99 Fun Facts About Bill Clinton

Which band's hit 'Don't Stop' was the theme song of Clinton's 1992 campaign?

Fleetwood Mac: after he won, Clinton persuaded the band to reunite and play the song at his 1993 inaugural ball.

What office did Clinton hold in Arkansas from 1977 to 1979?

Attorney general: he won it in 1976, two years after losing a House race, and was elected governor in 1978.

What was Bill Clinton's surname at birth?

Blythe: his father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr., died in a car accident months before Bill was born.

In which aptly named Arkansas town was Bill Clinton born?

Hope: he lived with his grandparents there while his mother studied nursing in New Orleans.

After his mother remarried in 1950, young Bill Clinton moved to which Arkansas resort town?

Hot Springs: as a teenager there, he stood up to his abusive, alcoholic stepfather.

Which instrument did Clinton play, winning first chair in the state band?

Saxophone: during the 1992 campaign he showed off his playing on late-night television.

Which president did a teenage Clinton meet at the White House in 1963?

John F. Kennedy: Clinton met him as a Boys Nation delegate, and he later named it one of two 1963 moments that led him into public life.

Clinton earned his bachelor's degree from which school in 1968?

Georgetown: he was twice elected class president there, but then lost his race for student council president.

For which Arkansas senator did Clinton work as an intern and clerk in college?

J. William Fulbright: in 1966 the senator's Foreign Relations Committee held televised hearings on the Vietnam War.

Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar at which Oxford college?

University: his Oxford coursework never added up to a degree, and he left early to return to the United States.

Where did Bill Clinton meet his future wife in 1971?

The Yale Law Library: after about a month of dating, he put off a campaign job to spend that summer with her in California.

Clinton ran which presidential candidate's 1972 campaign effort in Texas?

George McGovern: for all the campaign's work, Nixon carried Texas in his 1972 landslide.

Which strategist coined the line 'It's the economy, stupid' for Clinton's 1992 campaign?

James Carville: he put it on a sign at campaign headquarters as one of three messages to keep staff focused.

Clinton's first run for office, a 1974 House race, ended in defeat to which incumbent?

He lost 52–48 in a year when Watergate was dragging down Republicans everywhere else.

Unrest among which refugees at Fort Chaffee hurt Governor Clinton in 1980?

Cuban: they had come in that year's Mariel boatlift, and the federal government had interned them at the fort.

Who defeated Clinton in his 1980 bid for re-election as governor?

Frank D. White: Clinton won the office back from him in 1982.

Clinton's 1988 Democratic convention speech was criticized for what?

At 33 minutes it ran twice its expected length; he was nominating Michael Dukakis.

What nickname did Clinton earn after his strong second place in the 1992 New Hampshire primary?

Comeback Kid: he went on to sweep most Southern primaries on Super Tuesday and build a firm lead for the nomination.

In 1999, NATO air strikes backed by Clinton forced Serbian forces out of which region?

Kosovo: American troops then moved in with other NATO forces to keep the peace there.

On whose late-night talk show did candidate Clinton famously perform in 1992?

Arsenio Hall: the June 1992 appearance was seen as a lift for Clinton's stalled presidential campaign.

Which independent candidate took a large share of the vote in 1992 but won no electoral votes?

Ross Perot: he quit the race in July 1992 and jumped back in that October, a wavering that damaged his candidacy.

Which incumbent did Clinton defeat in 1992?

George H. W. Bush: he had pledged 'Read my lips: no new taxes' in 1988, then signed a budget deal that raised taxes.

Who was Clinton's vice president for both terms?

Al Gore: after leaving office he campaigned on climate change and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Zoë Baird and Kimba Wood, Clinton's first two Justice Dept picks, withdrew over what?

Undocumented nannies: after both withdrew, Clinton settled on Florida prosecutor Janet Reno, who got the job.

What was the name of the compromise policy on gay service members adopted in 1993?

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Clinton had vowed to end the ban on gay service members, but opposition in Congress and the military forced a compromise.

What did the 1993 Brady Bill require?

Background checks for gun buyers: James Brady, Reagan's press secretary, was shot in the 1981 attempt on Reagan and then campaigned for gun laws.

Which trade agreement, signed by Clinton in December 1993, took effect on January 1, 1994?

NAFTA: the deal itself had been signed in December 1992, before he took office, and Congress approved it only in November 1993.

Who headed the task force behind Clinton's failed 1993 health care plan?

The First Lady: her task force of experts worked in secret, and a federal court later forced some of its records into the open.

Which two justices did Clinton appoint to the Supreme Court?

Ginsburg and Breyer: before choosing Breyer, Clinton offered that seat to Senator George Mitchell, who declined to keep working on health reform.

Which Georgia congressman led the 1994 Republican takeover of the House and became Speaker?

Newt Gingrich: his budget clashes with Clinton led to federal government shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996.

The Clintons' stake in which Arkansas real estate venture led to years of investigation?

Whitewater: the inquiries found insufficient evidence linking the Clintons to the crimes of others involved.

Clinton was the first president to visit which part of the UK, in November 1995?

Northern Ireland: he spent the day with both communities, and then switched on Belfast's Christmas lights.

Which 1993 agreement between Rabin and Arafat was signed at the White House?

The Oslo Accords: in 1995, at a rally supporting them, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

Who was the Republican nominee Clinton defeated in 1996?

Bob Dole: he gave up his Senate seat in June 1996 to devote himself fully to the campaign.

In which city did Clinton's presidential library open in 2004?

Little Rock: its main building is designed to resemble a bridge over the Arkansas River, echoing his 'bridge to the 21st century' theme.

Which 1996 law defined marriage federally as the union of one man and one woman?

DOMA: in 2013 the Supreme Court struck down its federal definition of marriage as a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Which bipartisan senator duo helped pass SCHIP, the children's health program, in 1997?

Kennedy and Hatch: Kennedy had first proposed paying for children's coverage with a 75-cent-a-pack cigarette tax increase.

What did the 1999 Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act repeal part of?

It let banks offer a full range of investment, commercial banking and insurance services again.

Which president, besides Clinton, had been impeached by the House before 1998?

Andrew Johnson: the Senate acquitted him in 1868, and like Clinton he stayed in office.

Clinton's 1999 Senate trial ended in acquittal because conviction required what?

A two-thirds majority: on the perjury charge, ten Republicans joined all 45 Democrats in voting not guilty.

Which fugitive financier did Clinton pardon on his last day in office?

Marc Rich: his ex-wife Denise had donated to Democrats, and within weeks a House committee opened hearings into the pardon.

Near the end of his presidency, in which New York town did the Clintons buy a house?

Chappaqua: they bought the house so his wife could run for the Senate from New York.

What was the title of Clinton's 2004 autobiography?

My Life: he recorded the audiobook himself, and that reading won the 2005 Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

What heart surgery did Clinton undergo in September 2004?

Quadruple bypass: when one of the grafts later blocked, he needed stents in 2010 and then switched to a vegan diet.

Who shared Clinton's Grammy for Wolf Tracks and Peter and the Wolf?

Mikhail Gorbachev and Sophia Loren: Loren narrated Peter and the Wolf, Gorbachev gave the introduction, and the recording benefited several charities.

In 2009, Clinton was named UN special envoy to which country?

After the 2010 earthquake he founded the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund with George W. Bush.

What was the name of the Clintons' White House cat?

Socks: he never made peace with Buddy, the Labrador who arrived in 1997, so after the White House years he went to live with secretary Betty Currie.

Which Nobel laureate called Clinton 'the first black president' in 1998?

Toni Morrison: she later said she meant he was being treated like a black man on the street, as if already guilty.

What happened to Clinton's Gallup approval right after the House impeached him?

Hit a new high: polls showed most Americans did not support his impeachment by the House.

Bill Clinton's daughter was named after 'Chelsea Morning', a song written by which musician?

Joni Mitchell wrote the song, but it was Judy Collins's 1969 recording that Bill heard when he told Hillary that any daughter of theirs should be called Chelsea.

Which Secret Service code name went to Roger Clinton, Bill Clinton's half-brother?

Headache was the agents' label for Roger Clinton, a singer with the band Dealer's Choice whose behavior kept making news while his brother was president.

With which thriller writer did Bill Clinton co-author the 2018 novel The President Is Missing?

James Patterson and Clinton liked the partnership enough to write a second thriller together, The President's Daughter, which came out in 2021.

After heart stents in 2010, fast-food fan Bill Clinton switched to which kind of diet?

Vegan eating built on plant-based whole foods was recommended to Clinton by doctors Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn after the procedure.

Which poet read 'On the Pulse of Morning' at Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993?

Maya Angelou was only the second poet ever to read at a presidential inauguration, after Robert Frost in 1961, and her recording of the poem won a Grammy.

Which breed was Buddy, the puppy Bill Clinton brought home to the White House in December 1997?

Labrador Retriever Buddy, a chocolate-colored pup, was named after Clinton's great-uncle Henry 'Buddy' Grisham, whom he often cited as a major influence.

Which actor played Jack Stanton, a governor modeled on Bill Clinton, in the film Primary Colors?

John Travolta said he drew on several presidents but mostly on Clinton, in a film adapted from a campaign novel first published anonymously.

Which Saturday Night Live star played Bill Clinton eating customers' food at a McDonald's?

Phil Hartman counted Clinton as his best-known impression, and on meeting the president in 1993 he admitted he probably owed him a few apologies.

What did Bill Clinton claim in 1992 about the marijuana he had tried as a student at Oxford?

He did not inhale, Clinton told a televised candidates' forum in March 1992, adding that he had tried marijuana only a time or two in England and had not liked it.

To which astronaut, orbiting on Discovery in 1998, did Bill Clinton send a congratulatory email?

John Glenn was back in orbit when the message arrived; days earlier Clinton had watched him lift off, becoming the only sitting president to see a Space Shuttle launch.

Which trait did Bill Clinton share with both of his main rivals in the 1992 presidential election?

Being left-handed was common ground for all three major candidates in 1992, so a left-hander was certain to win the White House that year.

Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president to come from which generation?

Baby boomers reached the Oval Office when Clinton was sworn in at 46, the third-youngest person ever to become president.

Whom did Bill Clinton appoint in 1997 as the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State?

Madeleine Albright had been Clinton's ambassador to the UN, and her promotion made her the highest-ranking woman in U.S. government history up to that time.

Which service program, begun under Bill Clinton in 1993, helps volunteers earn college money?

AmeriCorps grew out of the National and Community Service Trust Act, which Clinton signed in September 1993, merging the older ACTION agency and a national service commission into one corporation.

Which mocking nickname did Arkansas newspaperman Paul Greenberg pin on Bill Clinton in 1980?

Slick Willie was Greenberg's jab at a governor he thought was abandoning the progressive policies of his predecessors, and the label lasted through the presidency.

In which Manhattan neighborhood did ex-president Bill Clinton open his office on West 125th Street?

Harlem's 55 West 125th Street became Clinton's base in 2001, on the same street as the Apollo Theater.

Bill Clinton was the first Democrat since which president to win two straight presidential elections?

Franklin D. Roosevelt won four in a row, and after him no Democrat managed even two straight victories until Clinton was returned to office in 1996.

To which country did Bill Clinton fly in August 2009 to bring home two jailed American journalists?

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il pardoned Laura Ling and Euna Lee the day after Clinton landed on a visit that had not been announced in advance.

Bill Clinton has called failing to intervene in which country's 1994 genocide one of his biggest regrets?

Rwanda lost about 800,000 people in three months, and Clinton has said that although the killing could not have been ended, it could have been cut down.

Where did Bill Clinton host Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat for a two-week peace summit in July 2000?

Camp David had produced an Egyptian–Israeli deal under Jimmy Carter in 1978, but the 2000 summit ended with no agreement and Clinton later blamed Arafat.

With which country did Bill Clinton restore relations in 1995, two decades after a war there ended?

Vietnam welcomed Clinton in person in 2000, when he became the first U.S. president to visit since the fighting ended.

For which 40-year government experiment on Black men did Bill Clinton formally apologize in 1997?

Tuskegee syphilis study participants were told it would last six months; it ran from 1932 to 1972, and Clinton called it shameful at a White House ceremony for the survivors.

In June 2000 Bill Clinton and Tony Blair jointly announced a finished rough draft of what?

The human genome draft came out of wide international cooperation, and months earlier the two leaders had urged that researchers be given free access to the sequence.

At which golfer's Florida estate did Bill Clinton injure his knee in a late-night fall in 1997?

Greg Norman was hosting Clinton at his oceanside estate in Hobe Sound before a golf tournament when the president fell on the steps at about 1:30 in the morning.

Which hip hop artist did Bill Clinton rebuke before Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition in 1992?

Sister Souljah's name now labels any moment when a politician pointedly repudiates an extreme voice linked to their own party.

Which rival beat Bill Clinton in the 1992 New Hampshire primary, then quit and endorsed him?

Paul Tsongas, a former Massachusetts senator, took the most votes, but the margin was narrow enough that each man came away with nine delegates.

Which Ohio city hosted the 1995 talks, sponsored by Bill Clinton, that ended the Bosnian War?

Dayton hosted the negotiations at a nearby Air Force base, and the agreement initialed there in November 1995 was ceremonially signed in Paris weeks later.

A 1993 battle in which African capital, retold in Black Hawk Down, shook Bill Clinton's first year?

Mogadishu cost 18 American soldiers their lives, yet Clinton says he refused calls to pull out of Somalia the next day and kept troops there for six more months.

In which state did Bill Clinton create the vast Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in 1996?

Utah did not even host the ceremony: Clinton declared the 1.7-million-acre monument at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and it was controversial from the start.

Bill Clinton's mother trained in New Orleans for which career while her parents raised him?

Nursing was her own mother's profession too, and Virginia followed her into it and qualified as a nurse anesthetist.

What kind of business did Bill Clinton's grandparents run, giving credit to customers of all races?

A grocery store that gave credit to people of every race stood out in the segregated South, and Clinton spent his earliest years living with the grandparents who ran it.

Which youth civics program sent Bill Clinton, then a high school student, to the White House in 1963?

Boys Nation, run by the American Legion, makes each of its delegates a mock senator, and broadcaster Tom Brokaw is another former member.

Besides basketball, which sport did Bill Clinton play for an Oxford team while a Rhodes Scholar?

Rugby union was one of two sports Clinton played at Oxford, which he left early for law school back in America without taking a degree.

Bill Clinton joined Jimmy Carter in organizing a unity gathering for which denomination that both men belonged to?

Baptist since boyhood, Clinton was baptized at the age of ten, though his wedding to Hillary, raised a Methodist, was a Methodist ceremony.

In which Arkansas college town did Bill Clinton marry Hillary Rodham in their living room in 1975?

Fayetteville is where the couple bought a house in the summer of 1975, and that October the wedding took place in its living room.

Which fellow Rhodes Scholar from his Oxford years did Bill Clinton later appoint Secretary of Labor?

Robert Reich had once been on a date with Hillary Rodham in college, and his economic thinking shaped the 1992 platform before Clinton put him in the cabinet.

Which nominee did Bill Clinton endorse in a widely panned speech at the 1988 Democratic convention?

Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, lost that November, and four years later Clinton won the Democratic nomination himself.

Which California school did Bill Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, enter in 1997 while he was president?

Stanford was followed by graduate study at Oxford, where her father had been a Rhodes Scholar, and she completed a doctorate there in 2014.

Which centrist 'Third Way' group did Governor Bill Clinton head in 1990 and 1991?

Democratic Leadership Council members argued after Reagan's 1984 landslide that the party had to move to the center to win nationally, and they hailed Clinton's election as proof.

Which friend since kindergarten became Bill Clinton's first White House chief of staff in 1993?

Mack McLarty had run the natural gas company Arkla before following his childhood friend to Washington, and he held the post until June 1994.

Who became the first female White House press secretary when Bill Clinton took office in 1993?

Dee Dee Myers was 31 when she took the job, and Aaron Sorkin later recruited her as a consultant on the TV drama The West Wing.

Which bank-robbery convict, her sentence commuted by Jimmy Carter, did Bill Clinton pardon in 2001?

Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, regained her full civil rights through the pardon.

Which disease was the original target of CHAI, the health arm of Bill Clinton's foundation?

HIV/AIDS drugs were the focus, and Clinton repeatedly visited Indian makers of generic medicines to secure low-cost supplies.

Bill Clinton appears in the 2006 documentary Wordplay as a devoted fan of which pastime?

Crosswords from The New York Times are the film's subject, and its other celebrity solvers include Ken Burns and the Indigo Girls.

Which Oscar-nominated 1993 documentary went behind the scenes of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign?

The War Room trailed George Stephanopoulos and fellow strategists from the New Hampshire primary onward and was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.

Which Arkansas poet, whose daughter Lucinda became a noted singer, read at Bill Clinton's second inauguration?

Miller Williams, a longtime University of Arkansas professor chosen by Clinton himself, read his poem Of History and Hope at the 1997 ceremony.

Which Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton died in a 1996 plane crash on a trade mission to Croatia?

Ron Brown and 34 others were killed when their Air Force jet hit a mountainside on its approach to Dubrovnik Airport.

Which journalist was unmasked as 'Anonymous', author of the Bill Clinton campaign novel Primary Colors?

Joe Klein denied writing the bestseller more than once, including in the pages of Newsweek, before admitting in July 1996 that the guesses were right.

Which artist painted Bill Clinton's official White House portrait, the first by a Black painter for any president?

Simmie Knox spent two years on the portraits of Bill and Hillary Clinton, which were finished in 2002 and unveiled in June 2004.

Which global sporting event did Bill Clinton officially open at Chicago's Soldier Field in June 1994?

FIFA World Cup viewers remember the ceremony, emceed by Oprah Winfrey, for a pop star's staged penalty kick that sailed wide of the goal.