Presidential Election of 1996

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON'S first term can be divided into two halves. During the first half, Clinton was bedeviled by minor scandals about expensive haircuts and the White House Travel Office, while also confronting the more significant controversy over the service of gay men and lesbians in the U.S. military. His Justice Department, FBI, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were heavily criticized for their handling of a siege at a religious compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993 that ended with the deaths of almost 80 people. At the same time, the president secured passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, saw his Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act pass by one vote in the House of Representatives in 1993, and signed the popular Family and Medical Leave Act.

Nevertheless, he also witnessed the collapse of his healthcare reform plan and watched as the opposition Republicans took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years in the 1994 off-year elections. By any measure, at this stage in his presidency, Bill Clinton's re-election looked doomed. Just two years later, in 1996, Clinton became only the third Democrat in the 20th century to achieve re-election. Facing approval ratings consistently in the low to mid 40 percent range, and a new opposition Congress, Clinton was forced rather pathetically to assert his continued relevance as president in an April 1995 press conference, saying, “The Constitution gives me relevance. The power of our ideas gives me relevance… The President is relevant here.”

The next day, a bomb exploded at the Alfred R Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 169 people. Providing Clinton the opportunity to act “presidential,” the Oklahoma City bombing ushered in the second half of the Clinton first term, dominated by conflicts with Congress over budget matters. Twice in late 1995 and early 1996, the federal government shut down because of disagreements between Congress and the White House over spending priorities and tax policies. Out of this conflict, Clinton emerged as a leader fighting for principles and preserving important social programs while his Republican opponents in Congress—House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole—were depicted as seeking deep and harmful cuts in federal spending. During this period, the president's approval ratings in most polls were in the mid to high 50 percent range. The second half of Clinton's first term also featured passage of awelfare reform bill that angered many progressives and Democrats, but that allowed the president to “triangulate” between the Republican and Democratic positions while also achieving a significant campaign pledge from the 1992 election.

Heading into the beginning of the 1996 campaign, then, Republicans faced an incumbent president with a mixed domestic record during his first term. The economy was relatively stable, though conflicts persisted with Congress over budgets and fiscal policy. The president had secured some legislative successes, while the signature achievement of his first term, healthcare reform, had failed. President Clinton's first term was dominated by concerns over Iraq's Saddam Hussein, ethnic strife in former Yugoslavia, and tensions in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians. Scandals also lingered around Bill Clinton: Paula Jones filed her sexual harassment lawsuit against the president in May of 1994; the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, was facing an independent counsel's investigation that began in 1995; and the secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy, resigned in 1994 under suspicion of accepting bribes. There was the Travel Office scandal and the beginnings of what would become the Whitewater episode.

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