George W(alker) Bush - 43rd president of the United States (2001- )

In one of the closest and most disputed elections in U.S. history, Bush, the Republican Party candidate, defeated Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, in a protracted contest that continued weeks after election day. When he took office, Bush, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush, became the first son to follow his father into the White House since John Quincy Adams followed John Adams in the early 19th century. Bush was also the first presidential candidate since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the electoral vote, and thus the presidency, while losing the nationwide popular vote. After election day, Bush trailed Gore in the popular tally by more than 500,000 votes out of more than 105 million cast nationwide.

However, he secured a 271 to 266 victory in the electoral college when, after five weeks of legal wrangling, Gore failed to overturn election results that gave the state of Florida, with 25 electoral votes, to Bush. Bush became governor of Texas in 1995. He secured the Republican Party nomination for president by building on his popularity as governor of one of the most populous states in the union. As governor, Bush gained a reputation as an effective politician who could work across party lines and could appeal to Democratic and independent voters in addition to Republican voters. He developed a political philosophy he called “compassionate conservatism,” which centered on conservative social and fiscal values combined with appeals for the private sector to do more to improve educational and job opportunities for minorities and the poor. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce Bush.

His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a Wall Street financier who was elected to the Senate of the United States from Connecticut in 1952. Although George Herbert Walker Bush began his career in the oil industry, he eventually served as a congressman, head of the Republican National Committee, ambassador to the United Nations, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and vice president and president of the United States. At the age of two, Bush moved with his parents from Connecticut to Odessa, Texas, where his father embarked on a career in the petroleum business. After a year in Texas, the family relocated to California for business reasons. A year later, the family moved back to Texas and settled in Midland, a town in western Texas located about 500 km (300 mi) from Fort Worth. Bush lived in Midland from 1950 to 1959. In 1953 his younger sister Robin, the next oldest child in the family, died from leukemia. After her death, Bush grew especially close to his mother. He had four other siblings: brothers Jeb, Neil, and Marvin, and a sister, Dorothy. In 1959, again for business reasons, the family moved to Houston, Texas. In 1961 Bush left Texas and went to Andover, Massachusetts, to attend Phillips Academy, a boarding school that his father had also attended. At Phillips, Bush played basketball, baseball, and football.

He was best known for being head cheerleader and commissioner of an intramural stickball league. In 1964 he enrolled at Yale University in Connecticut; his father and grandfather had also attended Yale. That same year, Bush campaigned for his father in his unsuccessful bid to win a U.S. Senate seat from Texas. At Yale, Bush was considered an average student, but he was popular with his classmates. He was head of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and a member of the exclusive Skull and Bones, a secret society that his father and grandfather had also joined. During Bush’s time at Yale, college students all over the country began to hold protests about a variety of issues, including protests against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975). Bush was uncomfortable with the growth of the student protest movement, and he generally refrained from participating in campus politics. In 1968 he campaigned on behalf of his father, who was running for reelection for a seat in the House of Representatives that he had won in 1966.

Bush graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1968. Upon completing college, he became eligible for the military draft. To meet his service obligation, Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. He told the admitting officer that he wanted to become a pilot like his father, who was a highly decorated Navy flier in World War II (1939-1945). He did his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and entered a pilot-training program at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia. He received favorable reports from his superiors, attained the rank of second lieutenant, and was certified to fly the F-102 jet fighter during training missions in the South and along the Gulf Coast. Bush remained in the Air National Guard until 1973. During the early 1970s, Bush worked on U.S. Senate campaigns for Republican candidates in Florida and Alabama. He also worked for a Houston-based firm that specialized in large-scale agricultural operations. In addition, Bush was involved in a mentoring program for children in inner-city Houston. During this time, he flirted with the idea of running for state representative in Texas but decided against it. In 1973 he was admitted to Harvard Business School in Massachusetts.

After earning his M.B.A. from Harvard in 1975, Bush returned to Midland. Like his father, he first entered the oil industry as a “landman,” someone who helps organize oil-drilling ventures by bringing together geologists, property owners, and investors. In this position, Bush searched property records, studied geological reports, and negotiated deals. In 1977 Bush announced that he was running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Shortly after he declared his candidacy, he met Laura Welch, a Midland native who worked as a librarian and an elementary-school teacher. In November 1977, three months after they met, the couple wed. Bush became the Republican congressional candidate after a tough primary race, but he lost the general election in 1978. His Democratic opponent attacked Bush as an outsider and a newcomer who did not understand the needs of voters in Texas. Bush captured the financial and political support of the oil industry, but his opponent won the support of rural and agricultural voters. After his loss, Bush resumed his career in the oil industry, starting a series of small, independent oil-exploration companies, including Arbusto Energy Inc. (Arbusto is the Spanish word for “bush.”) In 1980 he again campaigned on behalf of his father, who had been chosen as the vice-presidential running mate of Ronald Reagan. (Reagan won the election, and Bush’s father went on to serve two terms as vice president.) In 1981 Bush and his wife became the parents of twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, who were named for their grandmothers. Although he was raised as an Episcopalian, Bush began worshiping as a Methodist, the denomination of his wife. Bush’s oil companies never enjoyed great success.

He changed the name of Arbusto Energy to Bush Exploration and spent time in New York attracting investors. In 1984, however, his company merged with a larger company, Spectrum 7. Bush became chairman of Spectrum 7, but the company was hurt by falling oil prices. In 1986 it was folded into Harken Energy Corporation, another Texas petroleum company. Bush served as a consultant and a member of Harken’s board of directors. In 1987 Bush relocated his family to Washington, D.C., to assist his father in his bid to become president. He worked as a campaign adviser at his father’s national campaign headquarters, serving as a liaison to the media and to conservative and Christian leaders. He was a trusted confidant of his father and mother, who sometimes dispatched Bush to measure the loyalty of certain campaign aides and members of the vice president’s staff. He also campaigned across the country, sometimes appearing as a surrogate for his father. After his father won the election, Bush served as an adviser to the president-elect. He helped oversee a group that decided which individuals might be offered posts in the Bush administration. After the election, Bush moved to Dallas, Texas, and purchased a small interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989. He became one of the managing general partners of the baseball team and agreed to serve as the public spokesperson for the ownership group. Bush’s affiliation with the team raised his profile in Texas. In 1990 he explored, but then abandoned, the idea of a bid for the Texas governor’s office.

During his time with the Rangers, he oversaw the building of a new baseball stadium in Arlington, Texas. Bush, a lifelong baseball fan, was extremely happy during his tenure with the team. During the early 1990s, Bush repeatedly traveled to Washington, D.C., to confer with his father—the president—and to offer his advice. They discussed various members of the elder Bush’s White House staff. During his father’s time in the White House, Bush was the subject of a Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) inquiry. The SEC investigated whether Bush had engaged in insider trading when he sold Harken Energy stock shortly before Harken announced financial losses. The investigation ended with no proof of wrongdoing. In the 1992 presidential race, Bush again campaigned on behalf of his father; the elder Bush lost the election to Democrat Bill Clinton. After his father’s defeat, Bush turned his attention to his own political ambitions in Texas and began a regular series of meetings with advisers in Dallas to plan a run for the office of governor. In 1994 Bush ran for governor against popular Democratic governor Ann Richards. The gubernatorial race was a hard fought, sometimes bitter, contest. Bush’s campaign focused on four themes: welfare reform, tort reform, crime reduction, and education improvement. Bush worked hard to sell himself as a Texan, vowing not to be defeated by the same outsider perception that had helped derail his 1978 bid for Congress. He crisscrossed the state, accusing his opponent of spending too much time away from Texas. In an upset, he defeated Richards with 53.5 percent of the vote.

Because the Texas constitution limits the authority of the governor’s office, Bush turned his attention to gaining the confidence of powerful Democrats, especially the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the house. Bush needed to form alliances with Democrats in order to accomplish his goals. After winning their backing, he successfully pushed plans to cut welfare rosters, lower punitive damages in lawsuits, and return control of schools to local municipalities. Critics said he neglected environmental concerns, children’s health insurance, and rising poverty. Nonetheless, toward the end of his first term, a number of high-ranking elected Democrats in Texas, including several Hispanic politicians, publicly gave their support to Bush. During his first term, Bush faced glaring national and international exposure when a convicted pick-ax murderer named Karla Faye Tucker was scheduled to be executed in Texas in February 1998. Representatives of the Vatican, evangelist Pat Robertson, and others petitioned Bush to grant Tucker a reprieve. Bush declined, however, and the execution proceeded as scheduled. Tucker was the first woman put to death in Texas since the Civil War (1861-1865). Most studies indicated that voters in Texas supported the death penalty. Throughout Bush’s first term, national attention increasingly focused on him as a future presidential candidate. He made a well-publicized appearance at an Indianapolis, Indiana, gathering of national Republican leaders in 1997, and speculation about his presidential ambitions began to increase. Bush repeatedly said that his sole focus was being elected to another term as Texas governor. In 1998 the Texas Rangers were sold, and Bush earned an estimated $15 million. In his 1998 reelection campaign, Bush ran against Texas land commissioner Garry Mauro. Mauro, long affiliated with environmental issues in Texas, continued to focus on those issues while Bush began describing himself as a “compassionate conservative.”

Some Texas Democrats felt that Bush was intruding on traditional Democratic turf when he began advocating raising salaries for teachers. Bush aggressively courted the minority vote in Texas, making repeated visits to traditional Hispanic and Democratic strongholds such as the city of El Paso. Bush won his 1998 reelection race with a record 69 percent of the vote, becoming the first governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive four-year terms. Bush earned 49 percent of the Hispanic vote and 73 percent of the independent vote, both considered records for a Republican candidate. National speculation about Bush’s presidential possibilities soared after his reelection. Increasing national and international attention to the death penalty marked Bush’s second term as governor because Texas leads the nation in the number of inmate executions. However, Bush enjoyed high approval ratings among Texas voters, and he presided over the state during a time of general prosperity. During his second term as governor, he talked more about his philosophy of using faith-based organizations to do the work traditionally done by government. He urged more freedom for churches, synagogues, and mosques to provide social services and to perform work that state and federal agencies had previously done. Some analysts said his philosophy was a direct outgrowth of his belief that many of society’s problems could be traced to a moral decline and an over-reliance on government that had begun in the 1960s.

Throughout Bush’s second term, his critics contended that his plans to spur private-sector solutions to society’s problems were destroying the safety net that the government provided for poor people in Texas. His critics also said that, under his watch, Texas continued to rank near the bottom of statistical evaluations of the environment, children’s health insurance, and childhood hunger. Bush’s supporters lauded his efforts to raise teacher salaries, and studies indicated that educational test scores had improved under his administration. Throughout his second term, Bush stressed that one of his primary goals was to ensure that every child in Texas would know how to read. In the early months of his second term, Bush talked with Republican leaders, consultants, and strategists about the possibility of running for president of the United States. In early 1999, at a highly anticipated appearance in Austin, Texas, Bush announced that he was forming a committee to explore the idea of a presidential campaign. In June Bush announced his candidacy for president. By the summer of 1999, Bush was actively campaigning for the presidency against a field of fellow Republicans that eventually included businessman Steve Forbes, former Reagan adviser Gary Bauer, Utah senator Orrin Hatch, former vice president Dan Quayle, former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, former ambassador Alan Keyes, former head of the Red Cross Elizabeth Dole, and Arizona senator John McCain. In August 1999 Bush emerged victorious in the Iowa Straw Poll, one of the early, preprimary contests to help determine the party frontrunner. Through the early phases of his campaign, Bush continued to describe himself as a compassionate conservative. Some of his opponents suggested that he was not committed to true conservative principles and that he was using the slogan to lure independent and Democratic voters. Bush repeatedly said that he would make education a centerpiece of his administration and that he would strengthen the military.

He also pledged to aid minorities by combating what he called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” He promised to cut taxes, pointing to the tax cuts in Texas during his administration. By early 2000 the Republican contest increasingly centered on Bush and McCain. After McCain defeated him in the New Hampshire primary, Bush rebounded with a victory in South Carolina. His win in South Carolina set the stage for an eventual triumph in the final round of primaries. Through the primary season, his mother and father made appearances on his behalf. Critics continued to suggest that he was riding his father’s coattails. Some also contended that he lacked the experience necessary to be president since he had only been in office since 1995. Bush replied that, as governor of Texas, he was overseeing a state whose economy, population, and area were larger than those of many countries. By June the Bush campaign had raised over $85 million, a record-setting amount of money for a presidential race. In the weeks leading to the Republican National Convention in July, Bush traveled cross-country. Among his travels was a high-profile visit to the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

His allies lauded him for reaching out to minorities; his critics said that he had not delivered enough specific solutions to minority concerns. Just prior to the Republican National Convention, Bush picked Dick Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate. Bush had originally chosen Cheney to oversee the selection process for a vice-presidential candidate. Cheney had a lengthy record in elected and appointed offices and had served as chief of staff for President Gerald Ford and as secretary of defense for Bush’s father, President George Bush. Bush’s supporters saw the selection of Cheney as a way to offset accusations that Bush did not have the necessary experience to serve in the White House. Critics of the choice said that Bush was relying on his father’s old advisers and that Cheney’s conservative voting record in Congress would displease minorities and Democrats. On the final night of the convention, Bush delivered one of the most important speeches of his life, as he formally accepted the Republican nomination for president. Before thousands of supporters, he outlined his basic political philosophy of compassionate conservatism. In his speech he also chided the Clinton-Gore administration, saying it had not lived up to its potential. While supporters applauded Bush’s speech as a call for renewed moral leadership, critics focused on its failure to set forth specific policy proposals. Immediately following the convention Bush and Cheney began a series of train trips across the country to promote their candidacy. During the campaign, Bush’s main opponents were Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic Party nominee; consumer activist Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee; and political commentator Pat Buchanan, who ran on the Reform Party ticket. Bush focused on issues such as providing tax cuts and improving education. He also expressed a desire to change Social Security by letting people invest a portion of their funds in the stock market.

Bush participated in three debates with Gore. He also spent time campaigning in states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, and Oregon, which were very closely divided between the two candidates. On November 7, as election returns came in, Bush won 29 states, primarily in the West and South, including Wyoming, Utah, Georgia, and Alabama. He also won some traditionally Democratic states such as West Virginia and Gore’s home state of Tennessee. However, as the night wore on, it became clear that the presidential race would be extremely close. Both candidates needed to win Florida to receive the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president. When Florida’s vote was counted, Bush had more votes than Gore, but the candidates were separated by less than one-half of one percent of the tally. Florida law dictates that an automatic recount be performed if the candidates are separated by only one-half of one percent. The next day, Florida began recounting its votes while Bush waited to learn if he would become the president of the United States. The state was also waiting to receive and count overseas absentee ballots. After Florida finished its recount, Bush was still ahead in Florida, but only by about 300 votes. With the vote so close, Democrats pressed for a manual recount in four heavily Democratic counties, arguing that machine tallies had failed to accurately record all of the votes cast for president.

The Bush team went to court to prevent the manual recount, charging that the votes had already been recounted once and that a manual count introduced the possibility of human error. Florida’s secretary of state set a deadline of November 14 for submitting the recounted votes for certification. However, some counties could not finish their manual recounts by the deadline. Gore went to court to seek to have all the manual recounts included in the final tally. The Florida Supreme Court then ordered the secretary of state to delay the certification of votes until it could hear the case. On November 21 the Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the manual recounts should be included and had to be submitted to the secretary of state by November 26. Bush disagreed with the decision and appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court. On November 26 Florida certified its election results, including its overseas ballots, and Bush won the state by just over 500 votes. Gore, however, still felt that some votes had been excluded, and he contested the certified results in court. On December 4, after considering arguments from both sides, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Florida Supreme Court to clarify its ruling. The same day, a Florida circuit court judge ruled against Gore’s request for additional recounts.

The ruling was a victory for Bush. However, Gore appealed that case to the Florida Supreme Court. On December 8 the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the additional recounts should be allowed to proceed. Bush then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also asked the Court to stop the recounts from proceeding until the Court had a chance to hear the case. On December 9 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay, stopping all the recounts until after it heard the case, which it did on December 11. On December 12 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Florida recounts were unconstitutional because the recounts violated the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. The Court argued that not all votes were being treated equally because there was no clear standard for how to do manual recounts. The decision was a huge victory for Bush. On December 13, five weeks after the election, Gore officially conceded the race to Bush, and Bush became the president-elect of the United States. Bush was inaugurated as the 43rd president of the United States on January 20, 2001. In his inaugural address, he repeatedly touched on the theme of compassion and emphasized a need for civility in modern society. He promised to reform Social Security and Medicare, to reduce taxes, and to “confront weapons of mass destruction.” He spoke, in broad terms, of addressing poverty and encouraging personal responsibility.

Appointments When Bush assembled his Cabinet, he sought a mixture of Washington veterans, academics, businesspeople, and officials from state government. He appointed Colin Powell, the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as secretary of state; Condoleezza Rice, a Stanford University political science professor, as national security adviser; and Rod Paige, superintendent of the Houston, Texas, school district, as secretary of education. He also named Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense; Rumsfeld had served previously as secretary of defense under President Gerald Ford. Bush nominated one Democrat to his Cabinet, Norman Mineta, as secretary of transportation. Bush’s Cabinet reflected much of the diversity of the country, including three African Americans, two Asians, five women, and one Hispanic. Bush suffered one setback when Linda Chavez, his nominee for secretary of labor, withdrew her name from consideration after questions emerged over whether she had employed an illegal immigrant.

Bush replaced her with Elaine Chao, who had extensive experience in the nonprofit sector including being director of the Peace Corps. Bush’s nominee for attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former senator from Missouri, faced tough questioning about his conservative positions by Democrats in the Senate before he was confirmed. Some environmental advocates expressed concern with Bush’s choice for secretary of the interior, Gale Norton, because of some of her positions, including her support for opening some public lands for development. Some proponents of welfare reform were pleased when Bush selected Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson as secretary of health and human services; Thompson had led sweeping reforms of the welfare system in his state. B Domestic Affairs In the first weeks of his administration, Bush was at times overshadowed by media coverage and congressional inquiries into the last-minute presidential pardons that Bill Clinton had granted before leaving office. However, Bush focused on his program, including making education his first legislative priority.

In his first days in office, Bush announced his education plan, which included initiatives to give states more control over federal education spending and annual testing of students to measure performance. Bush also created an Office for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the White House. This office was designed to work with government agencies to provide funds to faith-based organizations so that these organizations could assume more responsibility for addressing the nation’s social problems, such as poverty, hunger, and homelessness. The creation of the office followed through on one of Bush’s campaign pledges. In February 2001 Bush introduced a $1.96 trillion federal budget that included tax relief and increased funding for education and the military. Amid debate on how best to utilize the federal surplus, Bush advocated a $1.6 trillion tax cut over ten years, arguing that “the surplus is not the government’s money. The surplus is the people’s money.” As he began pushing his economic agenda forward, Bush was faced with mounting evidence that the U.S. economy was slowing down. He argued that Congress should approve his tax cut to help stimulate the economy. Democratic leaders immediately assailed Bush’s budget proposals as fiscally irresponsible. They suggested that the government surplus should be used for government programs such as Social Security and that the tax cut would benefit only wealthy Americans. Critics of Bush’s plan also faulted him for proposed cuts in several federal departments and agencies, including the Departments of Transportation, Agriculture, Labor, Interior, Energy, and Justice.

Congressional Democrats vowed to battle both the scope of Bush’s tax cuts and the cutbacks at the federal level. Bush achieved a major success in June 2001 when Congress passed, and he signed, a $1.35 trillion dollar tax-cut bill. The bill, which takes effect over a ten-year period, will lower income tax rates for all taxpayers and double the child tax credit. It will also lower the tax penalty on married couples and abolish the estate tax. Bush pointed to the success of the tax-cut bill as an example of congressional bipartisanship. The same month, however, Bush suffered a setback when Senator James Jeffords of Vermont announced that he was leaving the Republican Party to become an independent. Jeffords’s move shifted control of the Senate from the Republican Party to the Democrats. Some experts speculated that Democratic control of the Senate would make it more difficult for Bush to push his legislative agenda through Congress. C Foreign Affairs In February 2001 Bush approved limited air strikes against Iraq in the first military action of his presidency. American and British warplanes bombed Iraqi military command sites south of the capital of Baghdad in a joint effort to warn Iraq that the no-fly zones established in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War (1991) were still in effect. In April Bush encountered his first foreign policy test when a U.S. Navy plane conducting surveillance was forced to land in China after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet. Each side blamed the other for the incident. After 11 days of tense negotiations, the Bush administration was able to secure the release of the American crew. In June Bush made his first trip to Europe as U.S. president. He met with European leaders and officials of the European Union. Bush encountered some protests in Europe relating to his environmental policies. Earlier in the year Bush announced that he would not support the Kyoto Protocol, a proposed international treaty that called for industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases. Bush renounced the treaty because it did not apply to developing nations, and he believed it would hurt the U.S. economy.