In addition to shifting the Democratic Party to the moderate center on economic issues, Clinton tried to break new ground on a number of domestic issues and make good on traditional Democratic commitments to the disadvantaged, minority groups, and women. At the same time, he faced the challenge of domestic terrorism when a federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.
One America
On June 14, 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced One America in the 21st Century: the President's Initiative on Race. This initiative, established with Executive Order 13050, was a critical element in President Clinton's effort to prepare his country to embrace diversity. The main thrust of the effort was convening and encouraging community dialogue throughout the country. The committee developed dialogue guidelines designed to help communities discuss how to heal racial and ethnic divisions wherever they exist.
President Clinton introduced the initiative during his commencement speech to the graduating class of the University of California, San Diego. In the speech, he discussed his own experience growing up in the segregated south. The audience included several figures from the Civil Rights movement, including Congresspersons John Lewis, Maxine Waters, Jim Clyburn, Juanita Millender-McDonald, Patsy Mink, and Robert Filner. The Advisory Board was introduced to the audience as well. President Clinton identified three imperatives for the initiative to focus on: expanding opportunity, demanding responsibility, and creating "one American community" based on respect and shared values.
I want this panel to help educate Americans about the facts surrounding issues of race, to promote a dialogue in every community of the land to confront and work through these issues, to recruit and encourage leadership at all levels to help breach racial divides, and to find, develop, and recommend how to implement concrete solutions to our problems—solutions that will involve all of us in government, business, communities, and as individual citizens.
President Clinton expressed his vision of an America based on opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and a unified community. He acknowledged that, even as America rapidly was becoming the world's first truly multi-racial democracy, race relations remained an issue that too often divided the nation and kept the American dream from being real for everyone who worked for it. The One America Initiative addressed race and diversity in schools; one of the model counties of diversity in schools was Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse school districts in the country.
Clinton's One America Initiative
One America in the 21st Century staff with President Clinton in June 1998
The Criminal Justice System
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was an Act of Congress dealing with crime and law enforcement. It is the largest crime bill in the history of the United States and consisted of 356 pages that provided for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs, which were designed with significant input from experienced police officers. Sponsored by Representative Jack Brooks of Texas, the bill was originally written by Senator Joe Biden of Delaware and then was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton.
Following the 101 California Street shooting, the 1993 Waco Siege, and other high-profile instances of violent crime, the Act expanded federal law in several ways. One of the most noted sections was the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Other parts of the Act provided for a greatly expanded federal death penalty, new classes of individuals banned from possessing firearms, the elimination of higher education for inmates, and a variety of new crimes defined in statutes relating to immigration law, hate crimes, sex crimes, and gang-related crime. The bill also required states to establish registries for sexual offenders by September 1997.
The increase in incarceration as a result of the Act led to prison overcrowding. The legal system began to rely on plea bargains to minimize the increased case load. Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton later expressed regret over the portions of the measure that led to increased prison population, such as the "three strikes" provision.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and DOMA
Although Clinton had campaigned as an economically conservative New Democrat, he was thought to be socially liberal and, just days after his victory in the 1992 election, he promised to end the 50-year ban on gays and lesbians serving in the military. However, in January 1993, after taking the oath of office, Clinton amended his promise in order to appease conservatives. Instead of lifting the longstanding ban, the armed forces would adopt a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”: those on active duty would not be asked their sexual orientation and, if they were gay, they were not to discuss their sexuality openly or they would be dismissed from military service. This compromise satisfied neither conservatives seeking the exclusion of gays nor the gay community, which argued that homosexuals, like heterosexuals, should be able to live without fear of retribution because of their sexuality.
Clinton again proved himself willing to appease political conservatives when he signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in September 1996, after both houses of Congress had passed it with such wide margins that a presidential veto could easily be overridden. DOMA defined marriage as a heterosexual union and denied federal benefits to same-sex couples. It also allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted by other states.
Domestic Terrorism
The fears of those who saw government as little more than a necessary evil appeared to be confirmed in the spring of 1993, when federal and state law enforcement authorities laid siege to the compound of a religious sect called the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas. The group, which believed the end of world was approaching, was suspected of weapons violations and resisted search-and-arrest warrants with deadly force. A standoff developed that lasted nearly two months and was captured on television each day. A final assault on the compound was made on April 19, and 76 men, women, and children died in a fire thought to be set by members of the sect. Many others committed suicide or were killed by fellow sect members.
Two years later, on the anniversary of the day that the Waco compound burned to the ground, former U.S. Army soldier Timothy McVeigh parked a rented truck full of explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and blew it up. More than 600 people were injured in the attack and 168 died, including 19 children at the daycare center inside. McVeigh hoped that his actions would spark a revolution against government control. He and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols were both arrested and tried, and McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001, for what was at the time considered the worst act of terrorism committed on American soil. Just a few months later, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 broke that record.
The Oklahoma City Bombing and Waco, Texas
The remains of automobiles stand in front of the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 (a). More than 300 nearby buildings were damaged by the blast, an attack perpetrated at least partly to avenge the Waco siege (b) exactly two years earlier.