Programs of the Clinton presidency
- The new administration compounded its problems with a series of missteps and misfortunes in its first months.
- A long time friend of the president, Vince Foster, serving in the office of the White House counsel, committed suicide in the summer of 1993.
- Despite its many problems the Clinton administration could boast of some significant achievements in its first year.
- Clinton was a committed advocate of free trade and a proponent of many aspects of what came to be known as globalism.
- He won approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which eliminated most trade barriers among the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
- Early in 1993, he appointed his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, which proposed a sweeping reform designed to guarantee coverage to every American and hold down the costs of medical care.
- The foreign policy of the Clinton administration was at first cautious and even tentative reflection, perhaps, of the president’s relative inexperience in international affairs, but also of the rapidly changing character of international politics.
- The United States was among the nations to send peacekeeping troops to Bosnia to police the fragile settlement, which-despite many pessimistic predictions-was still largely in place 7 years later, although terrible new conflicts soon emerged in other areas of the Balkans.