William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum
Presents artifacts and the history of the Clinton administration.
Site Details
Pin location is approximate.
1200 President Clinton Ave
Little Rock, AR 72201
Family Friendly?
Yes
Visitors Per Year
53,599
The Clinton Library and Museum is organized clearly, containing:
- An introductory film narrated by Bill Clinton describing his personal history. It incudes his childhood in Hope, Arkansas, and the values he learned from his relatives there, his early interest in playing saxophone as well as politics, meeting his wife Hillary at Yale, and his early successes and defeats in Arkansas politics as well as the lessons those defeats taught him.
- Near-exact replicas of the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room as they were when Clinton was President.
- A large timeline display highlights significant events and accomplishments during each year Clinton was President. For each year, it describes important policy achievements as well as cultural and world events occurring at the same time. Those accomplishments include the signing of a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, passage of welfare reform, and adoption of a crime bill that added police to the streets.
- Notebooks for each month of each year Clinton was President with daily agendas.
- Alcoves organized thematically with more in-depth examination of salient issues during his Administration, including education, health care, crime, and foreign relations, etc.
- The museum provides a downloadable app with audio descriptions of each section narrated by the former President.
The museum obviously emphasizes the issues and perspectives of the Clinton Administration, but it does so without committing significant factual distortions. It barely touches on the scandals that marred Clinton’s time in office, rationalizing and minimizing them as part of what Clinton characterized as the “politics of personal destruction.” Hillary Clinton is given a disproportionately large amount of attention, while his Vice President, Al Gore, receives surprisingly little attention.
The Clinton Library is very good at presenting Clinton in a positive light without negatively attacking his opponents. To the extent that there are distortions, such as featuring Hillary Clinton at the expense of Al Gore, they are related to personal, rather than ideological, rivalries. Many of the issues emphasized as accomplishments of the Clinton Administration are ones championed by conservatives today (as they were back then), such as increasing support for law enforcement, reforming welfare, and seeking to balance the budget. In general, the optimistic and patriotic tone of the museum reduces the ideological or partisan edge it could have had.
The Clinton Library and Museum may resonate more among older visitors who remember that period of history, but younger visitors can be introduced to that time period by well-designed displays, an accessible film, and engaging replicas and artifacts.
The Clinton Library and Museum houses the archives of the Clinton Administration and features artifacts and events of that period. In addition to providing additional funds for more police and reforming welfare, the museum emphasizes Clinton’s efforts to advance peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries, and the booming economy that helped balance the budget briefly in the 1990s. There is also some discussion of policy failures, such as the effort led by Hillary Clinton to enact health care reform. Ironically, many of the successes did not endure: the peace agreements collapsed, welfare abuse shifted to new programs, and the deficit ballooned when the hot economy cooled. However, the defeat on healthcare may have laid the foundations for Obama’s success on that issue. The museum cannot possibly track the later trajectories of these issues, but it does a solid job of describing what the Administration accomplished during its time.
Owned By: National Archives
Operated By: National Archives
Government Funded: Yes
Did you know?
A section of the museum is devoted to the Clinton family pets, Socks the cat and Buddy the dog.
Recommended Reading
- Bill Clinton: New Gilded Age President by Patrick J. Maney
- The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House by John F. Harris
Reviewed By
Jay P. Greene
Former Senior Research Fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation
The opinions expressed above are those of the Reviewer who is providing a good-faith historical assessment to educate the public. Reasonable opinions can vary, and the Reviewer’s opinion is not necessarily the opinion of The Heritage Foundation or its affiliates.