The one person in the United States that is always in the spotlight is the President of the United States of America. Being the president is a hard job, the stress can be overwhelming. The American people are constantly judging and watching every move that the president makes. Their opinions can be quite judgmental. Kids look up to the president and think of them as a role model. Also, the American people believe it is the job of the president to keep them safe. Most presidents state at their inauguration that their number one responsibility is to protect the American people. The purpose of this paper is to examine President Bill Clinton’s ethics, the pros and cons of his personality.
The virtues that will be discussed in this analysis focus on the 42nd President, Bill Clinton. President Clinton was a southern man that most Americans viewed as a president with virtue. They believed that President Clinton was wise, generous, faithful to his wife, fair, compassionate, and had good judgment when it came to foreign affairs and believed he was an honest man (Velasquez et al., 2008).
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The thing that most Americans did not want to believe about President Clinton was he had a vice. Even though there were rumors about infidelity during his campaign in 1992, no one wanted to believe it was true (Brusseau, 2012). Later the American people would realize that he had a weakness with infidelity.
The American people have always looked up to each of our presidents as someone whose job it is to protect them. The president needs to be a strong individual that Americans can count on through good and bad times. In the 19th and 20th century a presidential campaign was run on a ticket about virtue. The candidates talked about God, their service to their country and honesty. We as humans according to Velasquez et al. (2008) treat virtues as habits. These habits become characteristic of that person.
After three terms of Republicans in the oval office and the end of the cold war, Americans were ready for a change. It was time for a Democrat to be the next president. William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas for most of the 1980s. He did a great job as governor and was well respected by the Democrats. Clinton had been criticized for a few incidents of sexual harassment and rumors of infidelity, but it had been pushed to the wayside. Clinton was honest about his younger days when he protested against the Vietnam War and admitted to smoking marijuana but did not inhale. He was not a drinker, he was an excellent speaker, he was charismatic and loved by Americans black and white. Clinton was elected in 1992 by a nice margin over President George H.W. Bush.
President Clinton had an impressive record of accomplishments during his two terms as president. According to the White House archives some of his accomplishments were:
- 30-year low for unemployment;
- 22 million jobs created during his 8-year term;
- Highest homeownership in history;
- Crime rate at an all-time low;
- Added 100,000 new police officers across the country;
- Lowest welfare since the 1960s;
- More than 1,700 nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union disarmed.
Americans were happy during the 1990s and liked what President Clinton had done for the country. Even when Americans found out about his vice and he was impeached in December 1998 he had a 73% overall approval rating according to the Gallup poll (2019).
In January 1998 a story broke in the news stating that President Clinton and his intern Monica Lewinsky had sexual relations. The American people were shocked and President Clinton’s approval rating dropped to a low 51%. Sonner and Wilcox (1999) stated the American people were unsure whether the president had the integrity and the honesty to serve as the president.
The president denied the allegations and the American people doubted his innocence. Finally, the president spoke on national television and stated he was not guilty of having sexual relations with his intern Monica Lewinsky. Later that year in August he publicly admitted he had. Brusseau (2012) speaks about insensibility being a vice. President Clinton did not think about how the American people would perceive him after he lied, because at that time he was thinking about not getting caught.
When the Republicans tried to impeach President Clinton, his approval rating rose to 73% the highest it had been at any point during his presidency. According to statistics and many Americans, he was a good man and a great President. He had a great approval rating from the American people even after they find out about his infidelity and continued to support him. They accepted that the president had a vice. Sometimes depending on the situation, vices do not matter if it does not interfere with the overall job.
Conclusion
The one person in the United States (U.S.) that is always in the spotlight is the President of the United States of America. Americans believed that President Clinton was wise, generous, faithful to his wife, fair, compassionate, and had good judgment when it came to foreign affairs and believed he was an honest man (Velasquez et al., 2008).
In January 1998 a story broke in the news stating that President Clinton and his intern Monica Lewinsky had sexual relations. The American people were shocked and President Clinton’s approval rating dropped to a low 51%. Sonner and Wilcox (1999) stated the American people were unsure whether the president had the integrity and the honesty to serve as the president. According to statistics and many Americans, he was a good man and a great President. He had a great approval rating from the American people even after they find out about his infidelity and continued to support him. Had he been a weak president this whole thing may have turned out a lot different.
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