Bill Clinton

Few charts announce a leader as loudly as this one. Bill Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe III on 19 August 1946 in Arkansas, carries a Leo Sun in its own domicile, the lion-king at full strength, magnetic, warm-hearted and made for the centre of the room. It is the placement of the born leader who blazes at the heart of his own solar system, and Clinton rode that charisma from Georgetown and Oxford and Yale Law to the governor's mansion and, at forty-six, to the presidency he held from 1993 to 2001. That Sun sits in his ninth house of the big picture, law and global horizons, the true statesman-philosopher brokering peace in Bosnia, Kosovo and Northern Ireland.

His Moon is exalted in Taurus, an earthy, pragmatic nature seeking security and steady foundations; placed in the sixth house of work and service, it powered the tireless political operator and, later, his humanitarian foundation. Rising in Sagittarius, he met the world as the jovial, silver-tongued optimist. Yet Leo pride has its shadow, and Clinton's second term was consumed by the Lewinsky scandal and his 1998 impeachment. A chart describes temperament; it never excuses the choices a person makes.