By , many had come to doubt that President George H. He had alienated conservative Republicans by breaking his pledge not to raise taxes, and some faulted him for failing to remove Saddam Hussein from power during Operation Desert Storm.
Furthermore, despite living much of his adult life in Texas, he could not overcome the stereotypes associated with his privileged New England and Ivy League background, which hurt him among working-class Reagan Democrats. The contrast between George H.
Bush and William Jefferson Clinton could not have been greater. Bill Clinton was a baby boomer born in in Hope, Arkansas. His biological father died in a car wreck three months before he was born. When he was a boy, his mother married Roger Clinton, an alcoholic who abused his family.
However, despite a troubled home life, Clinton was an excellent student. He took an interest in politics from an early age. As a student at Georgetown University, he supported both the civil rights and antiwar movements and ran for student council president Figure In , Clinton received a prestigious Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University.
From Oxford he moved on to Yale, where he earned his law degree in The following year, he tried his hand at state politics, running for Congress, and was narrowly defeated. In , he became attorney general of Arkansas and was elected governor in During his campaign, Bill Clinton described himself as a New Democrat, a member of a faction of the Democratic Party that, like the Republicans, favored free trade and deregulation. He tried to appeal to the middle class by promising higher taxes on the rich and reform of the welfare system.
