Billy's Day

August 19th

It's the birthday of Bill Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope, Arkansas (1946). His father died in a car accident three months before he was born, and his mom got remarried to a man named Roger Clinton. As a teenager Bill took his stepfather's last name as a gesture of respect, even though his stepfather was abusive, and an alcoholic, and the family didn't have much money. Clinton wrote: "My father left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people, and that if I did it well enough, somehow I could make up for the life he should have had. And his memory infused me, at a younger age than most, with a sense of my own mortality. The knowledge that I, too, could die young drove me both to try to drain the most out of every moment of life and to get on with the next big challenge."

"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair

"It depends on how you define alone…" –Bill Clinton, in his grand jury testimony

"There were a lot of times when we were alone, but I never really thought we were." –Bill Clinton, in his grand jury testimony

"What's a man got to do to get in the top fifty?" –Bill Clinton, reacting to a survey of journalists that ranked the Monica Lewinsky scandal as the 53rd most significant story of the century

"I don't know whether it's the finest public housing in America or the crown jewel of the American penal system." –Bill Clinton, on the White House

"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again." –Bill Clinton

"Politics gives guys so much power that they tend to behave badly around women. And I hope I never get into that." –Bill Clinton, to a woman friend while he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford

"It was a real sort of Southern deal. I had AstroTurf in the back. You don't want to know why, but I did." –Bill Clinton, reminiscing about a pickup truck he once owned

"You know, if I were a single man, I might ask that mummy out. That's a good-looking mummy" —Bill Clinton, looking at "Juanita," a newly discovered Incan mummy on display at the National Geographic museum

"Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening." –Bill Clinton

"Last year, the vice president launched a new effort to help make communities more liberal." —Bill Clinton, during his 2000 State of the Union Speech. He meant to say "more livable," and then made the same slip-up in a subsequent sentence, drawing uproarious laughter from Republicans

"I asked him to do it because he was the only person that I could trust to read all 150,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations." –Bill Clinton, on asking Vice President Al Gore to tackle federal regulatory reform

"I'm someone who had a deep emotional attachment to 'Starsky and Hutch.'" –Bill Clinton

"Sometimes I feel like the fire hydrant looking at a pack of dogs. For six years I had declined to tell those kinds of jokes, because I have been told it is not presidential. But I feel kind of outdoorsy today." –Bill Clinton, at a party honoring the 150th anniversary of the Interior Department

"Well, I don't have much job security." –Bill Clinton, in 1992, on why he still plays the saxophone

"Usually briefs." –Bill Clinton, asked during a 1994 MTV town meeting whether he wore boxer shorts or briefs

"Look, half the time when I see the evening news, I wouldn't be for me, either." –Bill Clinton, in 1995, on a pre-campaign swing through Montana and Colorado

"There are always going to be people who want to be president, and some days I'd like to give it to them." –Bill Clinton, in 1993

"The economy has produced 6.1 million jobs since I became president, and if Michael Jordan comes back to the Bulls, it will be 6,100,001 jobs." –Bill Clinton, in 1995

"It wasn't my finest hour. It wasn't even my finest hour and a half." –Bill Clinton, after giving an endless nominating speech for Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention

"You'd think he was running for First Lady." –Bill Clinton, on George H. W. Bush's criticism of Hillary Clinton

"If President Reagan could be an actor and become president, maybe I could become an actor. I've got a good pension. I can work for cheap." -Bill Clinton, at a Hollywood fundraiser

"I may not have been the greatest president, but I've had the most fun eight years." –Bill Clinton