Bush, George W.

Bush, George W. (1946– ), forty-third president of the United States. George Walker Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Barbara Pierce Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush (see Bush, George), the forty-first president of the United States. He grew up in Texas; graduated from Yale College in 1968; and in 1975, after serving in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School. Two years later, he married Laura Welch, a schoolteacher and librarian. In 1986, under the influence of the Reverend Billy Graham, Bush renounced alcohol and embraced evangelical religion.

Resettled in Texas, Bush tried both politics and business. A 1978 run for Congress as a Republican ended in defeat, but influential friends helped him enter the oil and gas business and become a co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Returning to politics, he won the Texas governorship in 1994 and was re-elected four years later. Securing the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative.” Emphasizing his religious faith with speeches that invoked Biblical imagery, Bush swamped his opponent, Albert Gore, Jr., among voters who regularly attended church. As a Texas oilman, he gained support from energy-related businesses, including Enron and Halliburton. Richard ( Dick) Cheney, a transplanted Texan and former CEO of Halliburton, became Bush's vice-presidential running-mate.

The 2000 presidential race, pitting Bush against the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Albert Gore, and the Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader, ended in controversy. Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000 ballots, but the crucial Electoral College tally depended upon the outcome in Florida, where Republican officials declared a Bush victory by a margin of 537 votes. Gore sued to obtain recounts in several counties, where his totals seemed suspiciously low, and complained of other irregularities. Outspending Democrats by a nearly 5-1 margin, Bush's supporters mounted a month-long legal and public-relations campaign that successfully portrayed the Gore effort as a brazen effort to “steal” the presidency. On December 12, 2000, the U.S Supreme Court, in a controversial 5-4 decision, blocked a recount in Florida and, in effect, awarded Bush the presidency.

Colin Powell, an African American and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, became secretary of state. Condoleeza Rice, a Stanford University political scientist, and also an African American, was named national security adviser. As secretary of defense, Bush chose Donald Rumsfeld, who had held the same post in the Gerald Ford administration.

Debate over domestic issues initially dominated Bush's first term. An economic downturn and the collapse of an overvalued stock market turned governmental surpluses, at both the national and state levels, into soaring deficits. A succession of scandals rocked Wall Street, and accounting irregularities sank several large companies, including Enron. In 2001 the Bush administration successfully pressed Congress to enact a substantial tax cut, weighted toward the upper income brackets, as an economic stimulus. The White House also unveiled a controversial energy plan aimed at easing restrictions on exploration, pricing, and environmental safeguards. Critics saw this package, devised by Vice President Cheney during secret meetings with energy-industry executives, as primarily benefiting industry interests. The White House secured passage of an ambitious educational program, called “No Child Left Behind,” which established mandatory, nation-wide testing of children to determine which schools were teaching effectively. The president also introduced new rules that channeled federal funds to social welfare services provided by “faith-based” institutions. Bush's policies pleased his core political base, but his overall approval rating slowly sank.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, shifted the focus of Bush's presidency to foreign affairs and reversed his political fortunes. The president declared a War on Terrorism and rushed the USA Patriot Act through Congress, which allowed the Executive Branch broad authority to monitor and detain people it viewed as threats to national security. A new federal agency, the Department of Homeland Security, was created as well. In late 2001, a U.S.‐led military campaign toppled Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which had sheltered Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile, the president announced a unilateralist foreign policy initiative: according to the Bush Doctrine, the United States had the right to wage “preventive war” against any force, including any foreign nation, which endangered U.S. security. Vice President Cheney and neo‐conservative officials in the Defense Department, including Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, played a key role in shaping this policy. Aided by an uncritical media, the White House kept public attention focused on national- ecurity fears.

Bush's post‐9/11 popularity initially helped him expand his political leverage. The Republican Party gained control of the Senate in the 2002 midterm election, and it picked up additional seats in the House of Representatives. The White House secured another controversial tax cut, again touted as an economic stimulus.

Having entered office with hopes for toppling the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and thereby completing the “unfinished business” from the 1991 Persian Gulf War initiated by the first President Bush, the Bush administration soon shifted its major attention to that nation, which held vast oil and gas reserves. Citing evidence later shown to be non-existent or unreliable, Bush and top administration officials charged Iraq with possessing “weapons of mass destruction” and with supporting and financing Al Qaeda. Bush also justified the war on quasi-religious grounds, as part of a global struggle against ‘evildoers.” As early as January 2002, in his first State of the Union address, Bush identified Iraq (along with Iran and North Korea) as part of an “axis of evil.” After failing to gain United Nations support, the United States and a “coalition of the willing” consisting of Great Britain and several other nations, launched an air and ground assault against Iraq on March 20, 2003. Saddam's regime quickly collapsed. Resistance within Iraq to the U.S.‐dominated occupation, however, grew steadily wider and increasingly more lethal. By the summer of 2004, more than 800 U.S. troops had died in Iraq. The Bush administration drew fire from critics, including many former diplomats and military officers who charged it with exaggerating the Iraqi threat; neglecting Al Qaeda; and lacking any coherent advance planning for creating a peaceful, post-Saddam Iraq. By the time the administration transfered some authority to a new (unelected) Iraqi government, on June 28, 2004, Bush's domestic approval rating had returned its pre‐9/11 level. Meanwhile, however, massive governmental spending, including that for the war, helped revive the U.S. economy.

George W. Bush entered the White House after a contested election that suggested a nation almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Rather than governing from some middle ground during his first term, he pursued policies associated with the neo-conservative and evangelical wings of the Republican Party and further polarized partisan allegiances. The election of 2004, in which Bush faced Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, saw a country bitterly divided over the Iraq War, taxes and governmental deficits, educational policy, energy and environmental measures, foreign affairs, and religiously charged social issues including abortion and gay marriage.
See also Education: Education in Contemporary America; Environmentalism; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Executive Branch, Other Departments: Homeland Security; Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement; Iraq War of 2003 and Aftermath; Taxation.

Bibliography

David Frum , The Right Man: An Inside Account of the Bush White House, 2003.
Kevin Phillips , American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, 2004.
Bob Woodward , Plan of Attack (2004)

Norman L. Rosenberg