" height="2048" data-sizes="(max-width: 1312px) 100vw, 1312px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton.jpg 1312w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton-243x380.jpg 243w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton-487x760.jpg 487w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41750" class="wp-caption-text">1972: Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham at Yale Law School. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1968, Clinton won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. In 1971, Clinton returned to the United States to attend Yale Law School  in New Haven, Connecticut, where he met his future wife, fellow law student Hillary Rodham.</figcaption></figure> <p>A longtime advocate of international educational exchange, and founder of the Fulbright Scholar Program, Senator Fulbright had studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. As graduation from Georgetown approached, Clinton too applied for a Rhodes Scholarship and — largely on the basis of his work for Senator Fulbright — was accepted. Traveling to England by ocean liner, he met a fellow Rhodes Scholar, Robert Reich, who would later serve as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Clinton studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford, but left without taking a degree, returning to the United States to attend Yale Law School. At Yale, he met a fellow law student from Illinois who was one of the few women in the program, Hillary Rodham. Many of her classmates expected her to pursue a career in public service in New York or Washington and were surprised when she chose to join Bill Clinton in Arkansas. Both taught at the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville, while Bill Clinton made his first try for public office, running for Congress. Although he was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Clinton made a stronger run than previous Democratic challengers. The couple was married in 1975. The following year, Bill Clinton was elected Attorney General of Arkansas; at age 30 he was the youngest attorney general in the country. Clinton made national news in 1978 when he was elected governor of Arkansas.</p> <figure id="attachment_41763" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41763" style="width: 2560px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41763 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41763 lazyload" alt="" width="2560" height="1725" data-sizes="(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration.jpg 2560w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration-380x256.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration-760x512.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41763" class="wp-caption-text">January 1991: Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, in Little Rock celebrating his inauguration as governor. Clinton served as Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. This was Clinton’s last consecutive term as Governor of Arkansas. (Credit: AP Photo)</figcaption></figure> <p>The Clintons’ only child, Chelsea, was born during their first term in the governor’s mansion. At the time, the Arkansas constitution set the limit of a governor’s term at two years, and after signing an increase to the state’s motor vehicles tax to cover a budget shortfall, in 1980 Clinton was defeated for re-election. But in 1982, he was re-elected and would hold the office for the next ten years. After Clinton was elected to his third two-year term, Arkansas extended the term of its governors to four years. Clinton was elected to four-year terms in 1986 and 1990.</p> <figure id="attachment_41780" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41780" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41780 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41780 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1521" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992-380x254.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41780" class="wp-caption-text">November 3, 1992: Bill Clinton and Al Gore raise hands in victory in Arkansas after defeating President George H.W. Bush in a landslide election. At age 46, Clinton became the youngest U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. (© AP)</figcaption></figure> <p>The signature accomplishment of Clinton’s governorship was a sweeping series of educational reforms. His administration raised the state’s sales tax to pay for increased spending on education. Clinton expanded both vocational training and programs for gifted students, and raised standards of instruction, with augmented compensation and compulsory competency exams for teachers. Improved education results in Arkansas and Clinton’s chairmanship of the National Governors Association made him a national figure and presidential prospect.</p> <figure id="attachment_41769" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41769" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41769 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41769 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3418" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41769" class="wp-caption-text">February 1993: President Bill Clinton with his mother, Virginia Kelley, in the Oval Office of the White House. Clinton attributes his gregariousness, resilience, and optimism to his mother. (© William J. Clinton Presidential Library)</figcaption></figure> <p>At the beginning of the 1992 campaign, incumbent President George H.W. Bush was considered unbeatable, but a faltering economy eroded his popularity, while a compromise with the Democratic Congress on taxes created dissension in Republican ranks. A third party challenge by businessman Ross Perot further complicated the playing field. Clinton’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination was nearly derailed by allegations of marital infidelity, but the governor’s appearance with his wife on prime time television revived his candidacy. Clinton’s victory in the New York primary made him the clear front-runner for his party’s nomination. His selection of a fellow young Southern moderate — Senator Albert Gore, Jr., of Tennessee — as a running mate reinforced the sense of a generational shift in American politics, and Clinton emerged from the Democratic Convention as the leader of a united party.</p> <figure id="attachment_41782" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41782" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41782 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41782 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1532" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta-380x255.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta-760x511.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41782" class="wp-caption-text">December 8, 1993: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. NAFTA, a trade pact between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, eliminated all tariffs and trade restrictions between the three nations. The passage of NAFTA was one of Clinton’s first major victories as the first Democratic president in 12 years — though the movement had begun as a Republican initiative. (Photo by: Sygma/Corbis)</figcaption></figure> <p>After strong performances in televised debates, Clinton was swept to victory along with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. In his first year in office, Clinton succeeded in passing a budget which included a tax cut for lower-income Americans and a tax increase on higher incomes. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War permitted a substantial reduction in military spending, and with the economy recovering, the next few years saw a gradual reduction in the federal government’s annual deficit. Although Clinton’s 1993 budget received no votes from congressional Republicans, he assembled a bipartisan coalition to enact the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with more Republicans than Democrats voting in favor of the agreement.</p> <p>In his first term, the president achieved notable foreign policy successes, hosting Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the historic signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. The following year, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in a White House ceremony.</p> <figure id="attachment_41771" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41771" style="width: 2569px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-41771 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-41771 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2569" height="1713" data-sizes="(max-width: 2569px) 100vw, 2569px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat.jpg 2569w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41771" class="wp-caption-text">September 13, 1993: President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat shake hands after the historic signing ceremony for the Oslo Accord. (Photo: William J. Clinton Presidential Library)</figcaption></figure> <p>In 1995, Clinton mobilized NATO allies to carry out air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, forcing the combatants to the negotiating table. Clinton dispatched U.S. troops to keep the peace in Bosnia after the completion of the Dayton Agreement. Clinton led a second NATO intervention in the Balkans in 1999, to avert a massacre of the Muslim population of Serbia’s Kosovo region. Subsequent negotiations led to the independence of Kosovo.</p> <figure id="attachment_41810" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41810" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41810 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41810 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3501" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp-247x380.jpg 247w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp-495x760.jpg 495w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41810" class="wp-caption-text">1999: President Clinton comforts a young Kosovar refugee at Stenkovic 1 Refugee Camp near Skopje, Macedonia. In 1995, Clinton mobilized NATO allies to carry out air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which proved key in ending the war. In 1999, Clinton led a second NATO intervention in the Balkans to avert a massacre of the Muslim population of Serbia’s Kosovo region. (William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum)</figcaption></figure> <p>His ambitious plan to reform the nation’s health insurance system failed in Congress, and in the 1994 elections, the Democratic Party lost control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Clinton sought bipartisan compromises with the Republican Congress, enacting a welfare reform bill that antagonized many members of his own party. Bipartisan measures deregulating the financial services industry, passed toward the end of his second term, were widely supported at the time. Critics have subsequently suggested that they contributed to the financial crisis of 2008, many years after President Clinton left office, although the former president disputes this analysis.</p> <figure id="attachment_41777" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41777" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41777 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41777 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1496" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON-380x249.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON-760x499.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41777" class="wp-caption-text">November 30, 1995: President Bill Clinton and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume at Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Clinton became the first American president to visit Northern Ireland, touring the cities of Belfast and Derry to show support for the peace process. On April 10, 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern signed the Good Friday Agreement, bringing to an end the thirty years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles.” (Photo by: William J. Clinton Presidential Library)</figcaption></figure> <p>President Clinton broke with the policy of previous administrations with regard to Britain’s troubled rule over Northern Ireland. Over the objections of the British government and against the counsel of his own advisers, he issued a visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and received him at the White House. The Irish nationalist party responded with major concessions and Clinton successfully pressured longtime enemies to enter peace talks. These talks led to the Good Friday Peace Accord, negotiated by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, with Northern Ireland’s Unionist leader David Trimble and Social Democratic Labour Party leader John Hume. The accord ended decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland, and all parties to the process give a measure of credit for its success to the president’s sustained personal involvement in the process.</p> <figure id="attachment_5057" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5057" style="width: 2160px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-5057 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2012_bono_clapping_wordpress.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-5057 lazyload" alt="(L to R) President Bill Clinton, Catherine B. Reynolds, Bono, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, and Frank McCourt at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin." width="2160" height="1440" data-sizes="(max-width: 2160px) 100vw, 2160px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2012_bono_clapping_wordpress.jpg 2160w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2012_bono_clapping_wordpress-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2012_bono_clapping_wordpress-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2012_bono_clapping_wordpress.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-5057" class="wp-caption-text">2002: President Bill Clinton, Catherine B. Reynolds, Bono, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, and Frank McCourt at a symposium during the Academy of Achievement’s International Achievement Summit in Dublin.</figcaption></figure> <p>At the outset of the Clinton administration, the Internet and the World Wide Web were virtually unknown to most Americans. His administration supported construction of the fiber optic networks that enabled the expansion of broadband Internet service — the “information superhighway” he had described to widespread incomprehension in his 1992 presidential campaign. Along with Vice President Gore— an early Internet advocate — he pressed all government departments to adopt the new technology. By the time he left office, the Internet had become a ubiquitous presence in American life.</p> <figure id="attachment_41946" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41946" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-41946 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-41946 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1835" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin-380x306.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin-760x612.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41946" class="wp-caption-text">2003: Academy members Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry, President Bill Clinton, and Patti Austin at the International Achievement Summit’s Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies held at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.</figcaption></figure> <p>Clinton won re-election to the presidency in 1996, although Republicans retained control of Congress for the rest of his term. As early as 1994, an independent counsel had been appointed to investigate the Clintons’ financial dealings in Arkansas. The investigation failed to find any proof of financial crime but uncovered an improper relationship between the president and a young White House aide. Clinton had already denied having a sexual relationship with the aide during a sworn deposition in an unrelated case. The matter was referred to the House of Representatives, and in 1998 the House voted to impeach the president for perjury and obstruction of justice. For the second time in history, a president stood trial before the United States Senate. As the nation watched on live television, Clinton was acquitted of all charges.</p> <figure id="attachment_6539" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6539" style="width: 1336px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-6539 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-6539 lazyload" alt="" width="1336" height="916" data-sizes="(max-width: 1336px) 100vw, 1336px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048.jpg 1336w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048-380x261.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048-760x521.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-6539" class="wp-caption-text">2005: President Bill Clinton addresses his fellow Academy of Achievement members and student delegates at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to begin the 44th annual International Achievement Summit held in New York City.</figcaption></figure> <p>Although the country remained passionately divided over the case, the president’s popularity increased following the impeachment trial. After 30 years of budget deficits, the federal government recorded budget surpluses for the last three years of his presidency, and President Clinton left office with the highest approval ratings of any departing president since World War II.</p> <figure id="attachment_6426" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6426" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-6426 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-6426 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2207" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257-380x368.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257-760x736.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-6426" class="wp-caption-text">Telecommunications magnates Carlos Slim and Emilio Azcárraga, with Azcárraga’s wife, Sharon, and President Bill Clinton at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, California. (© Academy of Achievement)</figcaption></figure> <p>In the years since his presidency, Bill Clinton has achieved enormous success as a public speaker and wrote a bestselling autobiography, <em>My Life</em>. He founded the Clinton Foundation to address global causes such as the AIDS epidemic and climate change. The foundation has achieved considerable success in promoting public health in underdeveloped countries and has received high ratings from charity rating organizations for spending the largest part of its contributions directly on its programs and a bare minimum on administration or fundraising. After leaving office, President Clinton forged a surprising friendship with his former election rival, President George H.W. Bush, and worked with former President George W. Bush on Haitian earthquake relief. Clinton was also a highly visible advocate for the political campaigns of his wife, Hillary — who was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000 — and for President Barack Obama.</p> <figure id="attachment_40795" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-40795" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-40795 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-40795 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1824" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730-380x304.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730-760x608.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-40795" class="wp-caption-text">President Bill Clinton presents the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award to acclaimed singer and songwriter Sting at the 2017 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies at Claridge’s Hotel Ballroom in London.</figcaption></figure> <p>Despite the partisan conflicts that raged throughout his tenure, and lingering controversy over his personal conduct, the eight years of his presidency were years of unparalleled economic growth, which saw a temporary reversal in a decades-long trend toward income inequality. Public opinion polls registered a high level of approval of Clinton’s presidency for many years following his departure from office.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2002 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.attorney">Attorney</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.politician">Politician</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> August 19, 1946 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p>During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the United States enjoyed more peace and economic well-being than at any time in its history. Prior to his election as president, Bill Clinton served five consecutive terms as Governor of Arkansas, a position to which he was first elected at the age of 32. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to two full terms in office.</p> <p>In foreign affairs, he helped bring about the historic peace accord between Israel and Jordan, and facilitated an unprecedented degree of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. His influence also helped promote the peace process in Northern Ireland. President Clinton dispatched American military troops to enforce agreements restoring the democratically elected government in Haiti, ending the civil war in Bosnia, and averting imminent genocide in Kosovo. On his orders, American military power was also used to disrupt terrorist activities in Sudan and Afghanistan.</p> <p>Throughout the course of the Clinton administration, the United States moved from record deficits to record surpluses, enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, plummeting crime rates, and the highest home ownership rate in history — the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/yAOzossAKiE?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_05_15_26.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_05_15_26.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">The Man from Hope</h2> <div class="sans-2">London, England</div> <div class="sans-2">October 18, 2017</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>When you accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the 1992 convention, you mentioned a favorite professor you had met at Georgetown, Carroll Quigley. How was he important to you?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/MCcdIpXdHXw?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-MasterEdit.01_00_44_21.Still019-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-MasterEdit.01_00_44_21.Still019-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/the-american-dream/">The American Dream</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Bill Clinton: Let me just say a word about Georgetown. I think it’s unlikely I would have been president if I’d never gone there. That’s how important it was to me. When I wrote my autobiography my editor made me take out 20 pages that I wrote about Georgetown, and there’s still about 20 in there. He said, “It’s impossible you remember all these teachers and all the questions on the exam there,” and I said, “No, it’s not. You have no idea.” For me, it was like the world was opened to me.</p> <p>So Quigley taught a course called “The History of Civilizations,” and at the end, he said that the great gift of Western civilization to the human race was the idea of progress in a very specific way. He said it was the idea that the future can be better than the present and that every single person, not just the rulers, not just the elected leaders, not just the billionaires, every person has a personal moral obligation to make it so, to keep it going, to make the future better. And it resonated with me. I thought, “That’s the purpose of politics.” It made me really think even more than I had before that I might like a career in public service.</p> <p>It also made me aware of why in the aftermath of something like the 2008 crash you are going to have so much disorientation and anger and frustration because too many people have gotten up every day, and some still do, and looked in the mirror and thought all their tomorrows were going to be like yesterday.</p> <p>It’s the ultimate disempowerment. There’s nothing you can do for yourself, and even worse, for your family. It’s going to be all the same, and Quigley made us understand that our whole culture in Western civilization was designed to counter that, to believe that you personally could make a difference, and I never got over it. I still think about it. You’d be amazed. I still think about it. I think about a lot of things I learned in college, but that was very important for me.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_41953" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41953" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41953 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41953 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1519" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41953" class="wp-caption-text">October 1965: Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>While you were at Georgetown, you clerked at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Senator Fulbright of Arkansas. How did that experience shape you</strong><strong style="font-size: 1rem;">?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/uObD1JHTwXQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_20_25_06.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_20_25_06.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Bill Clinton: I got the job because I needed the work. I needed the money. My stepfather got sick when I was at Georgetown, and I was afraid my family didn’t have enough money for me to stay, and so I needed to go to work, and Senator Fulbright’s chief of staff was close to a man that I had worked with. By then I was working campaigns and stuff in Arkansas, and he called me one day, woke me up out of a cold sleep, and said, “You can come here.” He said, “You can have a part-time job for $3,500 a year or,” he said, “you can work full-time” — and some people did and went to school at night — “for $5,000 a year.” And I was still groggy, and I said, “I would like two part-time jobs.” He said, “You’re just the guy I’m looking for. Be here Monday morning.” I’ll never forget it. It was Thursday morning. So I started packing, gassed up the car, got in on Saturday and drove up and showed up for work Monday.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/hAAklmhcws8?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-MasterEdit.00_44_58_07.Still017-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-MasterEdit.00_44_58_07.Still017-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>My job was basically to be a delivery boy for all kinds of things, but they also — because I was at Georgetown and studying international affairs, I was assigned to read six newspapers a day and clip the most relevant articles. This is the technology we used. You couldn’t scan articles. There was no “online.” There was nothing, right? So I would read the newspapers, clip the articles I thought they ought to read, put them on a routing slip, which had on it the names of the senior staff of the committee and all the senators who were committee members. And I would send it to the senior staff, and they would decide whether to send any of them on, but I don’t think I’d have won a Rhodes Scholarship if I hadn’t been a clerk on the Foreign Relations Committee. Nobody else I was competing with read six newspapers a day, and they actually paid me good money to read <em>The Washington Post,</em> <em>The New York Times, The Washington</em> <em>Star,</em> which existed then, <em>The Baltimore Sun</em>, <em>The St. Louis Post Dispatch</em>, and then we alternated — and — oh, and <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>. We read them every day. Those were the six papers we read. I did, and then that’s what the senators got.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/NTWaHJFNhpQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_17_16_24.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_17_16_24.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/integrity/">Integrity</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Bill Clinton: The Vietnam War hearings were going on. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducted these very serious hearings, and Senator Fulbright, the chairman, was opposed to our policy; and Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, was the spokesperson for it — President Johnson’s secretary of state. And I never will forget, I learned a lot about how Washington worked because on the days the committee was going to have a hearing, quite often Rusk would come in, 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning, and drink coffee with Fulbright to prepare for the hearings, knowing they were going to fight like cats and dogs. It was a different time. They still could be civil to each other, could listen to one another. And they — Fulbright didn’t want there to be any surprises in the hearings. He didn’t mind them knowing, you know, what they were going to ask about, who was particularly interested in this, that, or the other thing. It was fascinating. We brought in all these experts.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/k-ceTJv5WDE?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_36_32_29.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_36_32_29.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I loved it, and I learned so much. I also had to have a security clearance just to carry documents that were marked “secret” or “classified.” And I started my long education in the ins and outs of the classification system of the United States government when I was an undergraduate. And because Fulbright was the chairman of the committee he had an automated — some sort of automated device that allowed the Pentagon to send him, every day, a list of the people who’d been killed in Vietnam from Arkansas. So I would go check it every day. Four of my high school classmates were killed, including, as I said, the son of my guy who was my Sunday school teacher for nine years. And I also knew, because I had to carry the stuff around, that not everything the government was claiming about the progress on the battlefield was true, and it’s kind of a crazy burden for a kid my age. I felt guilty I wasn’t there, and it felt futile to go. It was an awful feeling.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Senator Fulbright was quite outspoken in his opposition to the war. How did that impress you?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/FxgYcREpFpE?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_37_33_13.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_37_33_13.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/integrity/">Integrity</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Bill Clinton: He knew that it would be unpopular in Arkansas. You know, we’re just a state dominated by the Scotch-Irish, who provided 25 percent of all the soldiers who ever fought in uniform for America since the revolution. One of our counties had the highest fatality rate of any county in America in World War II. A lot of poor African American kids were in the military, and their parents didn’t want to know it was for nothing.</p> <p>I mean it was like an across-the-board challenge, and he believed — he had a very clear view of it, and I thought it was unusual because Fulbright had been more willing than I wish he had been to trim his sails on civil rights for a long time. And he said, “Yes, I disagree with them on that too,” but he said, “If you want to be a representative, and they know something, as much about something as you do — and they do on this — sometimes you have to give in.”</p> <p>“But on this, if I know more than they do, I am doing an immoral thing to preserve my political position at the expense of doing what’s right for their children over the long run.” And in the end, it played a significant role in the undoing of his career, but he did an enormous service to the country in the meantime. And I think — he lived to be 87 — he lived long enough for me to become president and give him the Medal of Freedom, and I think he died at peace with himself and the decision he made.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_41956" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41956" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-41956 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-41956 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1524" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125.jpg 2280w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125-380x254.jpg 380w, /web/20200917235223im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125-760x508.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41956" class="wp-caption-text">November 1, 1993: President Clinton signing NAFTA in the White House Oval Office with Trade Representative Michael Kantor, Representative Robert Matsui, Vice President Al Gore, Representative Daniel Rostenkowski, Representative Tom Foley and Senator Bob Dole. (Cynthia Johnson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>Looking back on your presidency with the hindsight of history, can you talk about some of the decisions people are still debating, such as welfare reform?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/MZ6dFOSf8cQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_09_28_01.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_09_28_01.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Bill Clinton: If I had to make the welfare decision again tomorrow, I’d sign it again tomorrow. We had a 60 percent reduction in the welfare rolls. We had an enormous percentage of poor people move into the workforce, start middle-class lifestyles, and when we had a brief tech recession of six months in 2001, after I left office, people who had moved from welfare to work were less likely to be laid off than the general working population. So I would do it again.</p> <p>Now I did not foresee that we would move so far to the right as a country, mostly because Democrats started winning the popular vote in presidential elections, and so a lot of them just don’t vote at midterm when the governors, the state legislatures, and the congressional districts are decided.</p> <p>If somebody told me that eight states would abolish cash benefits altogether I guess I’d have had to rethink it, but since the ‘70s there was no minimum welfare benefit. You just couldn’t go below where you’d been on the date certain. So, for example, when I signed welfare reform, a poor family of three on welfare got $655 a month in Vermont. They had the highest benefits, and $183 a month in Mississippi, Texas, and one other place. In other words, I think people had this idea that there was some national welfare system. There wasn’t. The national welfare system was, everybody gets Medicaid for their kids, and you get food assistance. The Republicans tried to get rid of that, and I vetoed those first two bills because I wouldn’t do that.</p> <p>I knew what would happen then, that a lot of people would be in trouble, but I didn’t foresee that they’d get rid of that altogether. Also, the law, as written, said that states will continue to get, no matter how small the welfare rolls get, the same amount of money they got in February of ‘94 when the welfare rolls hit an all-time high. After I left office that requirement was not enforced.</p> <p>So the real question is: Should every president walk around thinking, “No matter how good this bill is, I should think of the worst-case scenario, and if anything bad might ever happen after three more elections occur, I shouldn’t ever sign a bill.”? I don’t think you can do that.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>What about the North American Free Trade Agreement — NAFTA?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/tnOnwRIFzs8?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_09_33_00.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_09_33_00.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>If I hadn’t signed NAFTA it would have been worse. First of all, I made it better. We got more environmental protections, and we developed something called the North American Development Bank to promote more investment, particularly near the border where jobs were lost.</p> <p>Secondly, if I hadn’t signed it — after the Mexicans and the Canadians thought, under President Bush before me, it would be the law and they had reached agreement — we would have had more undocumented people pouring in from Mexico. We would have had more drugs coming in from Mexico, and everybody in Latin America would have hated our guts for walking away from our future.</p> <p>Now, what did I learn from it? I learned that there were people, mostly in the other party, who believe in free trade but didn’t really believe in doing anything for people who lost jobs. That is, every trade deal produces winners and losers, so this was going to work for us in a lot of ways because the Mexicans had much higher tariffs than we did. And because, if you’re a wealthy country, the jobs trade creates pay above the average wage, and often the jobs that are lost pay below.</p> <p>But it’s always assumed that all those people will be retrained and that there will be incentives to invest within driving distance of where they live to create new jobs. And we lost the Congress in ‘94, and I couldn’t get the money, and there was no interest in it until my last year as president when we passed something called the New Markets Initiative. So if I had it to do again, I’d get the money on the front end, and I’d say, “No, no, no, no. I need more money to help the people who will lose the jobs.”</p> <p>I just assumed, I think probably because I had — the Congress was the majority of our party, and also because the people that were for NAFTA, I couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to help the people that wouldn’t be winners.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>What do you think now about the decision to remove the Glass-Steagall restrictions that separated investment banking from commercial banking operations? Some people think that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/QEfV-3fQPD8?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_23_13_19.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_23_13_19.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I don’t think the Glass-Steagall bill made any contribution to the financial crisis at all for a simple reason. The difference in investment banks and commercial banks had been abolished in the 1980s by rulings of the Federal Reserve. So the main practical impact of my signing that bill was to allow banks to offer certain kinds of insurance, which played no role in the financial crisis. That wasn’t a big problem.</p> <p>There was another bill that I think did make a contribution to the crash that I wish I had vetoed for symbolic reasons. They would have overturned my veto. And that was a bill that allowed banks to engage in all these derivatives, like collateralized debt obligations, without sufficient collateral. Now, it passed overwhelmingly. Almost every Democrat voted for it, and we all wanted it because it reauthorized something I’ll call the Community Reinvestment Act. The Community Reinvestment Act, if the government enforces it, requires every bank in America to reinvest some money where they take deposits.</p> <p>And we’ve got 800 billion dollars of investment under it when I was president. Ninety-six percent of all the money that had ever been invested under it, going back to the 1970s, was in those eight years. See, it was a goldmine of broad-based prosperity, and I wanted it badly, and a lot of other Democrats did, and we voted for it, but it would have been overridden, the veto.</p> <p>And I wish I had vetoed it because I never believed — I had a big argument with Alan Greenspan. He said, “But these things only affect investors with 100 million dollars or more. They can take care of themselves.” I said, “Yeah, I don’t care if they lose 100 million, but you don’t understand. If 100 of them lose 100 million, or 1,000 of them lose 100 million, it can wreck the whole rest of the economy,” which is essentially what happened in the housing crisis. So I wish — it would have become law anyway. I wish I had vetoed that and sounded the alarm.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>What are you most proud of having accomplished as President of the United States?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/lW7zdMVi5uM?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_29_54_18.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_29_54_18.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Bill Clinton: I’m most proud of the fact that we produced broad-based prosperity, where the incomes of the bottom 20% rose more percentage-wise than the incomes of the top 20%, about the same as the incomes of the top 5%. That was across all racial groups, all regional groups, and all income groups, and that we did it while eliminating 600 billion dollars in national debt. And I put America on a path to be debt free so that we’d be able to embrace the challenges of the 21st century, and I think that at a time of yawning inequality, having inclusive prosperity is very important to building support for inclusive societies. I’m very proud of the fact that we did it together, that there was — you know, I had the most diverse administration ever then, and we proved it, and they were good. Everybody was good at what they did. We all worked together, and we proved that diverse groups make better decisions than homogenous ones or lone geniuses. I’m proud of that, and lots of other things we did I’m proud of, but I would — I think it worked for ordinary people, the people that were paying the bill, the people that needed help, the people whose incomes went down in the 1980s, and I think it can be that way again.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20200917235223if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZP0hpMUpEgQ?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_26_27_11.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Clinton-William-J-2017-00_26_27_11.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I think we’re in a better position as a nation for the 21st century than any other major country, but if you want to take advantage of it you can’t fight all the time. You’ve got to cooperate. If you want to take advantage of it you have to see diversity as a massive asset. If you want to take advantage of it you can’t be anti-immigrant because the native-born population’s birthrate is static. And having lost it, I can tell you youth matters to the productivity of a country. Having a median age that’s fairly young matters. You can’t ignore the fact that immigrants are twice as likely to start businesses as the native-born, and that the crime rate among immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, is half that of the native-born. So to pretend this is some great criminal problem and a drag on the economy is the reverse of what is true. It may be good politics at a time when people are angry and looking for somebody to blame, but we need to make some decisions here about the definition of citizenship. What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to have an American community? What are we going to do? But if you want it to work for everybody again, cooperation is a much better model than conflict. Conflict may work in certain election circumstances, but this country was built by “let’s make a deal.”</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Tell us about your mother, Virginia Cassidy — her life and her role in your career and as an inspiration.</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Well, first of all, she was only 23 when I was born, and she was a widow. I was born on August 19, and my father had died in a car wreck about three months earlier, so she had a little job to do, and in addition to that she was in the middle of a nursing program, which she wanted to finish so she could support me.</p> <p>So our early years were a mixture of me being with her and her parents, who kept me until I was four, and she would come home and live when she could. Then she married again, and I grew up with her and my stepfather, and she was just always there for me emotionally, and she was a lot of fun. She — no matter what was going on — and we had some challenges in my childhood growing up, she just never let it affect her belief that I could do whatever I wanted to do. I could be whoever I wanted to be, and she just drilled into me from the time I was old enough to listen to language.</p> <p><strong>Is it true that she actually told you that you could become president?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: If she did, I don’t remember it, but you know what happens when you get to be president, everybody you ever met when you were young says, “Oh, he told me was going to be president,” you know. And I don’t — they could probably pass polygraphs on it, but I don’t remember her saying that. She just — she wasn’t particularly political, and neither were my grandparents or their family, although they were all old-fashioned FDR Democrats.</p> <p>And unlike many white Southerners with limited education, they were basically in favor of integrating the schools and equal rights for African Americans, which I was always very grateful for. And I think it had something to do with my grandmother and my mother being nurses, and my mother once said to me, “Once you see people bleed it’s hard to believe there’s much difference in race.”</p> <p>And my grandfather had a little country store, and almost all its customers were African American, and it was an interesting childhood in my little town because my family members made it interesting. They found other people interesting. They taught me to pay attention. They taught me to listen. They taught me to tell stories. It was — I had a good childhood.</p> <p><strong>Was religion important to you?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Yes, but none of my relatives were, I would say, devoutly religious. That is that none of them were there every time the door was open, but I liked going to the Sunday school. In the summer we’d go to vacation Bible school. I loved to read the Bible. I loved the stories. I loved the moral lessons. I loved everything about it, and it was always important.</p> <p>But it became ironically more central to my life when we moved to a larger town and I joined a church that was about a mile from my house, and I used to walk there every Sunday by myself until, you know, my folks went to church at Christmastime and Eastertime and — otherwise it was just me. But I loved my Sunday school teacher, and his son was a close friend of mine, later killed in Vietnam.</p> <p>And it became a big part of my life then, and then I was sort of un-churched until my first term as governor when Hillary urged me to go back to church and sing in the church choir so I’d have something besides work to do. And so, until I became president I was a very active member of my local church, and it meant a lot to me. It had a lot to do with kind of shaping who I turned out to be, I think.</p> <p><strong>We’ve heard a story that there was kind of a game you played to try to convince a person who was sort of your enemy to become your friend, to sort of transform that relationship as a challenge. </strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Well, it wasn’t a game to me. We were taught, interestingly enough, given the current state of political affairs, that you should try not to hate anyone, that hatred was a sickness and a weakness, and that there were very few people who were completely evil, so you should go out of your way to figure out what makes them tick and see if you can find some way to communicate with them.</p> <p>I learned that more with my family — even before I was old enough to know what I was doing —when I was eating meals, my grandmother’s brother and his family had — they had four kids, and they always fed a lot of people, and we ate there a lot, and they would talk about whatever had happened that week.</p> <p>And the kids could talk, but they had to prove they could listen first, so before I could tell a story I had to recount what I had just heard, because if you weren’t listening, nobody wanted to listen to you. And it was like a primer in human nature, and I was fortunate in having people all along the way who tried to help explain other people to me, and I developed an obsessive interest in doing it.</p> <p><strong>You mentioned the Bible. Were there other books that you particularly loved growing up that had an impact on you?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Oh, yeah. I spent a lot of time in the public library. When we moved I was seven years old, and I got a library card, and I used to go to the library all the time, and I loved all the, you know, standard children’s novels. I love those Biblical epics, but my favorite books when I was a child were books about Native Americans: tribal leaders; Osceola, who brought the alphabet to the Seminoles; Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; and the standard ones that were heroes in all the Western movies.</p> <p>But I was fascinated. The Cherokee had moved across my state on the Trail of Tears when they were expelled from the East and then moved over to the reservation lands. I became fascinated with what happened to the Native Americans and the struggle that many were undertaking then — and they still try to preserve their traditions and their way of life, their ties to the land, and still provide education and participate in the life of the country. I was interested in it then. I’m interested in it now. The Native Americans in our country who don’t have casinos on their tribal lands still have the lowest per capita income of any ethnic group in America.</p> <p>It’s a disgrace, and when I became president I was the first president since James Monroe in the 1820s to invite all the tribal leaders to the White House, and it was fascinating. Some of the ones who came from lands that had casinos flew in on their private jets. A lot of the others had to pass the hat in the reservation to raise enough money to pay for a plane ticket, and they all came, and we began to meet, and I learned a lot from them.</p> <p>I remember one day I had a scheduled meeting with tribal leaders either right before I deployed troops to Bosnia or to Kosovo — I think it was Bosnia — and before we started, this man asked to talk, and he said, “My grandfather was killed at Wounded Knee. I know all about ethnic cleansing.” He said, “My father fought in World War II. I fought in Vietnam. My son is in the military. He is my only son. I love him very much. I would be very sad if he were killed, but I am honored that you have asked him to fight against ethnic cleansing.”</p> <p>I literally couldn’t breathe, because the normal human reaction would be, “How much do I have to give? Look what we’ve been through.” When he said, “My grandfather was killed at Wounded Knee…” — it was just unbelievable.</p> <p><strong>A few weeks ago you addressed the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. Could you reflect on how that event in Little Rock shaped you?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: It was all anybody talked about when I was a little boy. I was 11 when it happened. I’d just turned 11, and the schools then were closed for a while. The governor wound up closing the schools, or somebody — we had people coming to my hometown to go to school, but as I said, my parents were — and my grandparents were in favor of the integration, at least my mother was.</p> <p>And I watched it — you know, identified with those kids, and I saw them being jeered at and everything. Then 20 years later I was the attorney general of Arkansas, and I was invited to join Jesse Jackson at the auditorium of Little Rock Central High School for the 20th anniversary.</p> <p>And on the 30th anniversary I had them all back, and I showed them the part of the governor’s mansion where the plot was developed to keep them out. And then on the 40th anniversary I was president, and the governor and I — the then-governor and I held open the doors of the school for them to walk through.</p> <p>I participated in the 50th anniversary in Little Rock, and of course, the 60th one. Along the way, Hillary and I have become friends with many of them.</p> <p><strong>Many of the Little Rock Nine?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Yes. They’re all still alive but one. One has died between the 50th and the 60th reunion. That’s quite a fine person, and this year it was amazing because of all the turmoil going on in our country and the controversy about whether African Americans are being systematically disenfranchised in some of our states, which they clearly are.</p> <p>And one of the — one of them, Ernie Green, who’s the oldest, the first one to graduate from the high school, and so he’s 77 or 78 now, he said, “You know, I didn’t expect the Little Rock Nine to morph into The Charleston Nine.” He said, “I didn’t expect to reach this point in my life and have to fight all these battles again, but I am prepared to do so.”</p> <p>It was very moving. So, you know, all this ethnic discord in our country today, and racial tension reminds us that it wasn’t over, but most political battles are never over. There are almost no permanent victories or defeats in politics. There are many countries that have lost their freedom, and so that feels permanent, but a lot of them get it back.</p> <p><strong>The civil war didn’t end slavery. </strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: No, and as we found out with all this controversy over the Confederate monuments, and people who complain about them being moved, or removed, say, “Well, it’s just history. Why are we ignoring history?” And then after what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia the governor actually had a — an inventory done of war monuments because arguably America began in Virginia, Philadelphia, and New York, right, for different reasons, and the last battle of the Revolutionary War was in Virginia.</p> <p>Four of the first five presidents were from Virginia, so the governor announced that in the whole state of Virginia there were two monuments to the Revolutionary War, five to World War I, six to World War II, and 268 to the Civil War. Almost none of them were put up right after the Civil War. Robert E. Lee didn’t favor putting monuments up. He said it would only prolong the wounds, which is, of course, exactly why they were put up.</p> <p>They were put up in reaction to Reconstruction. They were put up in reaction to the civil rights controversies of the early part of the 20th century. They were put up later to say, “We haven’t forgotten. We haven’t given in.” That doesn’t mean they all need to be smashed to smithereens, but it might be good to do what at least one of the Warsaw Pact countries did after the Cold War.</p> <p>They collected all this good sculpture and put it in the Sculpture Garden and said, “You want to go look at history? Go out there and look at it, but we’re going to make it history.” And we haven’t done that yet. The reason these controversies are so passionate is that you can still stir up the old racial demons, and at our peril we do it from time to time.</p> <p><strong>One of the most memorable interviews we conducted for the Academy of Achievement was with Judge Frank Johnson, who did so much to desegregate the Montgomery buses, the Alabama schools.</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: I gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.</p> <p><strong>What prompted that? Talk about Judge Johnson, if you would. </strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: I believe he was appointed by Eisenhower. That’s back when there were Republicans then who actually supported civil rights; there were until, I don’t know, the early part of this century. There was the 98-to-0 vote in the Senate to extend the Voting Rights Act, and then the Supreme Court gutted it and gave, you know, the go-signal to people to restrict the franchise.</p> <p>It was probably one of the five worst decisions ever made by the Supreme Court, but anyway, Frank Johnson was an old-fashioned Abraham Lincoln progressive Republican with a little Teddy Roosevelt thrown in, and he thought it was — what he did was required by the law and the Constitution and Supreme Court decisions and was morally right and politically necessary for America to go forward as United States. And he conducted himself accordingly with great courage and at some significant risk.</p> <p><strong>He told us that when the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on his mother’s lawn that didn’t change anything. In fact, his mom stayed there that night. </strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Yeah, there were a lot of brave people who stood up. Then, you know, it cost Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Viola Liuzza and a lot of the others their lives, but they were on the right side of history, and they believed if they made this sacrifice that it would work out.</p> <p>And whenever I get discouraged about everything they stood against rising up again, I realize there just are no public, or permanent, victories. You have to keep fighting for freedom. There is always an impulse to degrade people who are different from you, to diminish them, to demean them, and it never seems to go away, even when there is ample evidence that when we work together, we do better.</p> <p>It’s not about material progress or personal comfort. It’s about personal identity, and there are still so many forces at work in the human psyche that lead some people to think that their identity requires them to have someone to look down on or to demean or to feel that they’re superior to, and I think that that’s at the root of all this. It’s the only story in human society. Who is the other? Who is one of yours?</p> <p><strong>Cain and Abel. You have had a particularly close relationship with the black community. Willie Brown at this event some years ago talked about a barbecue man that got out the vote. Could you talk about that?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Yeah. There was a guy — I used to fight with him some, but he fed people who were hungry, and he paid kids to go clean the streets around this barbecue joint so that people wouldn’t associate poverty with dirt.</p> <p>I never saw that done again on a systematic basis until the Rwandan revolution after the genocide. When now, in their country, once a month, every adult is expected to spend a day cleaning the streets so that it can be a source of solidarity. But I always thought, watching all that, how foolish and impoverished white people who were racially prejudiced were, that they didn’t ever have a chance to see the kaleidoscope of differences within the black community.</p> <p>And they didn’t have a chance to appreciate the role of the black church, which has enabled the survival of countless blacks, and also persuaded them that they should do what Mandela ultimately turned into a political creed — along with Martin Luther King and others following Gandhi — that they should not be violent. No matter what was done to them, they should live their beliefs and remain open.</p> <p>I always felt comfortable in black churches. From the first time I ever went into one I felt like I was home. I still do. It’s important, and I don’t know how — during the Reconstruction and all the terrible things that happened after slavery — I have no idea how they would have come to the current day with as much advance has thus been made had it not been for the solidifying role of the black church.</p> <p><strong>Right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, you had an experience as a delegate from Arkansas for Boys Nation. I believe it was 1963. And you had a chance to meet the president. Talk about meeting John F.</strong> <strong>Kennedy.</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Well, it was great. It was very interesting. This American Legion of Boys’ State program, they elected two senators from every state, and they got to go to Washington for, I don’t know, a week, ten days, something like that. And we pretended we were the United States Senate, and we voted on stuff, and there were four African American delegates. I still remember, and I got close to the guy from Indiana, who was really impressive.</p> <p>And so we voted on the civil rights legislation then pending in the Congress, and we passed it. And we passed it and it wasn’t subject to filibuster, and there were four of the Southern delegates who voted for it. And as it turned out there was one man from Alabama who became a judge that I’ve stayed in touch with, and both the guys from Louisiana, who my — I went to law school with one, college with the other.</p> <p>We’ve been friends all our lives, go figure. Just accident. One became a Jesuit priest and head of the Jesuit Social Mission for the Southeast. The other became a lawyer in Northern Louisiana and is my friend still today. We’re in touch all the time, but when we got there to the Rose Garden and the president was seeing us, he complimented us for voting for the Civil Rights Bill and said that he wished the governors, who we’d just met, had followed our lead because apparently they declined to endorse it.</p> <p>They couldn’t get whatever many votes they needed to endorse it, and we did, and oh, I was just beaming. And then he got down off the steps and he started going down the row shaking hands, and we were organized in alphabetical order by state, not delegate, so because I was from Arkansas I was near the front. And I was determined I was going to shake his hand, and I got up there, and I treasure that picture.</p> <p>But when I became president I met with the Boys and Girls Nation delegates every year, except one when I had to be out of the country for — because of foreign policy issues. And I tried to organize sessions so they could all go through a line and shake hands with me and they wouldn’t be cut out, like those that were from Utah or Washington or Wyoming who were in the back in our deal. But it was a — you know, it made you imagine that you could be part of that. That — and I remember when I became governor — and then later when I was president — but when I was governor, if I was out of the office and a school group came in, I let them come in and sit in my chair. And when I was president, when I was in office, and there, I often took pictures with children sitting in the chair. I wanted them to be able to imagine that they could do whatever they wanted with their lives.</p> <p><strong>Shaking hands with President Kennedy, did you feel a kind of sense that this looks like a fun job?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: No, I wasn’t thinking about it like that. I thought, “Is this a great country or what? Here I am.” You know, not — first of all, I was lucky to get there. I had a hard-fought election, and I just thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I loved the American Legion for giving me a chance to go, and I just — I thought I was lucky.</p> <p>And after I was inaugurated president, my mother lived for another year, so I remember the next day, the very first day I had my — you know, it’s what you might call the normal day, the day after the inauguration — I took my mother out to the Rose Garden, and she wanted to see the exact spot I was standing in when I shook hands with Kennedy.</p> <p>So I took her — and I remembered exactly where it was, so I took her down to the exact spot. It was a big deal to her to know, you know, where I was and to get a feel for what it was like. And she was looking around, and it’s very beautiful, the Rose Garden, and you see the symmetry of the White House and how it works, and it’s even, in some ways, more beautiful from the president’s point of view because you look out to the south lawn of the White House, and there are these magnolia trees there that were planted when Andrew Jackson was president. They’ve been there a very long time.</p> <p><strong>One of the remarkable aspects of your career, I think, is your resilience coming back after losing the second gubernatorial campaign. You were such a young governor. </strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: I was youngest ex-governor in American history!</p> <p><strong>You just turned on a dime, said, “Okay, we’re going to go back and do this again.” Where does that gumption come from?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: I do think my mother had a lot to do with that. I mean, after all, you know her — it was not near as bad as having your husband die in a car wreck after — he survives World War II. They had a great life planned, and he gets killed in a car wreck, not because of a concussion, but because in a fluke, the tire blows out on his car. He’s thrown out of the car. He lands in a ditch in a field, and the ditch is full of water, and he can’t get out of the ditch before he drowns. There’s — it made it look a little whiny for me to be all bent out of shape about losing an election, and I realized that it was a weird deal. It was 1980. It was Reagan’s election. It was a period not unlike now, widespread resentment over the stagnant economy, the Iran hostage crisis, and I bet I had a hundred people coming to — I’m not exaggerating — coming to me and saying, “God, Bill, I didn’t know you were going to lose. I just voted against you to because I didn’t like some of the things you’d done.”</p> <p>And I remember once — one of the funniest things that ever happened to me. I was driving over to see my mother. I lived in Little Rock, and she lived in Hot Springs 50 miles away, and in the middle of the trip was a little country store owned by a guy who ran the elections in that area and was real smart, so I went in to get a Coke, and started talking to him.</p> <p>And this little boy came up to me in overalls, and he said, “You’re Bill Clinton, aren’t you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I helped to beat you. I cost you 11 votes, and it was no accident.” I said, “You did?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “It was me, my wife, our two boys and their wives, and five of my friends. We just decked you.” I said, “Why’d you do it?” He said, “I had to because you raised my car tax. The car license.”</p> <p>And so we’re standing on the interstate. I said, “Look over there. You remember when I was governor? That highway broke wide open, and even big trucks were off in the ditch, and I had to send the National Guard down here to clean it up, and we had to fix it.” He said, “Yeah, I remember. I don’t care. I still didn’t want to pay it.”</p> <p>So I was laughing at the guy, and I said, “Let me ask you something.” I said, “If I ever ran again, would you vote for me?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “You would?” He said, “Sure. We’re even now.” And I went — and there were no cell phones, so I had a dime. I went and put it in the payphone, and I called Hillary, and I said, “You know, I’m not dead yet. We might have to run again.”</p> <p><strong>How did she feel about it?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Oh, she was for it. I think the three most interesting campaigns I ever had were my campaign for Congress that I lost in ’74 — but I learned a lot of what I know — my campaign for re-election as governor in ‘82 that I won, and the 1992 presidential campaign. It was utterly fascinating.</p> <p>But we were all dealing with the psychology of voters. If they elect you and they beat you and you want to be elected again — a lot of people have tried to do that in my state, and they’ve never done it. No one had ever done it, and think about it. You can’t exactly tell the voters they made a mistake.</p> <p>On the other hand, if they think they were 100% right, they’d wonder, “Well, why would I compound — why would I reverse that?” So you’re walking this sort of psychological tightrope the whole time. It was fascinating, and I dealt with it the whole time, you know, and I’d get way ahead, and then I’d start sinking again.</p> <p>I remember one day I was — not long before the election I went into this place. I stopped to get some gas, and I went and got a Coke and it was one of these country places where there’s a gas station here, and there’s a little coffee shop, and it’s one building. There’s one guy in there. He said, “I’m glad to see you, Bill.” He said, “I voted against you last time, but I’m going to vote for you this time.” And I said, “Why’d you vote against me?” I knew what he was going to say. He said, “Because you raised my car license.” See? In Arkansas everybody got their car license on their birthday, so if you raised it, every single day somebody new was mad at you, and nobody had credit cards. They all paid cash. Some of them had to go back home and get the money again. So I said, “Well, why are you going to vote for me this time?” He said, “Because you raised my car license,” and I said, “You know, it’s getting close to the election, and I can’t afford to make anybody mad, but if you’ll forgive me, it doesn’t make much sense to me that you’d vote for me for the same reason you voted against me.” He said, “Bill, it makes all the sense in the world.” He said, “Son, you may be a lot of things, but you ain’t dumb. You are the least likely person on the face of the earth to ever raise that car license again, and I am for you.” And that’s all he cared about.</p> <p>It’s a great blessing to have to run in a confined electorate where you actually have to retail politics, know people, and speak with them. And unfortunately the disappearance of local newspapers and locally owned radio stations with local news and personal interaction has been devastating to that kind of politics. Now, an enormous percentage of those people, they just watch Fox News. They get on the Internet and they find things they already agree with, and they’re impervious, even to things they personally know.</p> <p>And by 2014, we had a senator, Mark Pryor, who was up for re-election. He called me in April, and he said, “I can’t win anymore.” April. I said, “Why? You’re everything they say they want.” He ranked 48, 49 through 50th on a scale of 1 to 100 most liberal to most conservative. He did — everything he ever did he co-sponsored with Republicans, everything people said they wanted. But they don’t mean it anymore. I said, “Well, give me an example,” and he said, “Well, I was up in this mountain county, one of these rural counties like I used to run great in,” and he said, “I saw a man I have known for 20 years, and I said, ‘How are you doing?’ He said, ‘Mark, I am so happy.’ He said, ‘I’ve been worried about my health insurance, and I got online, and I found this policy that covers more than my old one did and costs less. I’m so happy, and it’s so much better than Obamacare.’” So Senator Pryor said, “Well, what’s the website?” And he told him. He said, “That is Obamacare. That’s what I voted for. That’s the website.” And he said, “No, Mark. I watch too much Fox News. I know that bill’s a piece of crap and you couldn’t be right.” So he’s saying, “I believe what I have been conditioned to believe on television over the provable fact of the name of the website and over you, whom I like, respect, and have known for 20 years.” Now that’s what happens when people go crazy, where the only thing that matters is whose camp are you in, whose side are you on, what tribe do you belong to — where facts and discussions become irrelevant.</p> <p>And it made me wonder whether the way I was raised and all the listening and storytelling skills I learned as a boy would even be relevant today. They’d be good if you’re in. They’re still really important to getting anything done, but if you live in an environment where everything is a litmus test and everything is a-hundred-to-nothing, and the only thing that matters is feeding your resentment, and anger blinds you to answers, and being very sanctimonious somehow proves your sincerity and authenticity, it’s really hard to get anything done. It’s a whole new challenge now, and that’s why — and the Russians knew that. You know, that’s when they get in here and start fooling with all these politics. They realize you just sort of load it up because once people take sides based on what tribe they’re in then there’s no difference in facts and fiction. There’s no difference in truth and lies. It’s just, does this confirm what side you’re on? And you can’t run a democracy that way. It is utterly impossible to preserve democracy. There are always going to be factual errors. There are always going to be problems. There is no such thing as a perfect system, but you have to have — remember what I learned in college. The future can be better than the present, and everybody’s got a responsibility to make it so. One of the great works of Western civilization is the myth of Percival, and the subtitle of the story of Percival is “The Good Man, Slowly Wise.” In other words, you’ve got to work at this knowing things. You’ve got to work at this wisdom and learning things. Not now. Whose side are you on? That’s all that matters. We can’t afford that. It’s not a good thing.</p> <p>I think that if the purpose of communicating information is to promote resentment instead of reason, fan anger instead of produce answers, it’s going to — in that kind of environment it’s hard to have a legitimate democracy because the whole purpose of democracy is honorable compromise. If you read the <em>Constitution the United States</em>, it actually should be subtitled <em>Let’s Make a Deal</em>.</p> <p>That is, there are some things you ought not to compromise on. Yes, I’m for equal rights for all Americans, but 90% of the decisions a democracy makes will be better if diverse groups bring their particular perspectives and you produce a product. And if we lose that it’s going to be difficult over the long run to actually save democracy in any meaningful sense.</p> <p><strong>If you had lost that race in Arkansas the second time around, what were you going to do? Was there a road not traveled in your life?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: I don’t know. I had never given any thought to it. I thought I would win. I thought that I had lost for a reason, and I thought that I was a little unseasoned and immature, and I had — the way I made decisions my first term, I got a lot done, but I was better at doing what I wanted to do than listening to other people about what they thought I should be doing or how they thought I ought to be doing it.</p> <p>So I got lucky because the guy that replaced me actually tried to do what he said he would do in the campaign, and it was an anger-based deal, and it didn’t work. So I got lucky, but if I hadn’t, I don’t know. And in my first term when I lost I got offered to be head of the World Wildlife Fund. I was offered presidency of a university. I don’t have any idea what I would have done.</p> <p>But I would have tried to imagine something that would keep me learning and happy and involved every day. You know? But you had to be pretty single-minded to fight that kind of battle, and so I didn’t have much space to consider.</p> <p><strong>Going from Hope, Arkansas — with a single mom — to the White House, that’s the American Dream too, isn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Yeah. I’m the luckiest person who ever lived, you know? I worked hard, like a demon. Some would say too hard from time to time, and I over-married, and I had a magnificent child. I have been incredibly fortunate, but I had the American Dream, and it didn’t matter to anybody that nobody in my family had ever been to college. It didn’t matter, and that’s just what I want for other people.</p> <p>I just want possibility. I want people to have endless possibilities and to deal with them responsibly. We have all these interesting challenges now. No one knows whether automation and robotics, nanotechnology, will kill more jobs than it creates. If it does, that presents a serious problem. What are we going to do? Have a few of us work to support everybody else, or shorten the workweek for everybody? If so, how do we get from here to there? No one knows yet how we’re going to stop cyber terrorism from wrecking honest discourse in democracy and maybe putting our very lives at risk. But I know this: we will not find the answer by spending all our time fighting each other and trying to use basically invasions of our cyberspace for short-term gain. This is something that requires us to take a deep breath and work together. So I think it is unlikely that climate change and species destruction — every conceivable thing you can think — can’t be managed. But I think it is impossible to imagine that it can be managed if we spend all our time majoring in the minors, trying to prove how much better we are than somebody else, trying to look down on somebody else, trying to keep people all torn up and upset all the time. Nothing good’s going to come from that. This is a great country and a world full of the largest number of possibilities in human history. How dare those of us who already have it made take away from the next generation of children the chances we had? We ought to be thinking about expanding them.</p> <p><strong>What does the American Dream mean to you? Is it still alive?</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: It means, first of all, that you will be judged not by the color of your skin, or where you were born, or what your religion is or isn’t, or by your sexual identity. You will be judged by whether you are an honorable, decent person treating other people well, obeying the law, trying to be good at whatever you do, trying to learn more about whatever you care about, and treating other people with decency. And that, if we all do that, and then if we keep our eyes on the future, it means that every generation should be able to aspire to do more and different things. And when we lose the sense of basic decency toward each other, of mutual responsibility, when we think it’s more important to demean and degrade people and divide them than to lift them up, we cannot preserve the American Dream. It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way. Every time we’ve had the American Dream for a handful of people and, in the words of Thomas Hobbs, “Poor, nasty, and brutish and short lives for everybody else,” it hasn’t worked out very well. This country is like an infinitely expanding universe of richness and opportunity, and if we decide to just dumb it down, shrink it down, mean it down, we could lose that. But so far everybody that’s bet against America in 225 years has lost money, and we have to hope that that will continue to be the case.</p> <p>De Tocqueville said, when he came here in the 1830s, he said, “America is great because America is good, and if she ever loses her goodness, she will cease to be great.” I want my fellow Americans to believe that. Most people are people. This is crazy, all this time we’re spending downing each other.</p> <p><strong>Thank you, Mr. President.</strong></p> <p>Bill Clinton: Thank you.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">William J. Clinton Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>30 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600.jpg" data-image-caption="October 1965: Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." data-image-copyright="Portrait of J. William Fulbright" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-fulbright-GettyImages-515513600-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2459016393443" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1.jpg" data-image-caption="July 24, 1963: Sixteen-year-old Bill Clinton shook hands with President John F. Kennedy in the Rose Garden of the White House. Clinton was attending the American Legion Boys Nation program. (Photo by: Arnold Sachs/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Clinton Meets Kennedy" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1-305x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-GettyImages-2717010-1-610x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.80526315789474" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin.jpg" data-image-caption="Academy members Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry, President Bill Clinton, and Patti Austin at the 2003 International Achievement Summit's Banquet of the Golden Plate, held at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. " data-image-copyright="wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin-380x306.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp3-2003-2280-Bill-Clinton-Aretha-Franlin-Chuck-Berry-Patti-Austin-760x612.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.98157894736842" title="President William J. Clinton and fellow Academy member Ray Charles meet at the 2003 Summit in Washington, D.C." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - President William J. Clinton and fellow Academy member Ray Charles meet at the 2003 Summit in Washington, D.C.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/clintoncharles_lg.jpg" data-image-caption="Two Academy members, William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, and the legendary musician who pioneered soul music during the 1950s, Ray Charles, at the Banquet of the Golden Plate Award gala ceremonies." data-image-copyright="clintoncharles_lg" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/clintoncharles_lg-380x373.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/clintoncharles_lg-760x746.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67236842105263" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta.jpg" data-image-caption="December 8, 1993: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. NAFTA, a trade pact between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, eliminated all tariffs and trade restrictions between the three nations. The passage of NAFTA was one of Clinton’s first major victories as the first Democratic president in 12 years — though the movement had begun as a Republican initiative. (Photo by: Sygma/Corbis)" data-image-copyright="SIGNATURE OF THE NAFTA AGREEMENT" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta-380x255.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-clinton-nafta-760x511.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5605749486653" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton.jpg" data-image-caption="1972: Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham at Yale Law School. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1968, Clinton won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. In 1971, Clinton returned to the United States to attend Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, where he met his future wife, fellow law student Hillary Rodham." data-image-copyright="wp-yale-clinton" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton-243x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-yale-clinton-487x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="President Bill Clinton speaking to Academy student delegates at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - President Bill Clinton speaking to Academy student delegates at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2002-clinton_1680px_6443.jpg" data-image-caption="President Bill Clinton speaking to Academy student delegates at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="President Bill Clinton, 2002, Dublin" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2002-clinton_1680px_6443-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2002-clinton_1680px_6443-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly.jpg" data-image-caption="February 1993: President Bill Clinton with his mother, Virginia Kelley, in the Oval Office of the White House. Clinton attributes his gregariousness, resilience, and optimism to his mother. (© William J. Clinton Presidential Library)" data-image-copyright="wp-2280-1993-Virginia Kelly" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1993-Virginia-Kelly-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992.jpg" data-image-caption="November 3, 1992: Bill Clinton and Al Gore raise hands in victory in Arkansas after defeating President George H.W. Bush in a landslide election. At age 46, Clinton became the youngest U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. (© AP)" data-image-copyright="Bill Clinton, Al Gore" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-clinton-gore-1992-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65657894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON.jpg" data-image-caption="November 30, 1995: President Bill Clinton and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume at Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Clinton became the first American president to visit Northern Ireland, touring the cities of Belfast and Derry to show support for the peace process. On April 10, 1998, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern signed the Good Friday Agreement, bringing to an end the thirty years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as "The Troubles." (Photo by: William J. Clinton Presidential Library)" data-image-copyright="wp-2280-1995 HUME - CLINTON" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON-380x249.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-2280-1995-HUME-CLINTON-760x499.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat.jpg" data-image-caption="September 13, 1993: President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat shake hands after the historic signing ceremony for the Oslo Accord. (Photo: William J. Clinton Presidential Library)" data-image-copyright="wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-1993-OsloAccords-ClintonRabinArafat-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_academy_1069.jpg" data-image-caption="Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressman John Lewis greet President Clinton at the International Achievement Summit. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wordpress_clinton_academy_1069" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_academy_1069-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_academy_1069-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67368421052632" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration.jpg" data-image-caption="January 1991: Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, in Little Rock celebrating his inauguration as governor. Clinton served as Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. This was Clinton’s last consecutive term as Governor of Arkansas. (Credit: AP Photo)" data-image-copyright="CLINTON FAMILY" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/clinton-governor-inauguration-760x512.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4285714285714" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5.jpg" data-image-caption="1952: Six-year-old William Jefferson Clinton in Hot Springs, Arkansas. (Credit: William J. Clinton Presidential Library)" data-image-copyright="wp2- Clinton_5" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5-266x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp2-Clinton_5-532x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.598" title="(L to R) President Bill Clinton, Catherine B. Reynolds, Bono, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, and Frank McCourt at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin. (© Academy of Achievement" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - (L to R) President Bill Clinton, Catherine B. Reynolds, Bono, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, and Frank McCourt at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin. (© Academy of Achievement">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2002-02.jpg" data-image-caption="2002: President Bill Clinton, Catherine B. Reynolds, Bono, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia, and Frank McCourt at a symposium during the Academy of Achievement’s International Achievement Summit in Dublin. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="Bono, 2002, Dublin, Ireland" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2002-02-380x227.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/2002-02.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-chicago_0644_JFR.jpg" data-image-caption="2004: William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, addresses Academy delegates and members in Chicago. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-chicago_0644_JFR" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-chicago_0644_JFR-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-chicago_0644_JFR-760x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0788.jpg" data-image-caption="President Bill Clinton addresses his fellow Academy members and delegates at the 2017 International Achievement Summit in London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-LondonSummit_0788" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0788-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0788-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5353535353535" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp.jpg" data-image-caption="1999: President Clinton comforts a young Kosovar refugee at Stenkovic 1 Refugee Camp near Skopje, Macedonia. In 1995, Clinton mobilized NATO allies to carry out air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which proved key in ending the war. In 1999, Clinton led a second NATO intervention in the Balkans to avert a massacre of the Muslim population of Serbia’s Kosovo region. (William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum)" data-image-copyright="wp-22801999 - Stenkovic 1 Refugee Camp" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp-247x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/wp-22801999-Stenkovic-1-Refugee-Camp-495x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730.jpg" data-image-caption="President Bill Clinton presents the Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award to singer and songwriter Sting at the 2017 International Achievement Summit in London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-LondonSummit_0730" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0730-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/WP-LondonSummit_0644.jpg" data-image-caption="Academy Awards Council member Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States, with 2017 honoree English actor Sir Michael Caine and guests at the honoree reception prior to the Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies at Claridge's in London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="WP-LondonSummit_0644" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/WP-LondonSummit_0644-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/WP-LondonSummit_0644-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0785.jpg" data-image-caption="President Bill Clinton addresses his fellow Academy members and delegates at the 2017 International Achievement Summit in London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-LondonSummit_0785" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0785-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wp-LondonSummit_0785-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66842105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125.jpg" data-image-caption="November 1, 1993: President Clinton signing NAFTA in the White House Oval Office with Trade Representative Michael Kantor, Representative Robert Matsui, Vice President Al Gore, Representative Daniel Rostenkowski, Representative Tom Foley and Senator Bob Dole. (Cynthia Johnson/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Bill Clinton Signing NAFTA" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/01/wp-clinton-nafta-GettyImages-50439125-760x508.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0066225165563" title="Academy guest of honor John Hume and Golden Plate Awards Council member President Bill Clinton at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin, Ireland." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - Academy guest of honor John Hume and Golden Plate Awards Council member President Bill Clinton at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin, Ireland.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/wp-2002-John-Hume-President-Bill-Clinton.jpg" data-image-caption="Guest of honor John Hume and Awards Council member President Bill Clinton at the Academy’s 2002 Summit in Dublin, Ireland. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-2002 John Hume President Bill Clinton" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/wp-2002-John-Hume-President-Bill-Clinton-378x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/wp-2002-John-Hume-President-Bill-Clinton-755x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66973684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/clinton-powell.jpg" data-image-caption="October 7, 2011: Former President Bill Clinton talks with former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell during funeral services for General John M. Shalikashvili at Memorial Chapel on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. Shalikashvilli served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Clinton administration and succeeded Powell in the position. (Jim Dresbach)" data-image-copyright="clinton-powell" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/clinton-powell-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/clinton-powell-760x509.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.80131578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/363863-001-hume-trimble-clinton.jpg" data-image-caption="March 17, 2000: St. Patrick's Day in Washington, D.C. Bill Clinton receives Gerry Adams, John Hume and David Trimble at the White House. (CORBIS SYGMA)" data-image-copyright="363863-001-hume-trimble-clinton" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/363863-001-hume-trimble-clinton-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/363863-001-hume-trimble-clinton-760x609.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68552631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048.jpg" data-image-caption="The 42nd President of the United States, William J. Clinton, addresses his fellow Academy members and student delegates at the 2005 International Achievement Summit in New York City. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048-380x261.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_clinton_Academy2005_0048-760x521.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.96842105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257.jpg" data-image-caption="Telecommunications magnates Carlos Slim and Emilio Azcárraga, with his wife, Sharon, and President Bill Clinton at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_slim_06Academy_257" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257-380x368.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_slim_06Academy_257-760x736.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71184210526316" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_254.jpg" data-image-caption="President William J. Clinton and President of Latvia Vaira Vike-Freiberga at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_06Academy_254" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_254-380x271.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_254-760x541.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66973684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_251.jpg" data-image-caption="President Festus Mogae of Botswana greets former President Clinton at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_06Academy_251" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_251-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_251-760x509.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_229.jpg" data-image-caption="President William J. Clinton addresses his fellow Academy members and delegates at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wordpress_06Academy_229" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_229-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/wordpress_06Academy_229-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on September 30, 2019</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever public-service help-mankind experienced-war-firsthand ambitious join-the-military pursue-public-office " data-year-inducted="1995" data-achiever-name="Bush"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bush-007a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bush-007a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">George H. 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Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/clyde-tombaugh/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Clyde Tombaugh</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20200917235223/https://achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. 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