William J Clinton

William J Clinton served as the forty-second president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 after earlier terms as governor of Arkansas. State Of The Union Addresses brings together speeches in which he reported to Congress on national conditions and presented his administration's legislative priorities. Across those annual addresses, Clinton discussed economic policy, employment, education, health care, crime, welfare reform, international affairs, and the changing role of technology. The speeches belong to a constitutional tradition, but they also document the political language and policy debates of the 1990s. Clinton's delivery often combined detailed proposals with stories about individual Americans, a rhetorical method intended to connect federal programs with everyday consequences. Read as a collection, the addresses show how his agenda changed during two presidential terms and through periods of divided government. They are therefore useful both as primary political documents and as a record of late twentieth-century American public life.