Bill Clinton's 80th Birthday Countdown

Bill Clinton Timeline

About Bill Clinton

A Rhodes Scholar and former governor of Arkansas, Clinton was elected president in 1992 and served two terms marked by a strong economy and a balanced federal budget. Since leaving office in 2001 he has led the Clinton Foundation and stayed active in global philanthropy and Democratic politics.

A handshake in the Rose Garden

On July 24, 1963, a 16-year-old Boys Nation delegate from Hope, Arkansas, muscled his way to the front of a White House Rose Garden crowd to shake President Kennedy's hand. Clinton later pointed to that moment as the spark for a life in public service. He went on to Georgetown, a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, and Yale Law, and in 1978, at just 32, was elected governor of Arkansas - the youngest governor in the nation at the time.

Four surpluses in a row

Elected president in 1992 and re-elected in 1996, Clinton served two terms during one of the longest economic expansions in American history. In 1998 the federal government posted its first budget surplus since 1969, and it ran surpluses four years in a row from 1998 through 2001. When he left office in January 2001, he was the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to, and complete, two full terms.

From the Oval Office to $45-a-year medicine

After the presidency, Clinton built the Clinton Foundation into a global operation. Its boldest spinoff, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, launched in 2002 when HIV treatment cost over $10,000 per person per year; by negotiating generic-drug deals, CHAI and its partners helped drive that below $45 a year, and today more than 28 million people in low- and middle-income countries are on treatment. His presidential center in Little Rock has drawn more than 5 million visitors and helped spur roughly $2.5 billion of investment in downtown Little Rock.

Quick facts

• Born August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas
• 42nd President of the United States (1993-2001)
• Shook hands with President Kennedy in the Rose Garden at 16 as a Boys Nation delegate
• Elected governor of Arkansas at 32 - the nation's youngest governor at the time
• Presided over the first federal budget surpluses since 1969 (1998-2001)
• Founder of the Clinton Foundation and its Clinton Health Access Initiative

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