Democrat · 1993–2001
Bill Clinton
Third Way Democrat. NAFTA, welfare reform, a crime bill, and a booming market decade.
Bill Clinton was president 1993–2001. The party color on the chart is Democrat. Early presidents are not forced into today’s party names. The placement note is: Third Way Democrat. NAFTA, welfare reform, a crime bill, and a booming market decade.
The dot is economics +18 and authority -10. That is right of center on economics. The other axis sits near the middle. Color and place are allowed to disagree. Theodore Roosevelt sits left of Grover Cleveland on economics.
What was said, and what the administration did, are filed separately. Said: A new Democrat: middle-class tax cut, health care for all, an end to welfare as we know it. Done: The middle-class cut and the health plan failed. Welfare reform, NAFTA, and a crime bill passed. The deficit fell. Where those two sentences pull apart, the dot follows the governing record, not the slogan.
The nearest other presidents on these two numbers are Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809, +8 / -8) and James A. Garfield (1881, +8 / +6). A small distance can join people who would have disliked each other. The chart is a compression, not a claim that they were alike.
Presidents are not placed with the Voteview roll-call score used for the current Congress. Two axes cannot carry a war, a court, a tariff, and a civil-rights record as separate facts.