American Experience “Clinton”

Newest Entry in the Acclaimed American Experience Presidents Collection
Profiles the 42nd President

From draft dodging to the Dayton Accords, from Monica Lewinsky to a balanced budget, the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton veered between sordid scandal and grand achievement. In Clinton, the latest installment in the critically acclaimed and successful collection of presidential biographies, American Experience explores the fascinating story of an American president who rose from a turbulent childhood in Arkansas to become one of the most successful politicians in modern American history and one of the most complex and conflicted characters ever to stride across the public stage. American Experience “Clinton” airs Monday, February 20, 2012 at 8 p.m. and Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 7 p.m. on Eight, Arizona PBS.

Clinton’s was a career full of accomplishment and rife with scandal, a marriage that would make history and create controversy, and a presidency that would define the crucial and transformative period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. It follows Clinton across his two terms as he confronted some of the key forces that would shape the future, including partisan political warfare and domestic and international terrorism, and struggled, with uneven success, to define the role of American power in a post-Cold War world. Most memorably, it explores how Clinton’s conflicted character made history, even as it enraged his enemies and confounded his friends.

Clinton features unprecedented access to scores of Clinton insiders including White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta (current Secretary of Defense), former Senator Trent Lott, Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, as well as interviews with dozens of journalists, members of the Republican opposition, childhood friends, staffers from Clinton’s years as Governor of Arkansas, and biographers.