George W. Bush

George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut , where his father, George H. W. Bush (1924–), was enrolled at Yale University. After his father graduated in 1948, the family moved to Texas , where the senior Bush worked as an executive in the oil industry. Like his father, George W. Bush attended Phillips Academy (a private school that prepares students for college) in Andover, Massachusetts , and went on to Yale University. He was an average student, president of his fraternity, and a member of an exclusive secret group, the Skull and Bones Society. While Bush was still at Yale in 1966, his father was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. After serving in Congress, George H. W. Bush went on to hold positions in the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon (1913–1994; served 1969–74) and Gerald R. Ford (1913–2006; served 1974–77) before being elected vice president and president in the 1980s.

In 1975, George W. Bush earned a master's degree in business administration from Harvard. He served as a pilot for the Texas Air National Guard before beginning a career in the oil and gas business. He quickly gained a reputation for fast cars and occasionally heavy drinking. In later years, he admitted to being irresponsible in his youth. After working in the energy industry for several years, Bush met Laura Welch (1946–), an elementary school teacher and librarian. They married in 1977, and their twin daughters were born in 1981. Bush ran for a seat in Congress in 1978 but lost the election. He had some difficult times in the oil business, but eventually built a small, successful company.

Change of ways

In 1985, under the influence of Baptist evangelist minister Billy Graham (1918–), Bush experienced a religious conversion. A year later, he stopped drinking alcohol. To those who knew him, these events were seen as major turning points in his life. When his father won the Republican nomination for president in 1988, Bush helped manage his presidential campaign. He gained respect in Washington, D.C. , for rallying the campaign team through the ups and downs of the tight race.

Back in Texas after the election, Bush organized a group of wealthy investors to buy the Texas Rangers, a major league baseball team. Riding a wave of popularity, he decided to run as the Republican candidate for

governor of Texas in 1994. To the surprise of many, he won the election. After only a year in office, Bush was hailed as the most popular big-state governor in the country. He worked to improve public schools, cut taxes, and put welfare recipients to work, and he encouraged new business and job growth. Bush won reelection in 1998 with 68 percent of the vote.

By January 2000, Bush was the frontrunner of a large field of Republican presidential candidates and became the party's nominee that summer. Since some people questioned Bush's grasp of national issues and foreign affairs, he selected the experienced Dick Cheney (1941–) to be his running mate. Mixing a folksy approach with clear policy measures, Bush maintained a slight lead against the Democratic nominee, Vice President Al Gore (1948–), as the 2000 election approached.

A controversial election

Shortly after 8 PM on election day, Tuesday, November 7, 2000, news agencies began projecting that Gore had won the popular vote and seemed headed for an electoral college victory. (The electoral college is the group that directly elects the president and vice president. Each state is allotted a number of electors equal to the number of its representatives and senators in Congress, and each presidential candidate has a slate of electors assigned to that candidate. When a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, the electors assigned to that candidate vote for him or her in the electoral college.) Around 10 PM, news reporters began referring to Florida ‘s popular vote as too close to call. When daylight came on Wednesday morning, there was still no new president-elect.

The problem was in Florida. Vote tallies completed in Florida were extremely close, and serious voting problems had arisen in four Florida counties. Recounts began. Republican officials tried to have the recounts stopped since accepting the tallies as they were would have resulted in a victory, though a very narrow one, for Bush. Democrats took the matter before state judges. The Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously (7–0) that manual recounts could continue. Bush's lawyers appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation waited to find out who would be the next president.

On December 12, a bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the recounts were unconstitutional. It ordered a halt to all further recounts. Gore conceded the election to Bush.

The presidency

Bush took office ready to cut taxes, improve schools, build an antimissile defense system to intercept long-range missiles launched at the United States, create a White House department of faith-based (religious) initiatives, and reform immigration policy and Social Security. He drew criticism soon after taking office when he refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, an amendment to the international treaty on climate change that required nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their countries.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked commercial airliners and attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. (See September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks ). With Congress uniting behind him, Bush announced a war on terrorism. In October, the United States led an invasion into Afghanistan (see Afghanistan Conflict ), where al-Qaeda , the terrorist group responsible for the attack, was headquartered.

The Bush administration set up a new department, the Homeland Security Department , to consolidate the different government agencies that protect the nation from terrorist attacks and other disasters. Bush aides put together the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which gave law enforcement agents more power but caused controversy by treading upon civil rights.

Going on the offensive

Not long after invading Afghanistan, Bush announced that Iraq, North Korea, and Iran were “axes of evil,” saying that they were illegally building up weapons of mass destruction (weapons capable of causing massive numbers of deaths, injuries, or destruction that fall into one of three categories: biological, chemical, and nuclear or radiological weapons) and that the United States would not allow them to do so. He stepped up his case against Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein (1937–2006), claiming that Iraq continued to build weapons of mass destruction even after the United Nations (UN) had concluded otherwise. The Bush administration also claimed that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda, and the administration asked the UN for a mandate to strike. The UN voted not to participate in an attack.

Proceeding without the United Nations, the Bush administration put together a coalition of forces dominated by American and British troops, with support from Australia, Denmark, and Poland, and drew up plans to invade Iraq. Worldwide opposition to an Iraq invasion was demonstrated on February 15, 2003, when protests drew between six and ten million people in hundreds of cities around the world. Nonetheless, the U.S. military assembled 125,000 troops in Kuwait; the United Kingdom assembled another 45,000. The coalition gave Hussein forty-eight hours to comply with requests for inspection and then attacked, starting the Iraq War. Investigations in Iraq after the war had started revealed no significant weapons of mass destruction; the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda was disproved. The initial attack overthrew Hussein, who was later hanged, but the war continued, fueled by Iraqi insurgents (rebels) who resented the American occupation of Iraq and by a growing civil war among Iraqi factions.

Although Bush tried to accomplish other things in his presidency, the ongoing Iraq War dominated his tenure in office nearly completely. During his first term in office, Bush was able to sustain popular support for his mission, and he was reelected to a second term. Soon after his reelection, however, his popularity began to plunge as the war dragged on. Then, on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, one of the most disastrous storms in U.S. history, struck the Gulf Coast, wreaking havoc in Mississippi and Louisiana . In New Orleans, the levees that protect the city from flooding broke down, causing 80 percent of the city to flood. For days, thousands of New Orleans citizens were stranded. Critics claimed that the Bush administration, and particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), did not seem to grasp the severity of the situation in the city. Their delays in getting help to New Orleans caused chaos and suffering, which was meanwhile being viewed on nationwide television. For an administration that had prided itself on security and being ready for disaster, its handling of the rescue of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina was viewed as a black mark.

In the 2006 congressional elections, the Democrats won a majority in both the House and the Senate for the first time in more than a decade. The growing ranks of critics of the president accused him and his top aides of having manufactured evidence of weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda links to win support for the Iraq invasion. Critics also held that the administration had given too little thought to the political situation in Iraq and the Middle East and thus provided too few troops to handle the insurgency that followed the invasion. Even some Republicans broke rank, calling the administration's handling of the war incompetent. Bush's approval ratings in national polls slipped below 50 percent in January 2005 and continued to plunge, with a disapproval rating hanging in the mid-60s in 2007.