American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 42.2 Bill Clinton

Episode Date: January 6, 2024

Bill in in the White House! But this is making some people very angry and determined to use anything they can find to bring him down. Will they find any dirt in his past? Something to do with the financials? Or maybe his personal life? - It's his treatment of women thing it was always going to be that it's the woman thing that's what they will find

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, Bill Clinton Part 2. Hello and welcome to American President's Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob, ranking all of the presidents from Washington until Biden. And this is episode 42.2. It is Bill Clinton. Yeah. How tricky was this one to research? I imagine it was quite problematic. Oh, well, we're getting to that, Jamie. Don't you, boy? I don't mean that.

Are you talking about all the very recent things that are coming out? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'll mention that briefly at the end, and you'll see why it's at the end. I'll mention it briefly. But I did it, Jamie. We fit Clinton into two episodes. Yeah.

Yeah, so there we go. This will be the last of two parts on Clinton. I honestly thought all the modern ones would be three, but you know what? There just wasn't as much to talk about Bill Clinton as I thought there would be. So yeah. Brilliant. All right. But before we start, let's do our introduction. Just zoom in. Yeah. On a sign of a shop. Yeah. a sign of a shop. Yeah. And it says,

cigars for sale. And two very obvious White House officials walking into the shop. Yeah. Over to you. Okay, so cigar shop and two White House officials walking into the shop. Yeah.

But then it all goes really grainy as if you're watching it on TV and you're zooming out, panning out, you should say. And this image is just on TV, but also it's zooming out within the TV and you realize that it goes to a news anchor. And it's got that little screen in the corner and that's where it is. And the news anchor says, thank you for that report on increase on cigar sales in Washington, D.C. thank you for that report on increase on cigar sales in Washington, DC.

In other news, for the third time in our history, the president of the United States has been impeached. Then Jamie, then it zooms out even further. Yeah. And what's that behind the news anchor? Big map.

Nope. It's the logo Fox news. Oh, yeah. And then Bill Clinton, Big map? No, it's the logo, Fox News. Oh. Ooh. Yeah. And then, poof, Bill Clinton party. Battle lines are drawn here. Oh, yes.

So there we go. Yeah, so anything you wanted to say about Clinton before we start? No, I remember the scandal. And it is, I mean, I'm sure we go into it, but it's because he lied rather than because he put things where they shouldn't go um yes we will be going into that yeah that's all i can't remember then he did two terms i think us is going through quite a bit of a economic okayness at the time in that is what the economists call it yes yeah i think the world was enjoying lots of you know those bright green shoes trainers bps to buy yeah um gatorade that was a thing yeah mountain dew that's been around for a while i think but you know people were watching fresh prince of bel-air they were frasier was out

yeah frasier was on friends big massive things friends was. Yeah, when did Friends start? 94, I think. Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, so there you go. That's what's going on in the world. But what's going on with Clinton? Well, we ended the last episode with him becoming president. In the end, it was an easy victory for Clinton.

After three terms of the Republicans, the public were just in the mood for a change, as discussed last time. However, before we talk about Clinton, let's just pause for a moment as discussed last time however before we talk about clinton let's just pause for a moment which you've already started to do to recognize the rapidly shifting culture in america it's just gonna lay lay of the land like you say friends is on star trek the next generation i believe oh it finished by 92. Oh, no, 94. 94, 94 it finished.

Oh, yeah, so, okay, no, we're fine. We're all good, just so. Deep Space Nine was on its way in as well. Yeah. A few more years, Star Trek Voyager. Oh, it's a boom time, Rob, you're right. It's the golden age, the golden age of American history. Yeah.

Yeah, the post-war years are now well and truly over. The internet age is about to begin, and changes are afoot. And also, the Reagan years, as we have covered, have really changed the Republican Party. And this fact will be one of the biggest narratives of Clinton's presidency. The Republicans had been in power for over a decade by this point. If you remember, the far right of the party managed to take over with the rise of Reagan. When Bush came along, he was more of a centralist, but the right of the party still had a lot of power, and they had learnt from Reagan's time the way to win was to fight and fight with everything they had, or indeed fight with things they didn't even have. Just fight. Reagan came across as a man who

would not compromise. He was their hero, even if he did actually fairly often compromise, as we covered. Bush, however, was seen as weak by the right of his party. And yeah, so he wasn't liked as much. But the new way of the Republican Party certainly rubbed off on Bush because his campaigns, if you remember, were very heavy-handed. Yeah. But when he lost, many on the right blamed it on the fact that he was too soft. He pandered to the liberals too much. They were determined to fight back.

So in other words, you've got a Republican Party who are in the mood for a scrap. Yeah. In 87, Reagan's administration had ended the Fairness Doctrine. You have to remind me what that is. Oh, I didn't talk about it at all. Ah, yes, tell me what that is then. It's one of those things that kind of slipped under the radar in my research until I came across it this time.

This was an enforcement for broadcasters using public airwaves to present a balanced view on politics. You invite a Republican on, you've got to invite a Democrat on. That kind of thing. Yeah, well, Reagan got rid of that. Yeah, yeah, obviously. Yeah, partisan politics on both sides saw the opportunities and the dangers of such a mood. There were people who thought this was a good and a bad idea on both sides of the political divide.

However, it soon became very apparent which way the wind was going to go. Because within a year, broadcasters had really latched onto a cash cow, a really good way of making easy money, and that is stoking the anger of the aging conservative population and do that you get more listeners you get more viewers you get more people buying your papers yeah and that rage yeah and that led to money so the likes of uh rich limberg which you might have heard of before limber is limber limber limber that's possibly how you pronounce it yes that's a how you pronounce it, yes

That's a good point I don't know, I reckon Yeah, it's one of those names It's one of those names that I recognise As being important in American culture But slightly before my time Anyway, he went national on the radio in 88 And he spent his time railing against the fact

That the feminists, the academics, the minorities, etc Were destroying America It was a huge hit Yeah railing against the fact that the feminists, the academics, the minorities, etc. were destroying America. It was a huge hit. Because as much as the majority of the population was starting to change or indeed question their own views on homosexuality, race, women in the workplace, what it means to be a man, that kind of thing, equally, a very large and significant minority of americans hated the change that was happening to american culture yeah and they found comfort in the airwaves and the papers telling them that they were right in being outraged just as many americans were persuaded a hundred years previously that the blacks and the irish were a danger to america and then a hundred years before that

it was the blacks and the native americans well now it was the liberals and the Irish were a danger to America. And then 100 years before that, it was the blacks and the Native Americans. Well, now it was the liberals and the blacks, obviously. That bit was largely said in a smaller voice by this time, but dog whistles were certainly still around. After all, it is better to feel angry than scared. So that's what they did. So you got this rapid rise in the late 80s early 90s of uh fear-mongering press shall we say it also coincides with the rise of 24-hour news how do we fill in all the news time

there isn't that much news well let's generate some news and if well what better news to generate the news that's going to get people to turn in, turn up, turn on. Is that why you get all these people rocking up to news stations that give their opinions, but they don't really know what they're talking about? Yeah, pretty much. You could do the same thing as well. Yeah, yeah. So there you go. So just know that that is all starting.

Now, it's not to say that it's like today, where the culture war has turned into an all-encompassing thing in America where drinking the wrong beer can put you on a side. It wasn't that bad back then but we're definitely starting to see the starts of that at this point. And once Clinton is in power the infrastructure is certainly there for the right to attack the Democrats as never before. Yeah, because when you're in power, you're in a position to defend. Yeah, exactly. Now, this was highlighted in the first few days when it was leaped to the press that Clinton was planning to force the military to accept gay men and women into the forces. Oh, it was the don't ask, don't tell.

Yes. Well, it's not yet, but this is where we're going to end up in. Yes. Now, in truth, Clinton was looking into this. He had mentioned it whilst he was campaigning, but this is where we're going to end up in, yes. Now, in truth, Clinton was looking into this. He had mentioned it whilst he was campaigning, but it was low on his list. It wasn't something that he particularly was going to dive in straight away, but immediately, within days of him becoming president, this is what the right-wing media were banging on about. He's going to let the gays in, and we all know what that means for the military. Now, Clinton had been told by several Southern Democratic senators he's going to let the gays in and we all know what that means for the military now clinton had

been told by several southern democratic senators that this won't fly you will not have full support of the democratic party we will not support this so clinton realizing there was not going to be a win here just puts it on the back burner and doesn't think much more about it it's not a big fight it's not one i'm interested in having. But the right-wing press had their bone and they ran with it. So that's all you could see in the news to begin with. Clinton, in turn, was actually focusing on the economy. That's what he wanted to deal with. The country was still dealing with the hangover of the Reagan years, namely the fact that Reagan had let the deficit climb and climb and rode the high of the boom until it crashed hard.

Now, Bush had already started to deal with the aftermath of that. Arguably, it led to him losing the presidency. So Clinton now had to deal with it. He campaigned on reducing the deficit and reducing the tax on the middle class. Once he was in power, however, he realized, just as Reagan and Bush had, you can't do both of these things at the same time. No. Reagan had decided, well, let's just focus on lowering the tax then and let the deficit climb. Clinton went for the opposite. He decided to get rid of tax cuts and focus on the deficit.

He needed to get it down. It had quadrupled under Reagan. It was currently at 3.7 percent of the gpd which was almost a whole percentage higher than what most economists stated was sustainable so they were heading to bad times according to the prevailing wisdom if i could just interrupt slightly just just so that our listeners are aware because i i know yeah i know what i know what deficit is it's clear but if you could just in a very simple way, is it the same as debt? Yes, it's how much the government owe. Owe to who? Banks?

Anyone. Corporations? Banks, corporations. Yeah, just generally how much does the government owe to other people? So borrowing's gone up. They need to pay it back and the interest as well. Now, economics. I know, I knew that.

Economics, obviously very complex. If you remember back in the early days, we had people like Hamilton saying a bit of a deficit's actually a good thing. Because people are invested in the government because they don't want it to crash, because then they won't get their money back. Having a deficit in on itself is not necessarily a bad thing. No. But when it keeps rising at the rate that it is, that is unsustainable. And at some point, something will break. This is what Reagan realized, but he just stopped trying to deal with it because he was riding an economic high. This is what Bush

realized, and it cost him his presidency because when he tried to deal with it, the economy was doing really badly and everyone felt poorer. So anyway, it's Clinton's turn. So he had promised he was going to cut the deficit in half in five years, which was hugely ambitious. But yeah, that's what he's planning to do. To do this, he and his advisors decided on course of action, roughly half of the money would come from spending cuts, and half would come from taxes. But unlike the Republicans, he was very clear to say, no, no, we're not just like the Republicans because most of the taxes are going to come out of the super rich. We're not just going to tax everyone. There are some people in this country who have enough money. We'll tax them instead. Most people polled were very much in favour of this.

The right-wing press, as you can probably imagine... Enraged. Absolutely enraged. They were already going to town on the gays and the military thing. They started to announce that this plan would harm ordinary working Americans. And also the super-rich, but... Yes, yeah. Definitely harm the ordinary working Americans more.

But this news was interrupted by an explosion in the North Tower of the Walt Trade Center. This was the terrorist attack, wasn't it? Oh, yes. Yes, on the 26th of February of 1993, a van containing a huge amount of explosives blew up in the underground car park. The idea was it to topple the North Tower into the South Tower, bringing both towers down and killing literally thousands. If you could imagine such a thing taking place. I can't imagine such a terrorist event though.

Yeah. Well, it didn't work, thankfully. It still killed six people, which is tragic. It injured over a thousand, but the explosion just was not strong enough to take the tower down. Initially, authorities thought it was an electrical fault explosion, but they very soon became clear, oh no, this is far too big of an explosion for that. This is an actual attack. Not just an attack, a terrorist attack, an Islamic one on US soil. This was new. It turned out that the, let's call it heavy-handed policies of the West in the Middle East since World War II had led to quite a few angry people over there who, therefore, were very easy to radicalise by opportunists. bases being attacked. So the idea of terrorist attacks coming from the Middle East is not new, but on American soil, trying to do something as big as take out the trade centres, that was new. It rang huge alarm bells in certain areas, but not really with the public. It just wasn't

big enough. It was an explosion. Yeah, okay, that's bad. Six people had died. I mean, six people dying is bad, but it's, it just wasn't big enough to make a big enough dent. In fact, the main story just a couple of weeks after this was the fact that Clinton had held up LA International Airport so he could get a haircut. A completely false made up story, by the way. He had got his haircut on the plane, but the air traffic was in no way slowed down whatsoever. It was just made up by the press. Yeah. And people believed it. As you can see, we're starting to see a pattern and something we've not really seen before. No. Well, at least

we've not seen it since the very early days when there was a lot of lying in the press. We've not seen it for a while. So what was the reaction of the US to this attack? As in officially, behind doors, or do you mean the public? Officially and behind doors. Was there a bit of like, oh, we need to keep an eye on this? It was like, ah, it's a one-off crazy person. No, no, behind doors people whose job it was to know

who was doing these things um they were very aware and alarmed uh it soon became clear that there were whole networks being put up in places like afghanistan there was a man out there called uh asama bin laden for example they really wanted to track him down because he was behind quite a few bombings recently clinton put out the order yeah track him down kill he was behind quite a few bombings recently. Clinton put out the order, yeah, track him down, kill him, arrest him. He's obviously bad news. But as you'll see, Clinton didn't manage to do it. I mean, it was important, but it certainly wasn't top priority.

I'm with you, yeah. And the general population, like I say, it just didn't. I mean, it was a big news story for a while, but it certainly wasn't this big event that they realised was just a precursor to something so much bigger. If it wasn't for 9-11, I probably wouldn't have even included it in this podcast. Right. Interesting. And like I say, Clinton's just getting really frustrated by the lying press at this point, because around this time, an angry voter asked Clinton why he was spending all his time on the gays in the military.

And Clinton replied that he wasn't. He'd spent a couple of hours on it. One day, looked into it, realised it wasn't going to go anywhere, put it on the back burner. He didn't quite put it like that, obviously, but yeah, that's what he's, it it's like i've spent a couple of hours on it the reply came from this member of the public i don't believe you and clinton was very frustrated that these lies from the press were getting through and there was nothing he could do about it there's huge portions of america genuinely believe that all clinton did for the first few months of his presidency was try to allow gay people to be in the military but it was just a whisper in the wind kind of thing yeah i mean interesting it'd be quite nice if he did try and do it to be honest have a bit more respect for him yeah but he wasn't uh but people believed it also shows that um even

though this is in our lifetime it's a very different different culture yes a different america the the idea that a majority of Americans at this point were very uneasy with the idea of a gay person being in the military because, I don't know, they're trying to shag the guns or something. I don't know. It is weird, isn't it? Who knows? Anyway, still, Clinton, he's going to focus on what he could do

and he's going to try and put all the stupid press stuff to one side He's got a chance to change the country for a long time soon after this Because a moderate on the Supreme Court retired And Clinton, therefore, was able to put in place a member of the Supreme Court And this is none other than Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ah Yes Probably won't mention her again really until

trump's episode um yeah but this is where she gets him i thought i always thought it was earlier than that no no it's i mean she's so old well i mean she was old yeah so little nugget for you there uh yeah ginsburg's now in the supreme Court. The Senate confirmed 96 to 3. That's a very healthy majority. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a sign that things were better back then. Yeah. So even if you're a Republican, you can go,

oh, yeah, actually, I respect the credentials. Decent judge. Let's go for it. More on this in Obama's episode. Just lots of foreshadowing going on at the moment. Anyway, meanwhile, Clinton's economy plans were coming to a head. Clinton had put into place the idea that the earned income tax credit should be dramatically expanded. In very simple terms,

all those people left behind by Reagan's harsh cuts would suddenly have a little bit more money again. A bit of a safety net. If you were below the poverty line, this would just give you a bit of a cushion. Good. Yeah. Average earners saw practically no increase in tax. Higher earners saw a modest increase in tax. And high earners saw significant increases. But I imagine there's still enough loopholes to get out of that, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If they're mega rich, I'm'm sure we're fine uh anyway it's a very close vote but it just passed despite six democrats voting against it and then it got a 50 50 split in the senate vice president gore casts the deciding vote letting it pass so very very close but a huge victory for clinton this undid a significant amount of what reagan did which was either

amazingly brilliant or horrifically terrible, depending on your political allegiances. Yeah. But it was certainly a big deal. Many Republicans came out and just simply put, this is going to bring the economy down. You thought it was going badly. Now you just wait. Oh, you just wait a couple of years. The economy is going to come crashing around your head, they confidently said. Democrats were happy, though. That was good. And then it was on to the next thing.

Next thing on the agenda is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. I keep hearing about that. Yes, well, it was a trade agreement pretty much created by Reagan and his administration. That's where it all started. The Bush administration then continued the negotiations, and it was pretty much a done deal. It just needed to be ratified. Now, Clinton had campaigned on keeping it and pushing it through. This was to appease Bush voters who were thinking of switching

to Clinton. Don't worry, I'm not a radical lefty. I will carry on with Reagan and Bush's NAFTA agreement. Yeah. So once they're in, Clinton now had to stick to his promise and push it through, which was something a lot of people in his party didn't want. It was a Republican idea. It wasn't theirs. They could do something better. Clinton wavered, but his advisors were adamant. No, you do need to do this.

It's not a bad trade agreement. No, it's not the one we would have created, but it's not a bad one. And it shows you that you're a man of your word. If you go back on this, it's, I mean, it's just a huge waste of everyone's time and effort and you'll come out like a liar. So a somewhat reluctant Clinton starts pushing for the agreement to be ratified. There was pushback from some Democrats and Republicans. It wasn't a complete party divide on this. But on both sides, the pushback was in the minority. NAFTA had taken years to put together countless meetings between officials in Mexico, Canada and the US. It would have been silly to abandon it at the last hurdle.

So it goes through and it passes. Hurrah, says everyone who supports it. However, despite the legislative progress, there was trouble brewing in the background. Something to do with... It's either his past or it's something else. Yes, it is his past, of course. It's his past. Yeah, of course it is.

Clinton's very, very chequered past. Big chequered vulture hanging in the background. During the campaign, as dirt was being dug up on all the presidential candidates, a story was dug up on Clinton. Not just Clinton, but the Clintons. It was not as scandalous as the affair with Jennifer Flowers or as juicy as the draft dodging, but it could be serious.

This is the Whitewater affair. I've heard of that. Let's just briefly cover what it is, shall we? In 1977, whilst governor, the Clintons had, along with their friends, the MacDougalls, invested in some land on the White River in Arkansas. Now, the idea was to turn a profit by buying the land, holding it, waiting until the area was developed a bit more, and then selling it on for a profit. Typical... Investment, yeah.

Typical investment, yeah. However, by the end of the 70s, the economy was not doing so great as we saw, and selling it actually would have led to a loss. So the four of them decided to build a model home on the plot, and just wait out the economic slump. Let's not cut our losses. The economy's bound to change soon. Now, from this point on, it all gets a little bit complex and accountant-y, so I'll keep it simple. Just know, however, this is simplified and there are more details if you want to go looking for them. Jim McDougall decided that he was going to get into banking and he took over a small bank and a savings and loan company do you

remember savings and loans companies from bush's episode yes yeah when they all all collapsed yeah well this is before then but just yeah just keep hold of that in your mind anyway um he used this to help raise money for the clintons of campaigns, because he was a business manager and he could host events and stuff. He then decided to lend himself some money to invest in another construction project. However, there was a law that said he could only lend himself what amounted to half the funds he needed. So he did some creative accounting and he lent the rest of the money to himself through various other means, shifting money around. It was all very dodgy and very illegal. Now, Hillary worked at a legal firm at this time, and this legal firm was the one that dealt with some of the services whilst this illegal activity was being done.

Oh, OK. Anyway, all of this was soon noticed by the government and investigations took place. McDougall resigned and Hillary's legal firm continued to do services for the business. The business is still up and running, but McDougall's no longer running the ship. Anyway, then the savings and loan crisis

that we covered in Bush's episode hits and the business goes under and because of the protections that bush had put into place remember uh this alone cost the taxpayer 73 million dollars just saving mcdougall's business yeah anyway uh because the whitewater plot was all tied up in this the clintons at this point lost their investment. It's just taken out along with the bank. Yeah. And there you go.

That's what happened. Now, you might be wondering where the Clinton's wrongdoing is here. I'm guessing from the banking element of it? No, that was McDoodle. But wasn't it Hillary whose company helped it? It was the firm she worked for. Yeah. And there was no indication that the law firm knew anything illegal was happening.

They were just doing services for McDoodle at the time. When they got money back from, that was it, 17 something million, did they get some of that no no no no oh no then i have no idea yeah well if you are wondering where the wrongdoing is that's exactly what the right-wing press were wondering at the same time surely surely something is there they thought that there was enough about this story that made certain people go if we dig here we will find something clinton's one of his best friends had committed fraud, very obvious fraud. Surely the Clintons were tied up somehow. They were invested into land together.

Surely they were tied up somehow. What about... Is it a guilt by association? Well, what about that fundraising? McDougall was doing fundraising. Had he used fraudulent funds? Had the Clintons used fraudulent funds in their campaigning? And what about, like you say, Hillary's law firm being involved? I mean,

maybe they did know something. A lot of time and effort was put into seeing if any dirt could actually be linked to the Clintons at this point. But nothing was found in time. The election went ahead and Clinton won. However, by this point, several journalists were really hoping that they could make their mark using this story, a bit like how Watergate had certainly made the careers of several journalists. Well, maybe there's something here. So they continued investigating. If they've done something wrong, the public deserve to know. Let's look. The Washington Post and the New York Times regularly published articles asking questions about it, but providing very few answers. The Republicans sensed blood and started to put pressure on the Attorney General to open up a formal investigation.

You know, just to settle the matter. Just to make sure everyone knows what's happened. Keep everything in the open. Transparency. Yeah. Things hotted up in conspiracy circles, however, when a friend, a childhood friend of Clinton, was found dead. Yeah. It was Clinton. Well, we'll get into that in a moment. Vince Foster was a childhood friend who had gone with Clinton to Washington.

He had been the one to get Hillary into the law firm because he worked for the same law firm. And he got Hillary into that job. So he worked for the same law firm and he got Hillary into that job. So he knew them both well. He was friends with both of them. He also dealt with the couple's financials. So he was very much tied to the Clintons, personally and professionally. When he got to Washington, he was on Clinton's team. He helped them. He advised them. But he also was finding life very hard. He was on antidepressants, he was very miserable, and he hated Washington with a passion. He hated the spotlight he was now in, and he often saw lies about himself in the paper. As all the dirt was tried to be dug up on the

Clintons, his name kept being dragged up, and he was being spoken about. A torn up note in his briefcase that was found near his body read, and I quote, The Wall Street Journal editors lie without consequence. I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here, ruining people is considered sport. That's not kind. It's really not kind. Yeah, Vince Foster shot himself and ended it. Now, skipping ahead slightly in the narrative, just to be super clear here,

five separate investigations in the end take place, and all of them conclude that his death was definitely suicide. There was the initial police report, the initial coroner's report, there were two congressional investigations, one led by Republicans and one led by Democrats, and an independent council that was set up to essentially bring Clinton down at all costs, concluded that it was suicide. It was definitely suicide. But when you come across rumours, which I don't know if you have or not, I certainly have, you occasionally come across rumours on the I don't know if you have or not. I certainly have. You occasionally come across rumours on the internet

people talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton covering up murder. Yes, yes, I've seen those. Well, this is the initial one. This is the big one. This was their first hit. According to the conspiracy theories of many. But, yeah, in conspiracy

circles, rumour starts flying around that this is all tied to Whitewater and they got rid of his friend because his friend was going to bring them down. Bill was furious about this. He was very angry that his friend was dead. In fact, I'll quote him here. I heard a lot of the right-wing talk show people

and all their sleazy stuff they said. They didn't give a rip that he'd killed himself or that his family was miserable. It was just another weapon to slug us with and to dehumanise us, which is a very fair point. The Wall Street Journal published a series of editorials that were very heavy on speculation and innuendo.

I mean, the big papers didn't go as far into actual conspiracy theories, but there were nudges and there were winks. The calls for investigations got louder and louder. Eventually, the Attorney General, Janet Reno, approved the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Whitewater and the death of Foster. So this is why those investigations take place. Yeah. So there you go. Clinton is being investigated over something that is quite obviously not a thing yeah now again skipping ahead slightly but it's just really interesting to note where it starts

this is the investigation that leads to monica lewinsky because because he's already been investigated they found that as well we're getting to it but yeah yeah but just so you know this is where it starts okay it starts with some very very tenuous financial speculation uh and uh frankly a wild conspiracy theory but an investigation is set up however life keeps going and clinton's got a job to do uh because the world affairs were happening. Saying that, however, the world's quietened down. It's the 90s. It's true. There's not much going on. Obviously, there's always something going on. But in America's eyes, there's not much going on. The Cold War is over. There's some little bits of terrorism going on every now and again. But apart from that,

we've seen a lot of in recent episodes, the president mainly dealing with foreign affairs. But it's not really the case in Clinton's presidency. Two major events take place that he deals with slowly over the course of the two terms. And I'm not going to go into them in a huge amount of detail. One of them is problems in Eastern Europe as the fall of the Soviet Union takes place and the collapse of Yugoslavia. Now, this area, as we know well from our Roman series, was on the border. Yugoslavia was the border between the East and the Western Roman empires. Obviously, it wasn't called Yugoslavia at the time, but that's where the border was. It was then the border... High five!

Yeah, high five. It was then the border... High five! Yeah, high five. It was then the border between the Catholic and the Orthodox Christian churches throughout all of the Eastern Roman Empire time. And then when the Ottomans finally bash down those walls and Constantine XI just goes charging in to his death, the area is converted to Islam and therefore roughly where Yugoslavia is becomes the border between the Islamic Ottoman Empire and the Christian Europe. So it is, in other words, a mounting pot that's been on the simmer for centuries.

And when the Soviet Union falls, it all starts to boil over. To cut a very detailed and long story short, starts to boil over. To cut a very detailed and long story short, the Serbians, led by Slobodan Milosevic, decided that Bosnia should not be a thing. Or more to point, Muslims should not be a thing.

So some good old-fashioned ethnic cleansing starts taking place. No joy. So I remember this as a child. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember about Bosnia and Serbia in the news. I remember being very confused. Adults trying to explain to me what this war was about and not being able to explain it clear enough.

Probably because they didn't really know themselves, I'm guessing. Also, I was very young, so... And the kids' news show in the UK called Newsround. Terrible job of explaining it. They had puppets and everything but no i genuinely don't know whether to believe you or not there i'm lying i mean it wouldn't surprise me um anyway as we've seen the us were understandably very cautious of getting

involved with the fallout of the fall of the soviet. It would be almost like dancing on the grave of the Russians and it would make people angry. So a hands-off, let them deal with it approach had been taking place under Reagan and Bush. And Clinton was pretty much the same. He wanted to be more hands-on. He saw the atrocities happening in Eastern Europe and thought, well, that's awful.

We should be doing something but world support wasn't really there britain and france were very cautious of getting involved because again it's a tinderbox uh we don't want to make things even worse the newly unified germany wanted to do something they were full of vim and vigor. They were unified and ready to take on the world. Don't say that. In a positive way. We tried twice before. In a positive way.

Okay. Yeah. But nothing could be agreed on exactly what to do. How do we stop a man who is causing the biggest atrocity since World War II? Offer some chill pills. Yeah. Well, what they did do in the end

was decide to lift the arms embargo on the area. Let's just give everyone guns, shall we? It'll sort itself out. That is the most American policy, isn't it? To be fair, it sounds counterintuitive, but the reasoning was the arms embargo was harming disproportionately the people fighting against Milosevic. Oh, so defensive arms.

So lift the arms embargo, it means they're able to defend against Milosevic. That was the idea. I mean, it's not great. Apart from this, the can was kicked down the road. This comes back a few times in Clinton's presidency, as we will see. But just know it's ticking along in the background pretty much the whole presidency. Anyway, back to internal issues. With the economy done and NAFTA sorted, next was healthcare.

Clinton had campaigned hard on health reform. And since being in power, Hillary had spearheaded the attempt to create reform. Almost on day one, Hillary was put in charge of health. Go and figure out a way to reform things. Now, just to remind you, President Johnson, he had introduced Medicare for the elderly. Medicare is a socialised medicine. Yes. But it's only for the old people.

Everything else, all of healthcare in America, was tied to employment. Everything else, all of healthcare in America, was tied to employment. Unique to the world, in America, your healthcare coverage was entirely linked to your employer. There is a veterans healthcare thing though, isn't there? Yes, there is that as well. There's that socialised medical care as well. Yes, there was that as well, but that is very small compared to everything else that's going on. Now, the invested groups and politicians were never going to allow for a universal healthcare system used by pretty much the rest of the world. That is, to be clear, a system where all residents have a right to access to healthcare,

no matter who you are. However, it just wasn't going to fly. The American system was too entrenched. However, it just wasn't going to fly. The American system was too entrenched. However, the Clintons thought, well, we can at least make a dent in what we've got to make it more fair across the country. Because it wasn't fair. You had different things going on all over the place across the country. The idea was it would remain private, which is what most people wanted. But the government would have more say in managing competition making sure that coverage was fair the costs were roughly the same and the rules were similar across the country that sounds fair

because you don't want like a big company dominating everything because then it's their policy yeah and you don't want a health care system where it depends where you are in the country depends on how much you're paying for something whether you can get certain things done or not yeah you just want some consistency uh anyway there's a huge amount of effort was put into this health care reform it was comprehensive a 1342 page document was released covering all the changes as you can imagine no one no one at all read it because that's 1342 pages damn it i got time for that yeah it was just too much no one, no one at all read it, because that's 1,342 pages, damn it. I don't have time for that. Yeah, it was just too much.

No one could understand the details quickly, but what could happen was the opposition were able to very quickly attack it. Let's just cherry pick this line here. Oh yeah, and Takat was immediately released with a good-looking all-American family sitting around a breakfast table worrying about how much their bills would increase and how they would not be able to choose their own doctors. Utter rubbish. I mean, the bill would not do those things. It very clearly laid out exactly why it wouldn't do those things, but no one knew that because the document was 1,342 pages long

and no one was going to read that. Yeah. Yeah. So public mood just turned against it immediately. The other big bill at the time was the crime bill. Apart from Clinton himself. Too dumb. Yeah. The other big bill at this time was the crime bill. Crime, violent crime in particular, was at an all-time high. This was before the continuous reduction in violent crime

that we've been seeing for the last couple of decades, which no one's really managed to explain why, but probably has to do with the fact that everyone's got a smartphone now. Yeah, it's true. Should we go and smash those windows? No, I'm looking at TikTok. We should put a sense of mean comments on TikTok instead. Yeah.

But yeah, no, this was before that reduction of crime started. So we are at the peak at this point. Crime was at an all-time high, especially in American cities. So while campaigning, Clinton tried to go against the idea that Democrats were soft on crime by promising he's going to be tough, he's going to bring in new police, he's going to do all sorts. To begin with, his crime bill saw no problems at all. Republicans and Democrats were more than happy with the headline of it, which was more police on the streets. Fine, no problem. But then, seeing how easy this was

going to be to push through, the Democrats included something else into the bill. It was a ban on selling assault rifles to the public. Ooh. And suddenly the NRA took note. And here is where we go into our brief aside on the NRA. Oh, what a lovely book there. Something that has been on the cards for quite some time. I seem to remember mentioning way back when we were talking about the amendments being created

that we were going to have to mention the ANRA at some point. Well, here we go. Only a brief aside. The National Rifle Association. What do you know about them before we start? I just remember that I know they're lobbyists. They're very pro-gun and use the Second Amendment as a thing. And the guy that stood up and gave a speech and said,

the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. That kind of thing. Which is really weird to British ears. Oh, it's incredible. And most other Western countries. Yeah. I don't think people outsideica have ever managed to really convey how strange america's thoughts on guns are to the rest of the world yeah it's certainly a cultural

difference there uh anyway national rifle association it started in 1871 as a group that helped people be better at firing their guns guns were unreliable and dangerous back in 1871, and some people thought, wouldn't it be good, right, here's an idea, if people stopped accidentally shooting themselves when handling guns? That sounds great. We should maybe set up a group, an association, where people can learn about safety of guns and marksmanship and maybe... How to hunt maybe we

could set up some shooting ranges to help people be better uh and we're just i don't know we'll go out hunting and we'll just enjoy our lives and our guns yeah so there you go that's how they started for the next 50 years that's what they were then in 1930s, a law was passed that taxed the manufacture of guns. The NRA set up a legal division to make sure that the tax was done right, and that was it. Oh, okay. Yeah. It was like, oh, right, okay, well, we're going to need some legal stuff here, aren't we? Because our people who, like, members are going to be asking about this kind of thing. We need to know the law. We can't just be enjoying our guns anymore.

Okay, we'll have a small legal division. The president at the time, talking about guns, said, and I quote, I seldom carry one. I have one when I felt it was desirable to do so for my own protection. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses and this is what the head of the nra said about 100 years ago yes yeah so the head of the the one that's running the nra said that at that time so a hundred years ago this was very typical for the nra

it was we like guns but they're dangerous, so we need to be careful with them. We need to teach people to be safe. So he's saying that guns can be dangerous, so that therefore they need to be dealt with sensibly. Yeah, pretty much. Okay. Anyway. Makes a lot of sense.

Continues for about another 30 years until the 60s. The Gun Control Act was put through at this point. It created a system to license guns and establish restrictions on certain classes and categories. Guns were starting to become very powerful. They were easier to make, cheaper to make, and they were more dangerous. The government realized this and went, we need to maybe clamp down on this. This isn't a bunch of people muskets anymore. This is getting dangerous. The NRA heard this and supported it. Ah, so they were in agreement that guns were getting too dangerous, too powerful, not really needed for the average person.

Yeah, it was. But still supported the use of guns for appropriate hobbies and stuff. Okay. However, what I can't say is that they wholeheartedly supported this. A majority of the NRA supported this. But by this point, there had developed a faction. And this was a faction within the NRA that were worried that if the government carry on doing this, they will eventually ban all guns and they won't have their guns anymore. Is this the Guns of Fun faction?

Well, this was the Second Amendment faction. And then in 1977, there was an internal coup of the organisation, which is now called the Cincinnati Revolution. Sounds far more glorious than it probably was. Well, the NRA at this point was really at a turning point in history. Certain Conservative members of the NRA thought that the 68 Bill went far too far. So in 1975, a lobbying arm of the NRA was set up and led by a man named Carter. Now, the leaders of the NRA thought this would just shut Carter up. Let him go and moan about the politicians. We'll go to the shooting range and go hunting. However, Carter was very good at lobbying and didn't just lobby

the politicians, he also gained lots of support by the members of the NRA themselves by talking a lot about how, if this carries on, the government will take your guns from you. He soon became a power within the organisation. The current leadership of the NRA tried to get rid of him at this point. He's too powerful. He might take over. We need to get rid of him. We need to move our headquarters to Colorado, build a brand new building with some fancy shooting ranges in and get away from the politics of Washington. That is not what the NRA is meant to be about. It's a hobbyist group. It's not meant to be political. They were too late. Carter was too powerful by this point. He had a following and he

was able to take over the organization in 77. Now, it's not just him. I'm simplifying. It was him and a few others. But his first move was to scrap the move of the headquarters to Colorado. Nope, we're not doing that anymore. Those lovely new shooting ranges and all the wild hunting land that you wanted to be around. Nope, we're staying here in Washington. That's not what guns are for. Yeah. So instead of being about the conservation of guns and recreational shooting, the NRA from now on would be a lobbyist group. Its primary function would be to protect the right to bear arms, or more to point, the right for invested arm companies to sell arms for profit. Because let's not be under any illusion here, this is exactly what it was. This was all coming from the arms manufacturers.

And they were scared that they would not make enough money if the government were clamping down on what they could sell. And they sort of used the Second Amendment as a shield. Yeah, exactly. So the NRA start pushing the narrative of the Second Amendment. Before this point, the idea that the Second Amendment was important to guns just really wasn't a thing. But the NRA spotted this in the Constitution and went, aha, there you go, this, this is important.

No one can say we're wrong. Yeah, so there you go. The Second Amendment said they could have guns and no one was going to take them. Any politician trying to control any guns in any way was anti-constitutional and therefore anti-American, damn it, the group quickly became more and more powerful and more and more right-wing and anti-government. Because before this, it was just not political at all. You saw people from all walks of life in the NRA.

You very quickly saw a swing of members going to the right at this point. The NRA around this time started to heavily attack the government and its agencies, especially the ones that enforced gun laws, mainly the ATF. They were seen as a branch of government that were literally trying to oppress the people. By the early 90s, the NRA had pretty much been taken over by the conservative gun rights faction, and the group was almost solely a lobby group for the arms industry. And, as we're about to see, an incredibly powerful one. Anyway, back to Clinton. That's the quick aside on the NRA of how they suddenly arrive in the 90s as being this huge political force. It's not quite as simple as that. They've been bubbling along since the 70s, but they're now big. Anyway, Clinton and his crime bill has an assault ban in his crime bill,

and the NRA were outraged. Absolutely outraged that they would potentially not be able to make as much money. So they got to work, and soon enough Democratic senators were contacting Clinton, letting him know that, sorry, we're not going to be able to vote for your bill, because the NRA have contacted me and said that they would campaign against me in the next senatorial election. And if they do that, I will lose. So sorry, no vote. Yeah. Leading congressional Democrats urged Clinton to remove the bill. This is too, it's going to cause too much trouble down the road. But Clinton stuck to his guns. He refused. Bad taste, Clinton. Bad taste.

He refused to give in. Gun crime was on the rise. He saw the statistics. It was very obvious on the rise. And here's some genius galaxy brain thinking here. Not selling assault weapons to citizens would probably reduce gun crime. Yeah, it's crazy to think. But yeah, so he wasn't going to let it go.

However, there was a lot of pressure. He couldn't just keep it in there. Eventually, he agreed on a clause in the bill that would end the assault weapon ban in 10 years' time. It's a sunset clause in there. So, if it goes through, the ban only

lasts 10 years. Yeah, I guess that's a way of sweetening it slightly. Yeah. Well, you know, it's not permanent. Yeah, exactly. In the end, 64 Democrats vote against the bill. But Clinton had just enough votes. It passes both houses.

Right. The 10 years assault weapons are banned in America. Guess what happened to the deaths in mass shootings over those 10 years? In mass shootings? I'm guessing they went down somewhat. They did go down. Not hugely, to be fair. Because I'm guessing people still had rifles.

You could still buy assault rifles if they were manufactured before the ban. So it was only new assault rifles. And obviously there were all sorts of firearms that were still freely available. But yes, mass shooting deaths did go down over those 10 years. That is just a fact. I know this is a contentious issue, but there you go. That happened.

Also, I know I've read that the majority of deaths come from handguns anyway, rather than it's just in a mass shooting. If you've got an assault rifle. Yeah. You can pump out more rounds. Exactly. And kill more people. Yeah.

Just what you need for the average citizen. Yeah. I mean, there is obviously a lot that you can go into in this, which we don't have time for. But all you need to know is the assault rifle ban did seem to work um weird and uh clinton's crime bill a success for the democrats sort of as we will see um his health care bill however that didn't get through that document was too confusing the ads against it didn't work it was seen as a huge defeat for clinton so much so

people really started to wonder whether clinton was really good enough for the job him being defeated on the health really really dented him and then the midterms came up and the democrats were utterly destroyed really yeah Despite people having more money? The poorest had a bit more of a cushion. The economy's still not doing great, remember. Midterms are always hard for presidents. Yeah. But for the first time since 1952, the Republicans gained both the House and the Senate.

Is this where Clinton becomes like a lame duck? Pretty much, yes. Just point that out again, though, Jamie. 1952, since the Republicans has had both houses of Congress. That's a long time. It's a long time, isn't it? As you can imagine, the Republicans were absolutely thrilled.

Yeah. And it then gets worse for Clinton because the new Speaker of the House was a man we have mentioned before. We suggested perhaps he lived in a volcano. It's none other than Newt Gingrich. Oh, Newt. Newt, yeah.

We last came across Newt when he was torpedoing his own party's president, President Bush, for not being right-wing enough. Now, just in case you've forgotten, Newt Gingrich is far right, talked off, give nothing, take everything, no compromise style Republican. And he was now the Speaker of the House. Yes. Brilliant. Now, many of the old school Republicans despised him, saying that all he knew how to do was pick a fight. He wasn't a real politician. He was a grandstander. He was loud. He was obnoxious. He wasn't a real politician. He just wanted to be centre of attention.

That is in vogue at the moment, though, isn't it? Well, yeah. He had recently called the president, and I quote, the enemy of normal Americans. You say it's in vogue at the moment. If you were trying to draw a line between Reagan and Trump, Gingrich is where you go next after Reagan. Right. Gingrich was very much a Reaganite type of Republican, and then a little bit more so. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's the way the party is going. It wouldn't have been seen at the time, but this was the future of the party. Anyway, looking into why the Democrats lost, well, it soon became clear two things. Firstly, the healthcare reforms had landed badly, the messaging was all off, and everyone thought it was a terrible idea. But also, at least 20 seats in Congress were lost solely due to the NRA. Wow. Yeah, the NRA pulled support and gave it to the opposition,

so they lost their seats. Exactly what they told Clinton would happen, happened. And because of that, and other reasons, Clinton loses the House. So as you can see, the NRA, powerful. Politicians take note of this and are certainly very nervous about upsetting the NRA. Certainly very pro-gun. Yes. Anyway, Clinton realised that he was essentially hobbled from this point.

If you don't have the House or the Senate, there's very little you can do as president, but it carries on. Some good news. The investigation into his friend Foster's death came back and very clearly stated that it's got nothing to do with anything apart from the fact that the man was very depressed, and also said that it's got nothing to do with Whitewater. However, Whitewater would not go away. Sections of the press kept insinuating that the Clintons were hiding something. We're not sure what, but they're hiding something, don't you know? And in a blow to Clinton, a man named Kenneth

Starr was put in charge of the investigation against him. Starr being in charge meant that this was not going to go away anytime soon. Starr was backed by the people who were determined to find anything on Clinton to bring him down. Meanwhile, it became clear that Gingrich was going to be a problem, because he refused to compromise with the president on anything, to the point when the federal budget was up for renewal, it was not agreed upon. Now, I'm not going to get bogged down on the details of federal shutdowns, it all gets a upon. Now, I'm not going to get bogged down on the details of federal shutdowns. It all gets a little bit technical. But to simplify it, if funding legislation is not put forth before the next fiscal year, the government stops paying federal

workers across the country. We've seen it happen in the last couple of years, haven't we? Well, yes. Now, pretend you haven't. Okay. Yeah. Because if it wasn't for recent times, you'd probably be more shocked with what's about to happen here. Now, the reason why the whole federal shutdown thing happens is to ensure that this stuff is sorted out, because shutdowns are unsustainable. So obviously unsustainable, you'd have to be a madman to go into one willingly. Yeah, it'd be crazy. Yeah. Now, up to this point, it had gone to the wire a few times,

with both parties refusing to compromise until the 11th hour, and a couple of times in American history, it had gone over the wire by a few hours, which led to a day without pay. Then once, in 1990, there was a three-day shutdown which shocked everyone. This has never happened before. What a sign of government collapsing.

I mean, this is a sign of a democracy in peril. A three-day shutdown. Really bad. Anyway, Gingrich and the Republicans refused to negotiate with Clinton. They saw Clinton as incredibly irrelevant and weak. His party had just suffered a huge loss. He, yeah, he's probably going to lose the next election. He's a mess. So no, we are going to put through our budget. We don't care who the president is. We're not going to compromise. Clinton, however, very annoyed by this, refused to be bullied. Even if I dropped to 5% in the polls, he said, if you want your budget,

you'll have to get someone else in this chair, he said to the Republicans. So the Republicans' sensing blood just carried on holding firm. I mean, there's no way Clinton's not going to cave, of course they'll cave. And the deadline passes. The government shuts down for an unprecedented five days. But the polls, much to the shock of the Republicans, started to show that they were the ones being blamed by the public and not Clinton. Yeah. So a temporary agreement was put in place to reopen things,

but that soon lapsed. It was only temporary. And the government shutdown happened again, this time for 21 days. Wow. Yeah. That's a month. Yeah. So, I mean, this took

place November, December, and January. And this is by far the most shut down, by a significant degree, that the American government has ever faced. Gingrich was slowly but surely turned upon. The public saw him

and went, this is your fault. You're being a stubborn idiot. You're just refusing to go. Everyone knows that government's about compromises and you are just refusing to budge at all. He went too far one day when he was being interviewed and he started to complain that the president didn't talk to him on Air Force One and then also didn't let him

out of the plane using the more important front door. He had to use the rear door. And at this point, he just came across as really petty. The headline the next day called him a crybaby, and he was just stamping his feet. The Republicans, seeing their support rapidly start to erode, cave, and Clinton gets his first win in a while. But without Congress, Clinton, again, there's very much little he can do for the rest of this term, apart from foreign affairs. But like I say, things were largely quiet on that front. So, I don't know, peace in Middle East? Could give that a go, he thinks. Yeah, that's an easy fix.

Yeah. Well, to be fair to him, I've not covered it. He has already been trying to do this. He's been talking to the leaders of Israel and Palestine. He'd been getting somewhere. He's been getting the two of them to talk. It was not seen as a lost cause whatsoever. But around this time, Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, was assassinated by a right-wing fanatic within his country. He was assassinated because he was

talking with the Palestinians. This fanatic did not want peace, he wanted eradication. Wow. Yeah. Consequently, the far-right government then get into Israel, which has kind of been around ever since. But we're not getting into that now, but that's all very, very fun, isn't it? It's not something we have to deal with right now. Yeah. Anyway, Clinton got on really well with Rabin and was very distressed by his death. I mean, he was his closest foreign leader friend.

So I'm assuming how you refer to your foreign leader friend says. Yeah. Yeah. Blair's not around yet, by the way, but he's close. Still John Major. Yeah. Johnny Mage, as we used to call him yeah i mean clinton gets on really well with blair um but he's not surprised i'm really

not surprised oh yeah the two of them very very similar in their their politics anyway even though there's very little he can do now for peace of middle east because the israeli prime minister has been assassinated uh and also there's very little he can do internally. It is an election year, so he does have stuff to do. He's got to win the next election. But there's very little to report on, to be honest. No one came close to challenging Clinton in the primaries. And Bob Dole, who was the Republican candidate, was...

That is him. Well, he was fine, I suppose, according to most people. He was a World War II veteran who was conservative, but not over the top with it. He just didn't inspire people. He was fine. Was he a bit like a McCain? Yeah, yeah.

He was of the older generation as well, and now America had a new, younger president in. Do we really want to go back to the World War II lot again? No. No, certainly not. No. We don't want a president born in the 1940s. No.

Yeah, everyone knew who was going to win. It was going to be Clinton. Clinton was going to win. But in an attempt to be in touch with the youth, Dole's campaign team created, interestingly, the first political campaign website. Oh, yeah. Only about 10 people in the world could access. Possibly. With dial-up. Do you want... When you say dial-up, is it a rotisserie telephone that you dialed up? Yeah, you have to put the right number into the website.

Well, do you want to know the website, Jamie? Because it's still up and running. Oh, I want to see it. What is it? www.doll, spout D-O-L-E, kemp, spout K-E-M-P, 96.org. Oh, this is amazing. Is it all like Comic Sans? Oh, you will see. Is it coming up?

If not, there is... I need to type it in. Oh, I spelt it wrong. That's why. You got it. Oh, please. Oh, I remember these websites. It's got the button that says enter here.

Yeah. Remember those? Yeah. Go on, yeah go on enter enter oh i don't i don't know if i want to go into doll oh wow i need to zoom in it's so small isn't it because remember back back then this was a filled the screen because the resolution yeah um it says welcome students so i'm guessing they were going from the student vote. Latest news and updates I did look at earlier. I'm clicking on that. Today's headlines. November the 5th, 1996.

Top stories. And then there's no top stories. There's a link to calculate your tax cut, but it doesn't work anymore. Which is a shame. There's a multimedia section with the latest real audio and other multimedia files. Oh, I missed that. Where's that? It's in the newsroom.

There's a newsroom? Yeah. In the three middle beds. Oh, yes, yes. Okay, found the newsroom. It's in multimedia. Let's check on this. Oh, you can't click on it anymore.

Oh, no. The multimedia hot topics, isn't that? Oh, commercials. That leads you somewhere. Bob Dole, the better man for better anyway we are now just looking at a website that our listeners can't see if you are listening this is amazing go and visit www.dolekemp96.org and just i feel like i've gone back in time bask in some history it's what's crazy is this is a little bit you remember when i i played the

old campaign songs to you like the canoe and tyler 2 songs it's a bit like that it's it's a bit like that it's like oh look how they used to campaign um i'm just so happy they've kept it going now because they have to pay for this and that is brilliant it's like a real history that's fantastic amazing slice of history isn't it it's fantastic you can still go there i it doesn't work perfectly but oh oh it's good so um yeah there you go i thought that doesn't work perfectly but oh oh it's good so um yeah there you go i thought that was really interesting uh but amazingly jamie you'll be shocked to learn that this website amazing as it is uh wasn't quite enough to to win voter turnout

was less than 50 oh that's that's sad in a in like a national general election that is shockingly low that was the worst since 1929. And Clinton easily won. However, despite making gains, the Democrats could not win back either the House or the Senate. They'd done a bit better, but they've still not got it.

So it was going to be another... Could they just combine? Get all the Democratic House people combined with the Democratic Senate and just take over? Is that allowed in American politics? I'm fairly sure that's breaking our law or two somewhere, I think. Well, I want to see that written down.

I'd have to check. Right. Yeah. Clinton knew it was going to be another frustrating two years not being able to get anything through Congress. So he sighs and gets on with it. However, things are looking up. There had been signs that the economy was improving for a while, but now it was undeniable. It was starting to look like the 80s again,

in terms of rapid growth. In fact, it started to look like it was going to be even better. The median household income had soon risen by 7.3% since Clinton started. And that was only four years ago, slash five years ago. Getting an almost 10% increase in such a short amount of time made a lot of people very happy. Just like Reagan, Clinton used this as much as possible to his benefit. The Democrats pointed at this as proof that their economic bill from a few years ago was working. See what we've done? And to be fair, the crash that was heavily predicted by the Republicans certainly did not happen. The opposite did. Another 10 years. But let's be honest here. We've seen this time and time again. It's the boom bust of the capitalist system. It is mostly independent

from the president. Clinton knows this. Reagan knows this. They were both very happy to pretend otherwise, because of course you're going to. Anyway, Gingrich, he's still going, but he's weakened. He was bruised and matted by that last election. He no longer is strong enough to threaten another shutdown as the year roll around, much to the president's glee. I think you said that in meetings. Yeah. In fact, Clinton was able to push through more money for education and welfare in the next one.

Yeah, something that the Republicans really did not want to happen. Socialism! Well, despite having both halves of Congress, they were politically too weak to fight against it. So Clinton's actually starting to get stuff done. I don't understand why, and I'd say from a UK point of view as well, why you wouldn't want to invest as much money as possible into education, because that's your country's future.

It's weird why you'd be against it. I'll admit it was at that very sentence that I was writing in my notes where I did have a what is wrong with some republicans moment in my head it's like it's it's investing in education why would you be against it but it will make your country better but what it will be is it will be arguments about how the education is funded whether it's federal whether it's state uh it's going to be all tied into things like that it's not quite as simple as education however um yeah it's it's something that they didn't want um anyway uh more good news um star the prosecutor who was investigating the whitewater stuff uh he had

been working around the clock for month after month after month. It's going into years now to get dirt on Clinton. And he announced he was resigning from the post. I just can't find anything. Well, yeah, this is what most people saw in the resignation. They saw it for what it was, which was essentially an admission that he couldn't find. Damn it, he had looked. He had looked and he could not find any crimes. I like to think that as soon as he said he's resigning,

they hide some new interns at the White House. Oh, we'll get into that in a moment. The right-wing press were not happy at all. Essentially, although Starr obviously didn't say this, but essentially what was inferred by his resignation was, yes, some of the details I could find are a bit dodgy. There's some stuff that isn't great, but there's nothing to actually implicate Bill or Hillary being involved in any of the dodgy

finances. Jim McDougal, yes, but not Bill and Hillary. In fact, Starr had even thrown Susan McDougal, the fourth person who was involved in the investment, he had thrown her in jail for the last two years because she refused to answer questions about Whitewater. Can you do that? Contempt. Oh, in court, okay. Yeah, so she's just in a jail cell at the moment. Apparently treated really quite barbarically.

That was not my word, a word used by someone who was investigating it. She was pardoned by Clinton at the end, which led to some people going, oh, more cover-up, and some people to go, well, that's good, because, I mean, her husband committed fraud. She shouldn't be in jail. But, again, perspectives, eh? Anyway, the Clintons celebrate. They're furious it had gone on for this long, but there we go.

We can all put that under the carpet. It's all gone. Oh dear, what's this? Because Star announcing his resignation did not deter the right-wing anger machine. Whitewater was good business, dammit. They had been making a lot of money from selling this story for years now. They were not going to let a small little fat, like there being no actual evidence, slow it down.

The talk show hosts and certain columnists from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times kept running stories. And of course, a new news channel had just started up. And this news channel, they really liked Whitewater. It was really bringing in the viewers, turning up. You could probably guess what news channel this is. Yeah. Does it rhyme with Mox?

Pox. Dr. Flox. Yes, it's Fox News. The bastion of good narratives. Well, a very short Fox News tangent here. By the 1970s, Rupert Murdoch, a media mogul from Australia,

Yeah, that's right. Well, he'd already taken over most of the important newspapers in his native Australia, and then Britain. Yeah, they're mine. Sun News, News of the World, all mine. This led to, I'm just going to put it bluntly, a disturbing amount of power in the politics of Britain and Australia.

A truly disturbing amount of power. Have you heard of what he calls himself now? Oh, God, what's he called himself? He sort of stepped down from his role as whatever it was, but he's called himself something like Imperator or something. Oh, God. Sort of like Overlord. It's something like Ridic or something. Oh, God. Or something like Overlord. It's something ridiculous and Roman is his head title.

Yeah. He's 92, Jamie. He's 92, yeah. Yeah. Almost as old as Biden. Almost. Anyway, yeah, so Rupert Murdoch. I mean, I don't know as much about Australia.

I'll just be honest. Australian history is not something I know much about Big spiders, lots of snakes, that's all you need to know Yeah, exactly But what I do know is that Since the 70s, in politics If you haven't got Rupert Murdoch behind you You are going to struggle Most recently, the absolute assassination

Of Jeremy Corbyn Shows how effective Rupert Murdoch can be still. But also really beneficial for Tony Blair. Yes. Yeah. Tony Blair got Rupert Murdoch on side and managed to get in in a landslide. Multiple times. You cannot understate how important Rupert Murdoch is in British politics. He is pulling the

strings in the background. Maybe not as much as some people claim he is, but he is a huge power force. Anyway, we're not talking about modern times. We're in the 70s here, and Murdoch has his sights on America. Now, newspapers had worked in Britain very, very well. It was the way to get the public outraged and buying papers. It makes money. America, however, has a different culture to newspapers than Britain does. And Murdoch realised it wasn't going to work quite the same way. He had to approach America differently.

I mean, he still went into newspapers, obviously, but he decided that television was the way forward. It's the future. It is the future it is the future so in 84 he purchased 20th century fox oh i didn't know that then in 96 he decided to get into the 24-hour news cable business so he creates fox news now fox news from the outset was designed to capitalize on the culture divide between the world war War II generation and the younger one coming in. Get those pearls clutching kind of thing and people will tune in.

It was obviously conservatively biased, but don't think of it as what Fox News became. Yes, it was biased when it first started, but in the early days it was mostly factual. It just had a bias. In other words, it wasn't being sued for nearly a billion dollars for the proven lies that it is saying, which is what's happening now. There wasn't this big divide between its news and the so-called opinion pieces,

which is almost impossible to distinguish between unless you're in a courtroom kind of thing, you could put Fox News on and get good, solid reporting. Like the weather was fairly accurate. Well, the things they were saying, it was accurate. It just had a conservative spin on it. That's how it started off. Now, certain people in Fox News were more conservative than others in the same way that journalists in all areas are. And you soon got in Fox News, in the New York Times, in ABC, CNN, all these big media companies, you got certain journalists who were hitching their career on bringing Clinton down. And they were all outraged that Starr was quitting because Starr was their big hope.

If Starr finds something, then all of our reporting is justified and it means that we were onto something. If Starr quits, it means we have just been shouting into the void for the last few years and we'll look like idiots. It delegitimises us. Yeah, exactly.

It felt like a betrayal. He was turned upon very quickly in the press. It's amazing how that happens, isn't it? Well, he was told by one journalist, like, actually in a column, to get out of town and let someone else do the job. With this pressure, Starr announced that, actually, I'm not resigning after all. I'm going to stay on because there is dirt. There's definitely dirt and I'm going to find it. So Clinton and Hillary, very annoyed by this. Okay, Whitewater's not gone away just yet. And then things get worse for Clinton

because Paula Jones, a state employee, had accused the president of sexually harassing her. That would never happen. No, no. Back in 1991 in Little Rock Hotel. No little rock hotel definitely not now this was a couple of years previously so this didn't all come out now but what had just happened it was decided that this could proceed through the courts despite the fact that clinton was the president there was an idea that well i'm president you can't put me through the courts that will distract

me from doing my presidential job. Presidential immunity, yeah. Yeah, exactly. The courts turned around and went, no. It's ridiculous. I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of this one just because time reasons. Jones claims that Clinton propositioned her in the hotel

and then exposed himself. That's what's going on there. Yeah. With this development, those working in Starr's office decided maybe this is the way forward. It's definitely the way forward. I mean, in retrospect, it's like you want to go back to that office and just go, what have you been doing for the last few years?

Do you know how dodgy his past is? It's an open is? If you just shift your focus ever so slightly from the financials and you've got an open call. I mean, they were getting nowhere in the financial dealings, but maybe, maybe it's personal life. Maybe there's something there. So, I mean, like I say, it had been set up over financials, but it was an unlimited open investigation. So they were allowed to just go, well, let's investigate something else then. So they start looking into his personal past and, oh, wouldn't you know it?

There's some stuff. Well, they're going to find something. We know this because obviously we know that by this time, Bill Clinton had had his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Ooh. Yes. Now, I'm going to say at the outset here, we don't have time to go into this in detail, especially the awful ways that Monica Lewinsky was treated by everyone.

Yes. Her friends, the FBI, the Republican prosecutors, and mostly by Clinton. Yeah, it's really bad. Yeah. However, if you want to know more details, go and listen to Slow Burn Season all about this. It is a fascinating season. It's really interesting, but also really depressing and awful. I mean, she just went through an awful time. Also, incidentally, this is it. This is the first presidential memory I've got. Yeah, me too. I was alive for the last couple. Bill Clinton's the first president I remember,

and it's because of this. And also, just to prove how bad society... I remember my mum trying to explain what the problem was to me. Oh, there are so many grown-ups struggling across the world. I remember, yeah. It was to do with cigar. It was to do with cigar case, something that men shouldn't do, which left me confused for a while.

Yeah, I could see why that would confuse you. I worked it out. I worked it out. Three years ago, I got there. I was going to say just to prove how bad society as a whole treated Monica Lewinsky. I'll give you my personal anecdote here, because my main memory of this is being around 11 years old, last year of primary school, being on the playground and me and my friends talking about it, having a vague idea that there was this woman in America and she had done something wrong to the president. Yeah. And it had to do wrong to the president. Yeah.

And it had to do with S-E-X. Can't say it. The teacher might hear. Exactly. That's how bad it was. It's like 11-year-olds in England. The only thing that we had picked up on was that somehow Monica Lewinsky had done something bad. Yeah. had picked up on was that somehow monica lewinsky had done something bad yeah anyway let's let's go into it briefly so you understand what did happen but like i say there's plenty more details out there how much detail you're gonna go into uh not that much in june of 95 monica lewinsky a 21 year old unpaid intern had managed to land a job working for the president's chief of staff.

Yeah. So she is in the White House. This is, I mean, I could rant about unpaid interns, but the fact is this is huge for her career. She's in the White House. She's only 21. This is good. This is good things are going to come from this. As we saw quite a few times in the last episode, Clinton noticed this young lady

and turned on the charm. And it worked. Of course it would. Well, the two flirted with each other a lot whenever they saw each other. And then during the government shutdown that I mentioned earlier, that meant long working hours and the two of them found themselves alone. They flirted some more, and then they started to get to know each other, shall we say. But not fully. No. No, which becomes important later. Yes, yeah it does. Yes. They didn't fully get to know each other, they discussed politics, shall we say. Yes. Yes, that's what they did. They orally spoke about... Politics. Yeah. Got the thrust of it, so to speak. Yes, exactly.

Anyway, after finishing, after a rousing discussion of politics, Clinton apparently flicked Lewinsky's intern badge and then said, and I quote, this could be a problem. Do you think, Clinton? Do you think? Yeah. Yeah. Over the next couple of months, the two of them managed to meet up and discuss politics a few more times.

But then Clinton called it off. This was foolish. He knew that. He's got a lot of people after him. If anyone finds out about this, he'd be in a heap of trouble. But no one will. Don't worry about it. It's fine.

Yeah. It's fine. So anyway, he calls it off and then they meet up and discuss politics again about a month later. But then really, no, it's fine so anyway he calls it off and then they meet up and discuss politics again about a month later but then really no it's really over this time so much so that uh lewinsky is uh transferred to the pentagon now apparently this was someone high up in the white house figuring out what was going on and transferring her out of the way yeah Or maybe it was Clinton himself saying, I need to get her away from me. She is too much of a tempestuous kind of nonsense.

Yeah. Anyway, the fact is, Lewinsky finds herself in the Pentagon. Gone is her really good political career that she was hoping to carve out because she was in the White House and got transferred out for some reason. And that's not going to look good, is it? So she was hurt and she was upset. I mean, she knew it was over and she wasn't happy about it once in the pentagon she made friends that's nice isn't it it's good to make friends yeah it is uh she made friends with a woman called linda trip uh trip had also been transferred from the pentagon sorry transferred

to the pentagon from the white house not for the same reasons. Okay. She worked there under Bush. She was a Republican. The Clintons came in and essentially just got rid of her. No, don't want you here. We want our own people. And Tripp was very annoyed by this. Again, it's like political whim of someone else means my career is now on the back burner. So she hated the Clintons.

And she was in the Pentagon and and she'd just made friends with Monica Lewinsky. So when her new friend started to tell her, increasingly angrily, about how she'd been treated, and about how the president had led her on, and then discussed politics, and then essentially fired her, Tripp began to secretly make notes, and recording the conversations with Lewinsky, without Lewinsky's knowledge. There's a book deal in here somewhere, thinks Tripp. Anyway, Tripp happened to know of a journalist who was busy trying to uncover Clinton's past life and his dealings with women. This was one of the many journalists who were trying to make a career from finding some dirt.

So she went to this journalist and played the tapes. But the journalist went, oh no, this is illegal. These are illegal recordings. Yes, I want dirt on Clinton, but I can't use illegal recordings. That will torpedo my career. So yeah, you've got something here, but I'm not going to touch this with a barge pole, essentially. Meanwhile, all that's going on,

Clinton is completely unaware of this. As far as essentially. Meanwhile, all that's going on, Clinton is completely unaware of this. As far as he's concerned, Lewinsky's out of the picture. Problem solved. I mean, he has done this with countless women in the past. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm sure it's fine. However, the Jones trial is going on.

Remember, this is where Jones had accused the president of sexually harassing her. Yeah. Back in 1991. Well, because that's going on, Clinton wants to shut it down, so offers Jones $700,000 to settle out of court. That's a good chunk of cash. Good chunk of cash. Jones's lawyers, absolutely thrilled by this, urge her to take the money. Brilliant. This is a huge payday. This is better than we thought we'd get. Excellent. However, by this point, several conservatives, or infested people, shall I say, had befriended Jones and convinced her, never settle, don't settle.

You want to hurt Clinton, settling is what he wants. Don't settle. Yes. So she doesn't. She refuses the $700,000. Jones's lawyers quit in protest. $700,000. How dare you. But by this point, no, this was a principal thing.

She's going to go after Clinton. So that's what's going on with the Jones case. It's not going away, is what I'm trying to say. It's hanging around like a... that vulture. It's that vulture. Meanwhile, Tripp, Lewinsky's friend, remember, realised that these were the people she needed to talk

to if she wants to get a book deal off the ground. The reporter she talked to last said no, but instead, why doesn't she go to Jones's lawyers? This Jones has refused to settle. She's fighting Clinton. I will go to her people with the news that I've got dirt on Clinton, and they'll be able to use it somehow, and I'll be able to get a book deal or something.

So Jones's legal team instantly subpoena Lewinsky to get more details. This is fantastic news. Let's get details. Lewinsky panics. She's just been subpoenaed, so she phones Clinton. Help. Clinton says,

woohoo, no, no, no, no. Just sign the affidavit saying you know nothing to do with anything concerning the Jones case. Yeah. Possibly. A lot hinges on what this conversation is. He either only said that

or he also said, tell them that we did not have a sexual affair. Anyway, Lewinsky then does so. She signs the affidavit saying that she has nothing to do with the Jones case and she did not have a sexual relationship with Clinton. So she lies. Yeah. On a legal document. Oh, that's bad. Yes. Now, the Jones lawyers, lawyers realizing that they could get nowhere with

lewinsky decided well okay this isn't working for us but why don't we go to star and tell his investigation into clinton that we've got this dirt maybe he'll be able to do something with it so star then supplies a wire for trip oh no a lot of names going around here. Is that clear? So Star, the investigator, gives Trip, Lewinsky's so-called friend, a wire. Trip then goes and meets her friend and illegally records Lewinsky. This is against the law.

You can't do this. But they do it anyway. Is it illegal only in a government building? Can you do it? It was the law at the time in the place they were that you could not record someone without their consent. Anyway, it's fine. Thanks, Star.

It's like, we're not going to use this for anything. I just want to know what Lewinsky knows. So they record her anyway, and they realise, oh, wow, we have something here. An affair was one thing, but Lewinsky has just signed an affidavit saying that she had not done anything with Clinton. And now we've got her on tape saying she did, because she was being open and honest with Tripp, her good friend. So had Clinton told an aide to perjure herself?

Because if he had, that's impeachable. That's a big deal. That's a really good point. Yeah. So like you said right at the start of the episode, it was all about the lie. And this is the lie. So two days after meeting and illegally recording Lewinsky, Tripp meets her friend again. This time, two FBI agents turn up out of nowhere, tell Lewinsky that she's in serious trouble, you've got to come with us. They lead her to a hotel room.

Yes, all very above board. Yeah. And they interrogate her, doing whatever they could to stop her from contacting a lawyer. They cut her off, basically, and use all the scare tactics they can think of. Incidentally, on the very same day, Clinton is telling Jones's lawyers that he

has nothing to do with Lewinsky and they'd never had sex before. So he is just lying to Jones's lawyers. A few days after this, Starr then leaks the story to the press. It's time to move on this. The headlines, Clinton accused of urging an aide to lie, comes out. Clinton falls back on what he knows. He's been here before. Damage control. He knows what to do. Go on the talk shows. So that's what he does. He goes off. He states that there was no sexual relationship with Lewinsky. In fact, I'll quote him here. I want you to listen to me. I did not have sexual relations with that woman. I never told anyone to lie, not a single time ever. He very publicly lied.

Oh. Yeah. But as all this was going on, the economy was going through the roof. Hooray! The dot-com bubble's coming up. Yeah. Life for the average American was good. Technology's coming on leaps and bounds.

Everyone's enjoying themselves. The internet, Jamie. We've got the internet now. I can download a picture in four to five minutes. Excellent. A lot of people simply didn't care about the scandal. They were entertained by it, yes. They joked about it, yes. But get angry about it?

Not really. But that's my memory of it. I remember my parents laughing at it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that tended to be the mood. Even so, Starr called Clinton to testify in front of a grand jury, which was obviously what he was going to do. Clinton, not wanting to force being forced, as it were, agreed.

Yes, of course, I'd come along, anything to help the investigation. But by this time, he realised he could no longer dodge the truth. He's been very, I mean, he's been lying, but in his mind he's been twisting words mean he's been lying but in his mind he's been twisting words so he's not been lying lying but evidence was mounting up including address of lewinsky's with some shall we say political discourse on it he's gonna have to come clean yeah he's gonna have to admit i did have sexual relations well according to a couple of biographies i read, he admitted his wrongdoing

to Hillary on the 15th of August, 1998, which I just do not believe for a moment. There was no way she did not know that this was true. She knows what he's like. She would have known as soon as the first allegation came out. She just would have known. However, she was furious as she was used to the cheating by this point but this was putting their careers in jeopardy for what yeah to have a dalliance with an intern you idiot anyway clinton goes off to testify in which he read a prepared statement pointing out that he did not think that oral sex counted as sexual relations so he hadn't actually lied well no and you can imagine that kind of comment would make a lot of guys go hey that's fine he's a lad yeah uh he i mean it's just it's just nonsense everyone realized it was nonsense he was uh the butt of many a joke he still is um uh because of

this this is one of the things he is most famous for, is this idea that... Trump used it during the debates with Hillary as well. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that's what he did to say that he had not committed perjury. No one was believing it whatsoever. The right-wing press had a field day, a victory lap.

They got their man. They finally got the dirt on him. And on October the 8th of 1998, the House voted for only the third time in American history to open an impeachment inquiry on a sitting president. Meanwhile, the midterms came up, and the Republican pundits gleefully awaited the punishment of the Democrats for Clinton's behaviour. This is going to... Red wave!

It's going to destroy them. Absolutely destroy them. And then to the amazement and utter horror of the Republicans, it just didn't happen. The Democrats actually gained seats. Now, not quite enough to flip either the House or the Congress still, but apparently all of this did not put a dent in Clinton's popularity whatsoever. In some polls, he'd actually gone up. Clinton had, as he had before, managed to come out of this scandal

pretty much unharmed in the eyes of the public. Most voters, like I said before, had been entertained by the scandal, but very few thought it was enough reason to change votes. Yeah, they said the man made mistakes, but he was probably seduced by that Lewinsky. Don't like her, do we? Yeah, she's a homewrecker. And those Republicans, they've been looking for dirt on him since day one.

They've been throwing all sorts of mud at him, obviously making it up as they go along. So, to be honest, we're fed up. And that Gingrich fella, I mean, he's just a bully, isn't he? A stubborn bully who keeps shutting down the government. His awful tactics prove that the Republicans are the nasty party. And that was pretty much the opinion of a lot of voters. All of this backfired on the Republicans. The disastrous performance hits the right of the Republicans hard. It was proof to many in the moderate faction of the party that the right of the party have been doing this for too long now and it is harming their party.

It's time for the moderates to come back. You've had your turn. Gingrich, seeing the pressure, resigns. And many predict that the Republican Party will swing back towards the centre. It's interesting, though, because that's not the way... Well, I mean, it's interesting that this doesn't actually happen. It's predicted that it's going to happen. But obviously, as we know, the far right of the Republican Party hasn't even hit its stride yet.

Well, I guess it calms down during the next Bush, doesn't it? Yes, and we will obviously get into that in Bush's episode. But yes, Clinton had, in the eyes of many, won. I mean, the impeachment vote goes ahead. He is impeached, but he was never going to lose that vote. You need a two-thirds vote against you. And although he didn't have the Senate, there was no way two-thirds of the Senate were going to vote to impeach him. He comes out of it seeming like he wins, which really angers a lot of

Republicans. Because although they couldn't find him doing anything illegal, they really didn't like the guy. And there was a lot of evidence to suggest that he wasn't a nice person. And he keeps getting away with it. Anyway, Clinton then just rides the good economy to the end of his term, really. He's able to do very little. The Republicans still hold Congress. He mostly works on attempting to aid peace talks in the Middle East, which for time reasons I'm not going to get into. If it eventually got somewhere, I probably would have done, but it's all very depressing. I mean, he's getting somewhere. It's pretty good, but it ultimately is not going to work.

He also aids the UN and Europe deal with Milosevic in Serbia. He's also credited with helping the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, although I find that interesting. That's certainly not a common viewpoint in England, or as far as I'm aware, in Ireland, but maybe it's different in Ireland. Oh, Derry Girls. In the show Derry Girls, that's one of the episodes,

he comes over. Yes, exactly. He goes over and he visits Derry, and they're all very excited there. Anyway, most of this has very little impact on people at home. The Cold War was big international news, but things going on in the Middle East or Eastern Europe, most Americans did not care, so it didn't really hit the news very big.

The next election then comes up, and it is the most controversial since Hayes' election back in 1876. But that's for Baby Bush's episode and not this one. So we will leave it there. Clinton stops becoming president and he is still alive to this day. He's looking a bit haunted. At time of recording.

That's Clinton's presidency in a nutshell. Not much happened in terms of stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. It's like going for a drive in a Volvo. It's like, it happened, but I don't need to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, we will talk about this when we're rating him, but yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? It is.

Silver screen would be an interesting conversation. Disgrace, it's going to be more interesting, but let's go into this then. Statesman shit! Okay, was he much of a statesmanman and did he do good for the country? Well, he was the youngest governor in the country when he became governor. That was an achievement, wasn't it? He was very clearly a natural politician.

A natural spokesperson. Had the charisma and new art to say to people. Yeah. And from most accounts, he did a good job as governor. I know we pretty much skimmed over his governorship. But yeah, he got on with the job it was mostly fine with some hiccups you remember the disaster of this first governorship where he tried to change too much too quick which you see shadows of with the half reform that he tried too much too quick and it backfired so maybe he could have learned more from that but in office he managed to reverse a lot of Reagan's policies

that had demonstrably harmed the poor in society. Yeah, made the economy better off for that. Yeah, I'm all, obviously, these kind of things, depending whether you're Republican or Democrat, you're going to be for or against something. But as a human being, I'm going to state that if you are helping the people who are starving to death, you've done a good job. So he, I think he gets points there.

He also did what Reagan could not do. He balanced the budget. Now, he said he was going to half the deficit in five years. He wiped it clean. Yeah, that was a big boom. Wow. He also got out of being president just in time. Yeah, he did.

Yes. Saw that profit, sent it to war. Yeah. I mean, this massive economic boom of the late 90s that he had little to do with, but he was able to use it to, yeah, there you go. And that deficit has been a huge problem since the 70s. And Reagan had a huge economic boom, and he let it just sit there. Because if he got rid of it,

he then couldn't justify public spending being cut. So there are ideological differences, and Clinton meant that he cleared it, and then he could spend more on public spending, which arguably helped the people of America. Which is what you'd want in an official for sort of leading the country. Well, I put it in a tick in the one column myself. Many cite NAFTA as one of his big achievements,

but I'll be honest, I don't think we can give him credit for that. That was Reagan and then Bush. Clinton just saw it over the line. But still, he did see over the line a big trade agreement that was beneficial to America. He brought in a law that meant that people were able to take unpaid leave for medical reasons and not get fired. That's a really good law.

Which, amazingly, was not a thing up until this point. Really? Yes. So you could say, I've got a cult, until this point. Really? Yes. So you could say, I've got a cult, you're fired. I've just broken my leg. I need to go to hospital for a week. You're fired. That's insane.

Why would you have that? I just, yeah, so he got rid of that. Good. You now had some protections as a worker. Sometimes, sometimes little things like this come up, and I'm strongly reminded that although Britain and America have a lot of cultural similarities, they are two very different countries. And here's another one, gun control. Obviously, as I said earlier, hugely contentious in America.

There's a lot of arguments about it, but I will just put it very bluntly. More guns equals more shootings. And if you argue against that, you're just being disingenuous. Yeah. You're going to get more shootings if there's more guns. So banning assault rifles made mass shooting deaths go down. So, I mean, I am putting this in the win column. Yeah.

Depressingly, which we will get into more in the future, as soon as the 10 years elapses, the NRA have turned the assault rifle ban into a political movement. And therefore, there's a big push on buying assault rifles because it's seen as anti-banning guns. There is an argument to be said that more assault rifles were purchased because it was banned in the first place,

because it's now seen as a political movement, because sales of assault rifles go through the roof as soon as the ban is lifted. But I don't think you can hold that against Clinton. I don't think that was predictable. So anyway, I'm giving him points for that. Even though he didn't hold the Senate or the House, he was still able to get more money for education through and more money for welfare through because the economy was doing well and he was able to get things through Congress even though it was really hard. So that was good.

Yeah. He helped out internationally with the Middle East and Eastern Europe, something that I haven't gone into as much as maybe I should have, but I'm trying to stay American focused. But I mean, what he did do was good there. Getting people talking is important. Yeah, exactly.

And everything under him was just very stable. Also, the army thing. I know he brought that in, but I did know he asked to negotiate. So it's like, we're like gay people in the army, but if you don't say, we won't ask. Yeah, I mean, you could argue that is a step forward, but let's go on to bad, shall we? Because the very first thing I've got for bad was the don't ask, don't tell policy in the military. I mean, it is a step forward, but it's a baby step forward. A lot more could have been done. He just

didn't have the political will for that fight. So he decided not to do it. He never did focus on gays in the military, as he was accused of. He perhaps should have done, because it's just crazy that there was that much prejudice. I mean, I say it's crazy. Obviously, I know why there was. But yeah, there you go. So he could have done better there.

Some international stuff that I've not mentioned at all. America was conducting some intervention, shall we say, in Somalia during Clinton's presidency. It was a complete disaster. Two helicopters went down. 18 American lives were lost. Due to this, the US ended up backing out, which was all a bit messy, and that wasn't good. After several terrorist attacks around the world took place and were linked to a man called Osama bin Laden, Clinton attempted to have him captured, but utterly failed to do so,

which, again, is a hindsight thing, possibly. I mean, it's not an easy thing. I mean, even after, you know, Bush, within a year of his first presidency, 9-11 happened. It was until Obama. Yeah, exactly.

Eight years or nine years. And that's got to be the biggest manhunt in human history. And it still took years. So yeah, I mean, you can kind of see why it was seen as important, but like I said earlier, it wasn't top of the list and it's one of those hindsight things.

So I don't know if we can criticise him too much for that, but just thought it was interesting to mention that he's certainly on the radar. So there you go, that's his statesmanship. I think a six is fair. I'm thinking slightly higher. I think it is fairly dull. Yeah, yeah.

But stuff gets done, and that's what you want some stuff gets done some stuff he wasn't able to do he didn't get the health care reform through which is a shame but the crime bill going through is really good the economic bill that he went put through was really good everything i mean he was lucky enough to be riding an economic boom but he used that in a sensible way so yeah i i think in this modern age politically he did a damn good job it wasn't flashy america ticked along and it was it was fine you didn't have like in the reagan years people going around and stomping around the rest of the world uh you didn't have, like in the Reagan years, people going around and stomping around the rest of the world. You didn't have the pores of society having all security ripped away from them.

I think seven. Yeah, seven. Not going much higher than... I can't go into the eights or the nines, so not a ten. But yeah, I think he was a decent president. And decent presidents are hard to come by. Especially in the modern age, yeah, I think he was a decent president. And decent presidents are hard to come by. Especially at a modern age, yeah. So a total of 13.

Yeah. So that was nice he got some points, wasn't it? Yeah. Let's get rid of them. Yep. Disgrace Gate. Okay, Disgrace Gate. Well, this one's obvious in many ways,

but it's also hard to pick apart, and it's also very depressing. Let's face it, Clinton's character was not good. No, he's an awful human being. Yeah. Yes, it mostly centres around his awful treatment of women. He abused his power to sleep with women, he discarded them and he thought of them very little afterwards. We have come across presidents like this before, but he is certainly up there with the worst of them in this regard. We have many examples of him mistreating women by having affairs, picking them up, and discarding them. However, what I've not really talked about much is that we also have several accusations of

sexual harassment and assault, which I alluded to some of them, but I certainly didn't allude to the bigger ones, just because it made the narrative very complex. So I'm going to mention them here. But it does get very murky, because you've got people saying things to news outlets, but saying different things under oath. I am no investigative journalist. Frankly, I did not want to go down a rabbit hole this depressing for hours of my life to try and come up with what I think might be the truth of the matter, because what would I know? I'm a guy sitting in a room. What I will do though is I'll give you some highlights, shall I? Yay. And if you want to know more, you can look it up. Okay, several very credible allegations have come out about him groping women and exposing himself over the years. These are very credible allegations. Yeah, not surprising at all. No, it certainly fits what we know about him

as a character. One allegation of rape came out in 99. This was about Clinton when he was governor in the 70s. Now, due to the length of time between the allegation and the event, plus the fact that the victim, Juanita Brodick, had previously denied it happening in an affidavit when the jones lawyers had spoken to her this went nowhere so just be clear that remember jones turned down the the deal got new lawyers those lawyers went looking for more dirt they found brodick at this point and said did anything happen because we think something did. And she said no. And she signed that on a legal document. Clinton was then able to use that and his supporters to say, well, she said nothing happened. She signed a legal document saying it. However, she didn't say nothing happened.

She just said, I'm not prepared to swear on a legal document that something did because I do not want anything to do with this. That man's horrible. He's ruined my life, and I don't want anything to do with him. I'm not going to start fighting him in the courts, which is what she said at the time. Now, a couple of years later, she changed her mind, and this is when it came out publicly, when she decided, no, actually, I do want to fight this in the courts. So, it's all very murky. This is why you will hear some people say, but she swore she didn't do it on a legal document, but also, that's not the full picture. So did Monica Lewinsky.

Yes, exactly. We do not know for certain what happened in any of the cases. We do know that Clinton denies all of them. We also know that he denied having an affair with Flowers and Lewinsky, as you just pointed out. Clinton has form for just completely lying about this stuff. The man is a cheat and a liar and quite probably an abuser of some degree. So there you go. That's Clinton. But where does it start getting a little bit more tricky? Because that's very clear cut, isn't it? The guy's not a nice guy. Well, where it gets tricky is, aside from this, there really isn't anything. If you're being sensible about it, this is his vice, his flaw. It's big, but it's very contained.

It's his treatment of women. And yet there are so, so, so many crazy allegations out there about him. Due to the relentless pursuit on dirt by the right-wing media, the Clintons, and I'm not just talking about Bill here, I'm talking about Hillary as well, both of them appear in loads of conspiracy theories. We have only just touched on some, and I'm not going to go through all of them, but a couple of highlights here. He was accused of murdering his friend, obviously, but that was just the tip of the iceberg the current clinton body count conspiracy has him and hillary killing no fewer than 17 people including jfk's son jfk jr apparently they've just been murdering people their whole lives yeah now aside from this and various he's

stealing money from the government series allegations Allegations of Pizzagate. I don't know how well you know Pizzagate. Oh, lucky you shaking your head. This is much more modern. We're talking build up to Trump being president. It was the allegation that a pizza shop without a basement was trafficking children to paedophile Democrats out of its basement. Yes! No, I remember hearing this.

Oh, you do know this one. Yes. Is when Hillary is in the election thing. Oh, that's hilarious. Yes, strongly, strongly linked to the Clintons because they were using it against Hillary Clinton. But Bill Clinton very much involved as well. I mean, absolute bonkers conspiracy theory when you start looking into it. The one that really amuses me the most, however, is the fact that the place doesn't have a basement. Yeah, I remember that.

That was the funniest thing. I know there are bigger things to pick at on this conspiracy theory, and I know that it deals with some very serious things, but the fact that apparently it's all happening in a certain basement that doesn't exist is what sticks out to me. And then, more recently, so recent that it is literally coming out as I was writing these notes,

we have the ties to Epstein and all the human trafficking there, which is far, far too recent for me to really comment on with any kind of objectivity right now. It's literally coming out as we're recording this time is going to tell how involved he was his treatment of women kind of damns him but his treatment by right-wing conspiracies make it seem like well maybe this is just another false slander against him i assume time will tell so yeah you've got the very obvious bad things but then you've also got the fact that he's the target of absolute idiot conspiracy theories, which kind of makes you think a lot of it is just nonsense.

The only other thing that comes up against him fairly often is the fact that he dodged the draft. Yeah. But I'm just going to say here, I'm not marking him down for that. Most people didn't want him to go to war to be shot at. He's got the ability to get out of it. If I was in his position, I would have done exactly the same thing.

I would have done the same. Pretty much anyone who could dodge the draft, dodged the draft, unless you were really gung-ho military. I mean, Donald Trump did. I won't. I was literally about to say, I'm not going to mark Clinton down for it. And when we get to Trump,

I'm not going to mark Trump down for it either. That'd be unfair. It would be unfair. He'll get marked down for everything else. When we get to his disgrace gate, that's something that we can gloss over so anyway there you go uh right this one i uh i did something very unusual um i i actually went and looked back on what we've marked other people because i feel very uncomfortable marking this disgrace gate it reminds me of back

when we were talking about slavery i was like oh this isn't fun is it uh so uh what i did is i looked back on other um slutty presidents presidents who who were also quite nasty i mean the obvious one is jfk yeah but i don't think jfk was as bad as clinton i don't think jfk But I don't think JFK was as bad as Clinton. I don't think he was. I don't think so. I don't. I mean, he was just as big of a womaniser. He picked up women and discarded them and treated them like dirt, just like Clinton was. And we marked him down for it. But the public

declaration of your you know, the implication that that person's wrong and a liar. Yeah, I mean, JFK didn't lie about it. I don't know, it just doesn't seem as bad, but maybe I'm wrong there. Anyway, he only got 10th for Disgrace Gate,

because I think generally in other areas he impressed us. But other people in the past who were not great. Editing will appear, just jumping on. I said the wrong name and then the wrong score for the wrong name at this point. I tried to edit it together to make it flow. It's a mess. So I'm just going to say, I meant to say Cleveland scored minus 16 for his awful, awful treatment of women and the other stuff he did and uh yeah that's kind of what i was saying and uh let's just jump back into the joy that is disgrace gate so that's the kind of territory i think we're in if we're going to be consistent with who is the who is the president with a propeller penis was it with the

one propeller the propeller penis we did a sketch at the end where he's in a swing yes harding um like that yeah uh jerry yeah that's who you're talking about. You're talking about Jerry. Yeah, he got a disgrace gate of 10 because, I mean, it wasn't great, but it's not this level. Yeah, I think I'm going to go for a 7 because he's just not a nice guy in many areas. But equally, he wasn't racist. He wasn't actively trying to harm people. I mean, he did more for America progressing in certain areas than many presidents,

but he was just awful to women. So yeah, I always knew Disgrace Gate was going to be a horrible round. So glad I made it minus numbers. Anyway, I'm going to go minus seven as well and try not to think more about it and move on. So he's on a total of minus one. Well done, Bill. Well, he was born into a very poor family, which we don't see very often. He grew up in an abusive home,

which we do not see very often. And then he managed to work his way out. He worked and he worked. And he was a boy genius. That was something that really surprised me about Clinton. Did not realise he was so intelligent academically. Anyway, he, yeah, he does really well. He meets JFK, remember?

Becomes his hero. That's nice. He does really well at college and goes off to Oxford. And at this point, he becomes a massive hippie and he dodges the draft and goes back to Oxford and spends another year being a hippie.

Then it's off to Yale and he meets Hillary and then he starts having all the affairs under the sun. He becomes the governor. He lost being governor, becomes governor again and then becomes president.

But littered throughout all of that, you are going to be able to get drama on all of the affairs. Yeah, this is an R-rated film. If you're doing a story on Clinton, the politics is kind of to one side. It is the story of a man who's having an affair, and it's got to be about Hillary as much as Clinton. Sorry, as much as Bill.

Yes. It's got to be about the two of them. But bigger picture, I mean, it's not that impressive. It's not that exciting. I think the fact that I managed to get Clinton into two episodes, which really surprised me, kind of points to the fact that not that much happens in his life.

It would have been really, if Hillary had won the 2016 election, I think that would have been a far more interesting episode. Yes. Hillary would be scoring a lot more points in silver screen than bill i mean just because the trauma well yeah having to put up with bill's behavior building them up as a political power couple trailblazing uh female politics for the country i mean she becomes the first female presidential nominee and won the popular vote to become the president.

Yeah, her story, far more interesting than Bill's. But we're not doing Hillary and we never will. So, I mean, it's not really boring. There's some stuff in there. I mean... It's sort of like reality TV kind of interesting. It's like, what's he doing now kind of thing. Oh, there's another woman and another one.

I want to know more about the people around him. Suffering. Well, yeah, kind of. I mean, it makes drama, doesn't it? I mean, I'd watch a dramatisation on Monica Lewinsky's life, who incidentally, by the way, if you don't follow her on Twitter or stuff like that, follow Monica Lewinsky.

I've been following her for years. She does lots of interesting stuff in her life now and is also a very funny person. No, I can't go big. It's not awful. I'm not going really low because there is interesting stuff there. Four.

Oh, look at that. Four. Said at the same time. We're in agreement. So that's eight. And a total of seven so far. That is very calls back to very early paintings. Yes, it's very obviously an oil painting.

It's more oil painting-y than some of the other ones that looked almost photorealistic. He's there, he's got a slight smile on his face, and he's got his hand in his pocket. Of course he has. Interesting, behind him, it looks like army badges. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Yeah, there's an American flag.

His most distinctive feature is his tall grey hair. Yes. Buffont. Yeah. I believe it's called. I can't say I'm impressed, though. It's just a man standing, isn't it? It is.

That could be us. Yeah, it's not a great portrait. But it's not awful. No. I'm going to go for... I'm just going to go for three. I don't think it's that great. I'm going to match you.

Okay, so that's the score of 1.5 for this. Okay, next. Bonus! Two terms. Something that I did not think to do in the bonus rounds is taking points off if you get impeached, which in retrospect is maybe something we should have done, because that's interesting, isn't it? But it's so rare.

It is so rare. And it'd be unfair, because Trump gets bonus points. Oh, no, no, no. Points off. You don't gain points. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bonus points off. Anyway, two full terms. No one tried to kill him, so no points for assassination. No one even tried. And election? One. Just. He just missed out winning a landslide. His second election, he did really well. You average out the two of them. He got 69.7% of the Electoral College votes. He would have loved to do the fact he got 69.

Yes, he would. You need 70% to get the two-point here, so he just misses out. So what's the score then, Jamie? Clinton scored an impressive score of 11.5. 11.5. That puts him behind William Taft, which I'm sure he'll be very sad about. It puts him behind James Garfield. Oh.

Yeah. He does manage to James Garfield. Aw. Yeah. He does manage to beat Harding. Hey! And his pet Jerry. So there you go. It's not a great score. It's not the best score, no. It's not.

And considering Clinton is usually held up as being one of the best post-war presidents, he tends to do better as time's gone on. I think some people might be surprised with how poorly he did. But we've got one more question. Has he got it? American or American? No.

Yeah, I'm happy to say no with this one. I'll be honest. I thought we were going to have an argument here because I knew that there were things I was going to dislike about Clinton. But I also assumed that he did a lot of good because I've heard about how he was a pretty good president, but I'm just fairly unimpressed. He happened to be president when there was a huge economic boom,

just like Reagan. Yeah. And that's about it. He put forward some decent stuff, and that's about it. And if you then take into consideration the fact that I just don't think I'd like him on a personal level yeah I'm happy to say no yeah me too

so that is not a great score and it's not he does not get an American he is an American no or whatever we call it an American that's the one so oh dear Clinton yeah anyway well there we go. That's Clinton done.

Jamie, Jamie, we have only got one, two, three, just count them presidents left to do. Potentially nine episodes. Possibly six. Possibly. I mean, it's definitely not going to be six. Trump is going to be a three-part episode. I can't see me doing Baby Bush in less than three

because a lot happens in his presidency. Obama. Obama, maybe two. Might be able to do Obama in two. I'll be honest, I don't know much about Obama's life at the moment, so we will see. But yeah, we're so close to the end now. It's crazy.

So thank you very much for everyone who has been listening all this time. Thank you for all your support. Don't forget, you can support us on Patreon if you'd like to. Get access to episodes about Alexander Hamilton's life, multi-part episodes, and we're halfway through his life. We will get back on that. But we've also got all the Roman Republic episodes on there,

whiskey episodes, and two Star Trek episodes so far. Woo! They're the best episodes. episodes on there, Whiskey episodes, and two Star Trek episodes so far. They're the best episodes. In fact, if you're a fan of Star Trek, become a patron because we are ranking all the Star Trek captains from Archer all the way to Burnham, and they are bloody brilliant. Who's next, Jeremy? Kirk. Oh my god, I know

that one. The big Kirk, the big K. That's very exciting. Okay, well, yes yes so thank you very much for listening uh i think that's all we need to say really isn't it yeah yeah okay then well goodbye goodbye I'm thinking the Musket Club, because that's all I use, a musket. A musket club? It's a brilliant idea. The MC. Musket club, that's good. The National Musket Club.

NMC, it sounds a bit clunky, I think. It does. National, national. It's details, we'll figure out the name later. The fact is, I love your idea. A gun club. A gun club where people can get together. In this day and age, guns are dangerous, you know. They're so dangerous. We need to be responsible.

We need to teach people how to shoot carefully and be respectful of what is, quite frankly, a dangerous weapon. That is true. My friend Gerald, he fired his musket and he chipped his fingernail. He must have been in such pain. Yes, yes. National Gun Club.

Oh, that's a bit more well-rounded. That's quite good. That's quite good. Although, looking at all our members, we maybe have rifles. Rifles. Rifles. Rifles.

The National Rifle Club. The NRC We could have shooting ranges We could have trips at the weekend Trips at the weekend, going hunting Oh, that'd be splendid Can you imagine, I can shoot some ducks Yes, we could have magazines

Magazines Stuff where you can keep your guns Safely stored away Competitions, competitions. We can have competitions. And we get everyone to sign a declaration where if they've got their gun and they have their family, you must lock it away, keep your ammo in a different position.

Basic, sensible gun safety. Of course. Yes. Oh, I'm really looking forward to... Association. An association! Because it's more than just one gun and one more group of people. We're an association. I love it. Excellent.

But what I must insist... Yes. This time we start a club. We cannot, and I must insist, allow it to be taken over by a lobbying group for the arms industry that go on to justify the mass slaughter of innocent civilians. Oh no, we can't let what happened last year happen again. That was truly, truly awful. The National Frog Lovers Association. Who'd have thought it? Those armoured toads still marching down Fifth Avenue, New York. It's horrific.

Hello, Editing Rob at the end here. I'm just jumping on just to introduce you to a little treat. Not long ago, the father of one of our listeners contacted us asking if we could record a birthday message for his son, Abraham, who is also a big fan of the show. So we recorded the message, but we also recorded this song for him. It took a little while to do, so Jamie and I thought maybe we'd just put it on the end of the episode. Enjoy. Oh, who has heard the great commotion, motion, motion all the country through? It is the ball a-rolling on for Tippecanoe and Tyler too, and Tippecanoe and Tyler too. And with him will be little Van, Van, Van is a use of man, and with him will be little Van.

Sure, let him talk about how cider, cider, cider and lung heaven soon Will only help to spave the ball for Tippecanoe and Tyler too And Tippecanoe and Tyler too And with him will be little Van, Van, Van is a used-up man And with him will be little Van Like the rush of mighty waters, waters, waters, waters Onward it will go And of course we'll bring you through

For typical new and Tyler too And typical new and Tyler too And with him we'll be little Van Van, Van is a user man And with him we'll be little Van