George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. He was born into the Bush family; his father, George H. W. Bush, was the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. Although he originally planned to focus his presidency on programs like education and stay out of foreign wars, the 9/11 terrorist attacks resulted in him changing his perspective. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security and sent the military to invade countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. In his opinion, the best way to deal with terrorism was to strike before the terrorists could.
While in his twenties, Bush flew warplanes in the Texas Air National Guard. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in the oil industry. In 1978, Bush unsuccessfully ran for the House of Representatives. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball before he was elected governor of Texas in 1994. As governor, Bush successfully sponsored legislation for tort reform, increased education funding, set higher standards for schools, and reformed the criminal justice system. He also helped make Texas the leading producer of wind powered electricity in the nation. In the 2000 presidential election, Bush defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Al Gore despite losing the popular vote, after a narrow and contested win that involved a Supreme Court decision to stop a recount in Florida.
Upon taking office, Bush signed a major tax cut program and education reform bill, the No Child Left Behind Act. He pushed for socially conservative efforts such as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and faith-based initiatives. A decisive event that reshaped his administration was the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, resulting in the start of the war on terror and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Bush ordered the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, to overthrow the Taliban, destroy al-Qaeda, and capture Osama bin Laden. He signed the Patriot Act to authorize surveillance of suspected terrorists. Bush also ordered the 2003 invasion of Iraq on the belief that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction(WMDs); although no WMDs were ever found in Iraq, Hussein was nevertheless overthrown and captured by U.S. forces. Bush also signed the Medicare Modernization Act, which created Medicare Part D.
Bush was re-elected president in 2004, defeating Democrat John Kerry and winning the popular vote. During his second term, Bush reached multiple free trade agreements. He appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alitoto the Supreme Court. He sought major changes to Social Security and immigration laws, but both efforts failed in Congress. Bush was widely criticized for his handling of Hurricane Katrina and the midterm dismissal of U.S. attorneys. In the midst of his unpopularity, the Democrats regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections; afterwards, Congress made multiple attempts to impeach Bush, with all being unsuccessful. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars continued, and in January 2007, Bush launched a surge of troops in Iraq. By December, the U.S. entered the Great Recession, prompting the Bush administration to obtain congressional approval for multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program. After finishing his second term, Bush returned to Texas, where his presidential library opened in 2013. He has maintained a low-profile since leaving office.
At various points in his presidency, Bush was among both the most popular and unpopular presidents in U.S. history. He received the highest recorded approval ratings in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but also one of the lowest such ratings during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Although public favorability of Bush has improved since he left office, his presidency has generally been rated as below-average by scholars.
History[]
Early life[]
George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the eldest of six children of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce Bush. The Bush family had been involved in business and politics since the 1950s. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a former Wall Street banker and progressive Republican senator from Connecticut, and his father was a businessman, diplomat, and vice president and president of the United States.
In 1948, George H.W. Bush moved the family to Midland, Texas, where he made his fortune in the oil business. Young George spent most of his childhood in Midland, attending school there until the seventh grade. The family moved to Houston in 1961, and George W. Bush was sent to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. There he was an all-around athlete, playing baseball, basketball and football. He was a fair student and had a reputation for being an occasional troublemaker. Despite this, family connections helped him enter Yale University in 1964.
George W. Bush was a popular student at Yale, becoming president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and also playing rugby. For Bush, grades took a back seat to Yale’s social life. Despite his privileged background, he was comfortable with all kinds of people and had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Like his father and grandfather before him, George W. Bush became a member of Yale’s secretive Skull and Bones society, an invitation-only club whose membership contains some of American’s most powerful and elite family members.
Two weeks before graduation, at the end of his draft deferment, George W. Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard. It was 1968 and the Vietnam War was at its height. Though the Guard unit had a long waiting list, Bush was accepted through the unsolicited help of a family friend. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he earned his fighter pilot certification in June of 1970. Despite irregular attendance and questions about whether he had completely fulfilled his military obligation, Bush was honourably discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974.
After his Guard duty, George W. Bush continued his education, enrolling at Harvard Business School, where he earned a Masters of Business Administration degree in 1975. He then returned to Midland and entered the oil business, working for a family friend, and later started his own oil and gas firm. In 1977, at a backyard barbeque, Bush was introduced by friends to Laura Welch, a school teacher and librarian. After a quick three-month courtship, he proposed, and they were married on November 5, 1977. The couple settled in Midland, Texas, where Bush continued to build his business.
George W. Bush credits his wife for bringing his life in order. Prior to marriage, he had several embarrassing episodes with alcohol. Soon after marrying Laura, he joined the United Methodist Church and became a born-again Christian. In 1981, the couple enjoyed the arrival of twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. In 1986, Bush sold his struggling oil business to Harken Energy Corporation for stock and a seat on its board of directors. It was also at this time that he quit drinking and became deeply involved in his church.
Governor of Texas[]
In 1988, George W. Bush moved his family to Washington DC to work on his father’s bid for the White House, participating in campaign activities and meeting influential people. After his father’s victory, he returned to Texas, and in 1989 joined a group of investors purchasing the Texas Rangers baseball team. George W. Bush quickly emerged as the group’s leader and made some savvy trades. The team did well and Bush earned a reputation as a successful businessman. In 1998, Bush sold his share of the team for a reported 17 times his initial investment.
After his father’s 1992 reelection loss to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush decided to run for governor of Texas as a Republican. His affiliation with the Rangers and his family reputation helped him in the 1994 campaign against incumbent Democrat Ann Richards. His campaign focused on welfare and tort reform, crime reduction, and education improvement. The contest was contentious and bare knuckled, with accusations of financial impropriety on one side, and homosexuality on the other. Bush won the election with 53 percent of the vote and became the first child of a U.S. president to be elected a state governor. In 1998, Bush became the first Texas governor to be elected to consecutive four-year terms.
Presidency[]
Bush ran against then-Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 United States presidential election. More than 100 million people voted on November 7, 2000. But the election was very close. When they began counting the votes, it became clear that whoever got the most votes in the state of Florida would win the election. But there were many issues with the ballots in Florida. Gore sued to get Florida to count the votes again. For more than a month no one knew who won the election. The Supreme Court made a decision to stop recounting votes. Gore decided to accept his loss on December 13 and Bush was declared the winner.
First term[]
In 1999, George W. Bush began his quest for the presidency, and after a contentious series of primary elections, he won the Republican presidential nomination. The 2000 presidential election pitting George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore was close and controversial. As Election Day unfolded, there was no clear winner. The late-night news declared one candidate the winner, then the other the winner. By early the next morning, Bush had 246 electoral votes and Gore had 255, with 270 needed to win. Florida’s 25 electoral votes were held in the balance where several counties reported problems with balloting. After more than a month of recounts and legal manoeuvring, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the election, giving George Bush the victory. Though Gore lost the election in the Electoral College (271 to 266) he received over 543,000 more popular votes than Bush, a result that further complicated Bush’s victory.
In the first two years of his presidency, George W. Bush enjoyed a political majority in both Congressional houses but faced a strongly divided government. At times, his political rhetoric fuelled this divide. Taking a budget surplus left by the previous Democratic administration, Bush pushed through a $1.35 trillion tax cut to stimulate the economy, but critics contended it favoured the wealthy. His administration prompted further controversy when he announced the U.S. would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol for reducing green-house gas emissions, citing potential harm to the U.S. economy.
On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial jetliners. Three of them hit their targets in New York (The World Trade Center) and Washington, D.C. (The Pentagon). A fourth plane crashed into a farmer’s field in Pennsylvania, after the passengers successfully prevented the hijackers from crashing into another target. The war on terror had begun, and President George W. Bush promised the American people that he would do all he could to prevent another terrorist attack. A comprehensive strategy was formed with the creation of the Homeland Security Department, the Patriot Act and the authorisation of intelligence gathering that, for a time, included monitoring international phone calls made by U.S. citizens. The Bush administration also built international coalitions to seek out and destroy Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban government was said to be harbouring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
As the conflict raged on, United States military forces in Afghanistan began transferring Taliban fighters and suspected Al Qaeda members to a special prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a permanent U.S. naval base. Hundreds of prisoners were held there as enemy combatants, a classification given by the Bush administration that stated terror detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions. As a result, many were subject to enhanced interrogation techniques, which in the opinion of various international organisations, including the Red Cross, amounted to torture.
In September, 2002, the Bush administration announced that the United States would preemptively use military force if necessary to prevent threats to its national security by terrorists or "rogue states" especially any that possessed weapons of mass destruction. Based on what would prove to be inaccurate intelligence reports, the Bush administration successfully obtained a UN Security Council resolution to return weapons inspectors to Iraq. Soon afterward, Bush declared that Iraq hadn’t complied with inspections, and on March 20, 2003, the United States launched a successful invasion of Iraq, quickly defeating the Iraqi military. Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, fell on April 9, 2003, and Bush personally declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003. With a power vacuum in place, Iraq soon fell into a sectarian civil war.
Second term[]
In 2004, George W. Bush ran for re-election. Though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not going well, and his efforts in Social Security reform had met with great resistance, Bush's political core remained supportive, and he was able to win reelection over Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry in the November election. During his second term, Bush pushed for immigration reform, which received criticism from many conservatives, and eased environmental regulations, which received criticism from many liberals. The Bush administration's poor response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans further pushed down his favorability rating.
In 2008, as George W. Bush entered the final year of his presidency, the country faced enormous challenges. The United States was fighting two foreign wars, and the budget surplus left by the Clinton administration had transformed into a multi-trillion-dollar debt—the effects of military spending, tax cuts, and slow economic growth. In the early fall of 2008, the country was hit with a severe credit crisis that sent the stock market into free fall and led to massive layoffs. The Bush administration scrambled and encouraged Congress to enact a controversial $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act to bail out the housing and banking industries.
Post-presidency[]
Following the inauguration of Barack Obama, Bush and his family flew from Andrews Air Force Base to a homecoming celebration in Midland, Texas, following which they returned to their ranch in Crawford, Texas. They bought a home in the Preston Hollow neighbourhood of Dallas, Texas, where they settled down.
He makes regular appearances at various events throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area, most notably when he conducted the opening coin toss at the Dallas Cowboys first game in the team's new stadium in Arlington and an April 2009 visit to a Texas Rangers game, where he thanked the people of Dallas for helping him settle in and was met with a standing ovation. He also attended every home playoff game for the Texas Rangers 2010 season and, accompanied by his father, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington for Game 4 of the 2010 World Series on October 31, 2010.
Since leaving office, Bush has kept a relatively low profile though he has made public appearances, most notably after the release of his memoirs in 2010 and for the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2011. In March 2009, he delivered his first post-presidency speech in Calgary, Alberta, appeared via video on The Colbert Report during which he praised U.S. troops for earning a "special place in American history," and attended the funeral of Senator Ted Kennedy. Bush made his debut as a motivational speaker on October 26 at the "Get Motivated" seminar in Dallas. In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting on November 5, 2009, the Bushes paid an undisclosed visit to the survivors and the victims' families the day following the shooting, having contacted the base commander requesting that the visit be private and not involve press coverage.
Bush released his memoirs, Decision Points, on November 9, 2010. During a pre-release appearance promoting the book, Bush said he considered his biggest accomplishment to be keeping "the country safe amid a real danger", and his greatest failure to be his inability to secure the passage of Social Security reform. In 2011, Bush was informed by Obama about the killing of Osama bin Laden.
After years of leading a relatively quiet life in Texas, Bush returned to the media spotlight in 2013. He was on hand for the opening of the George W. Bush Library and Museum on the grounds of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The other living former presidents, including Bill Clinton and Bush's own father, attended the event as did President Barack Obama.
On September 1, 2021, Bush appeared in the documentary 9/11: Inside the President's War Room. On September 11, 2021, Bush spoke at the Flight 93 National Memorial, where one of many events was being held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Bush spoke emotionally about the lessons of 9/11, the heroism of the people on board Flight 93 and the broader spirit of America.
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