Politics at the End of the Twentieth Century

The baby boom generation that produced Bill Gates and Kristen Breitweiser also brought President Bill Clinton (and his successors George W. Bush and Barack Obama). The first president born after 1945, Clinton had to deal with the challenges facing the post–Cold War world. He embraced globalization as the key to economic prosperity and showed his readiness to promote and defend U.S. national security. Despite achieving general prosperity and peace, Clinton could not escape the political polarization that divided the American electorate, and his tenure in office only made this schism worse.