George W. Bush biography
Quick Facts
- NAME:
George Walker Bush
- OCCUPATION:
U.S. President,
U.S. Governor
- BIRTH DATE:
July 06, 1946
(Age: 65)
- EDUCATION:
The Kinkaid School,
Phillips Academy,
Yale University,
Harvard Business School
- PLACE OF BIRTH:
New Haven,
Connecticut
- ZODIAC SIGN:
Cancer
Best Known For
George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States.
He led his country's response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and initiated
the Iraq War in 2003.
Born July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, George W. Bush
was the 43rd president of the United States. He narrowly won the
Electoral College vote in 2000, in one of the closest and most
controversial elections in American history. Bush led the United States'
response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and initiated the Iraq War.
Before his presidency, Bush was a businessman and served as governor of
Texas.
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 honorably 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.
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.
As governor, George W. Bush appealed to moderate Republicans and
Christian conservatives in his own party and earned a reputation for
bipartisan governing. He implemented the philosophy of "compassionate
conservatism," which combined limited government with concern for the
underprivileged and personal responsibility. The previous gubernatorial
administration left the Texas treasury in a surplus, so Bush pushed for a
tax cut and increased funding for education. He promoted educational
reform, tying teachers’ salaries to student performance on standardized
tests, and signed into law legislation lowering the age at which
juveniles could be tried in adult courts.
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
maneuvering, 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 fueled 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 favored 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,
On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists
hijacked four U.S. commercial jetliners. Three of them hit their
targets in New York and Washington DC. A fourth plane crashed into a
farmer’s field in Pennsylvania. 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 USA PATRIOT ACT, and the authorization of intelligence
gathering that, for at 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 organizations in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban
government was said to be harboring 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 organizations, 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 (WMD). 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, 2002, the United
States launched a successful invasion of Iraq, quickly defeating the
Iraqi military. Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, fell on April 9, 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.
In 2004, George W. Bush ran for reelection. 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 Stabilization Act to bail
out the housing and banking industries.
George W. Bush left office in January, 2009, leaving behind
much unfinished business and low approval ratings. The country remained
politically divided. Critics laid much of the country’s misfortunes at
his feet, while supporters defended him for his strong leadership during
one of the country’s most dangerous periods. Bush and his wife settled
in Dallas, Texas, where he participated in the building of his
presidential library and wrote his memoir "Decision Points." At the
request of President Barack Obama, Bush and former president Bill Clinton led private fundraising efforts in the United States for disaster relief, after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
George W. Bush played up to his Texas roots through most of his
political life. For both his supporters and detractors, it provided
reasons for their support and criticism. For some, his folksy image and
manner suggested he was "not ready for prime time," politically adept,
but not a statesman at a time when the country need one. For others, he
was perceived as a president of big ideas who eagerly embraced large
visions and the risks involved. His supporters credit him with
reestablishing America’s place as the world’s uncontested leader.
Internationally, he has been maligned for his "cowboy diplomacy" in
foreign affairs. Like many presidents before him, the George W. Bush
presidency will find its place in history balanced against his successes
and failures.
