Nineteen ninety-nine was a weird, electric, and deeply anxious year. We were all freaking out about the Y2K bug eating our hard drives, Britney Spears was everywhere, and the guy sitting in the Oval Office was fighting for his political life. If you're asking who was president of the US in 1999, the answer is William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd president. But just saying "Bill Clinton" doesn't really capture the chaos.
He was halfway through his second term. It was a year of extreme contradictions. On one hand, the economy was absolutely screaming—unemployment was at a 30-year low, and the government was actually running a surplus. On the other hand, the first two months of 1999 were spent in a Senate chamber deciding if he should be kicked out of office.
The Year of the Impeachment Trial
The year started with a literal trial. On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton formally began in the Senate. This was only the second time in American history that a sitting president faced this. Chief Justice William Rehnquist presided over the whole thing. It was surreal.
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The House had impeached him in late 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, all stemming from his deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit and his subsequent attempt to cover up an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. People often forget that the trial didn't drag on for years; it was actually pretty fast. By February 12, the Senate voted. They didn't even get a simple majority on the perjury charge, let alone the two-thirds needed to convict. He stayed.
Clinton's survival wasn't just a legal win; it was a cultural moment. His approval ratings were bizarrely high. Americans seemed to be saying, "Look, we don't like what he did, but the stock market is up and we're not at war, so let's just move on." It was the era of "triangulation," a political strategy Clinton and his advisor Dick Morris used to co-opt Republican ideas like welfare reform and balanced budgets, leaving his opponents with very little room to attack him on policy.
What Was the Country Like Under Clinton in '99?
Think back to the vibe of that year. Google was still a baby. We were using AOL dial-up. The dot-com bubble was at its absolute peak. In March 1999, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10,000 for the first time ever. It felt like the money would never stop flowing.
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Clinton pushed for a lot of "small-bore" initiatives that year. Since he couldn't pass massive healthcare overhauls anymore after the 1994 failure, he focused on things like the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and pushing for more teachers in classrooms. He was obsessed with the "Information Superhighway." He signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in November 1999, which sounds boring but actually repealed parts of the Glass-Steagall Act. This allowed commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies to merge. Critics today, like Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Reich, often point to this specific moment as a precursor to the 2008 financial crisis.
It wasn't all tech booms and surpluses, though. 1999 was the year of the Columbine High School massacre. That happened in April. It shook the Clinton administration and the entire country to the core. Clinton tried to push for tougher gun control measures—like closing the "gun show loophole"—but he faced massive pushback from the NRA and a Republican-controlled Congress. The "Third Way" politics he championed were being tested by a domestic reality that felt increasingly fractured.
Foreign Policy: The Kosovo War
While the domestic news was dominated by the trial and the economy, Clinton was also the Commander-in-Chief during a significant conflict. In March 1999, NATO launched Operation Allied Force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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The goal was to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo by Slobodan Milošević’s forces. This was a "humanitarian intervention," and it was controversial because it didn't have explicit UN Security Council backing. Clinton had to balance a desire to stop another genocide (having felt he acted too late in Rwanda) with a public that was wary of "boots on the ground." It was mostly an air campaign. By June, Milošević agreed to withdraw. It remains one of the defining moments of Clinton's foreign policy legacy—using American power to enforce human rights, even when direct national interests weren't immediately threatened.
The Shadow of the 2000 Election
By the time the leaves started turning in late 1999, everyone was already looking at what came next. Vice President Al Gore was gearing up for his run. George W. Bush was the frontrunner for the GOP.
There was this weird dynamic where Gore wanted to distance himself from Clinton's personal scandals but desperately wanted to take credit for the "Clinton-Gore" economy. It was a tightrope walk that defined the end of the decade. Clinton spent his final full year as who was president of the US in 1999 trying to secure his legacy. He traveled to the WTO protests in Seattle (which turned into a riot) and tried to broker peace in the Middle East, though the big breakthroughs at Camp David wouldn't happen until the following summer.
Misconceptions About the 1999 Surplus
You'll often hear people say Clinton "saved" the economy and created a massive surplus. This is mostly true, but it's nuanced. The 1999 fiscal year ended with a $124 billion surplus. However, that surplus was technically "on-budget," meaning it included Social Security tax receipts. If you stripped those away, the federal government was still technically borrowing from the Social Security trust fund.
Still, compared to the trillion-dollar deficits we see today, 1999 looks like a golden age of fiscal responsibility. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and former Secretary Robert Rubin were the architects of this era. They pushed for "fiscal discipline" which, combined with the massive productivity gains from the early internet, created a period of growth that we haven't really seen since.
The Real Legacy of 1999
If you want to understand the modern political landscape, you have to look at 1999. It was the year that political polarization went into overdrive. The impeachment trial created a "war" mentality between the two parties that hasn't really cooled down. It was also the year that showed how much a strong economy can insulate a leader from personal scandal.
Clinton was a master communicator. He could talk about the "Bridge to the 21st Century" one minute and then get into the weeds of the Earned Income Tax Credit the next. He was a policy wonk who had the charisma of a movie star, a combination that kept him afloat during a year that would have sunk almost anyone else.
Understanding the 1999 Presidency: Key Takeaways
To truly grasp the significance of Bill Clinton's role as president in 1999, keep these factors in mind:
- The Impeachment Paradox: Clinton was acquitted in February 1999, yet his approval ratings actually went up during the process, peaking around 73% in some polls. This taught future politicians that a loyal base is more important than bipartisan consensus.
- The Economic Peak: This was the year of "irrational exuberance." If you're looking for the moment when the modern tech-driven economy was born, 1999 is it.
- Bipartisan Policy: Despite the impeachment, Clinton signed major legislation with a Republican Congress. This is almost unthinkable in today’s environment.
- The Rise of Interventionism: The Kosovo campaign set the stage for how the US would view its role as a global policeman in the post-Cold War world.
Next Steps for Further Research:
If you want to dig deeper into the 1999 era, I recommend checking out the 9/11 Commission Report—specifically the sections on what the administration was doing in 1999 to track Al-Qaeda, as this was a period of high alert following the 1998 embassy bombings. You should also look into the "Seattle WTO Protests" of 1999 to see the birth of the modern anti-globalization movement. For a legal perspective, the Senate trial transcripts provide a fascinating look at how constitutional law was debated in real-time.