Powers of the President of the United States Richard Nixon tried to use executive privilege as a reason for not turning over subpoenaed audio tapes to a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, the Supreme Court ruled in "United States v. Nixon" that privilege was not absolute. The Court reasoned that the judiciary’s interest in the “fair administration of criminal justice” outweighed President Nixon’s interest in keeping the evidence secret. Later President Bill Clinton lost in federal court when he tried to assert privilege in the Lewinsky affair. The Supreme Court affirmed this in "Clinton v. Jones", which denied the use of privilege in cases of civil suits.
Presidency of Bill Clinton presidency, historians and political scientists have tended to rank Clinton as an average to above average president. President George H. W. Bush's popularity in the aftermath of the successful Gulf War convinced many prominent Democrats to sit out the 1992 presidential election. With party leaders like Mario Cuomo and Dick Gephardt out of the running, the 1992 Democratic primary field consisted of relatively unknown candidates. Among those who sought the Democratic nomination were former Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, former Governor Jerry Brown of California, and Bill Clinton, who had served as the Governor of Arkansas since 1983. Clinton emerged