George W. Bush: Facts and Information

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Synopsis

George Walker Bush was the 43rd president of the United States of America. He narrowly won the election in 2000, one of the closest, most contested, and most controversial elections in the history of the United States. He led America’s response to the 9/11 terror attack that claimed thousands of American lives. According to an article published on whitehouse.gov, the aftermath of the 9/11 attack transformed him into a wartime president “facing the greatest challenge of any president since Abraham Lincoln.”

Early Life

Bush was born July 6, 1946, to his father, George H. W. Bush, and mother, Barbara Pierce, in New Haven, Connecticut. His father was attending Yale University at the time. The family moved to Midland, Texas, where his father got into the oil business. George W. Bush had five other siblings: John (also called Jeb), Marvin, Neil, Dorothy (also called “Doro”), and Pauline. In 1953, his younger sister Pauline succumbed to leukemia at the age of 4 years.

The young George Bush spent his childhood and attended primary school in Midland. The family moved to Houston, Texas, in 1961. Bush was enrolled at Andover Academy in Massachusetts. While at Andover, he made a name for himself as an all-around athlete. He played baseball, basketball, and football. He occasionally got into trouble, but he completed high school and joined Yale University like his father and grandfather before him.

He studied history at Yale University. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1968 and enlisted with the Air National Guard. He served in Texas and Alabama until his discharge in 1974. He then joined Harvard University and studied for a Master’s degree in Business Administration. He graduated from Harvard in 1975 and moved to Texas to join the family oil business.

In 1977, George W. Bush founded a petroleum and energy company that he called Arbusto, which is Spanish for “bush.” The company investors included his own sister, Dorothy Bush. In the same year, George Bush met and married Laura Lane Welch. Laura was a teacher and librarian when she met George W. Bush.

In 1988, he moved his family to Washington, D.C., to serve as his father’s campaign adviser and media liaison for the George H. Bush Presidential Campaign. While in D.C., he put together a group of investors who bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989. For the next five years, he worked as the managing general partner for the Texas Rangers.

Political Life

In 1978, Bush took up his family’s long-held tradition of public service for the first time and ran for U.S. Representative of the 19th district in Texas. He lost the seat to Kent Hance. He returned to his oil business, which he sold in 1986.

He took up the political mantle for the second time in 1994 when he successfully ran for governor of Texas. He was re-elected as governor for a second term in 1998, becoming the first governor of Texas in history to win two consecutive four-year terms.

George W. Bush publically made known his interest in the presidency of the United States in 1999. He announced his candidacy for president from the Austin Governor’s Mansion in June, effectively launching his campaign for president. He won the Republican nomination that set him against the Democratic Party candidate, Albert Gore.

His Presidency

The early part of the campaign showed a Bush lead by a two-digit margin in the polls. The gap was fast closed by Vice President Al Gore. The presidential elections were so closely contested that it was hard to tell the winner from the loser. Although Al Gore won the popular vote by 543,895 votes, victory for the presidency was dependent on the Florida electoral votes. After a month of vote recounting and lawsuits, the Supreme Court decided on the election and confirmed Bush as president. He was inaugurated into presidency on January 20, 2001.

In his first year in office, the U.S. was hit with the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The terrorist attack on 9/11 cut short the lives of thousands of Americans. He responded by sending troops to Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, which was said to be harboring and financing Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.

The first term of the George W. Bush presidency was more about war. His most controversial decision yet was his invasion of Iraq. His reason was that Iraq was a future threat to the well-being of the United States.

His argument that his invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan made the world a safer place won him the debate against John Kerry in his bid for a second term as president. He went on to win his re-election for a second term.

Toward the end of his term, the U.S. was running two wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. It was a very costly undertaking, and the economy was underperforming as well. As a result, America was deep in debt. This sent the stock market into free fall, leading to massive layoffs and foreclosures. A $700,000,000,000 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was enacted to bail out the housing and banking sectors.

Post-Presidency

Bush returned to Texas as a private citizen in 2009 with a low approval rating and much unfinished business. In 2010, he teamed up with President Clinton in a fund-raising effort to offer relief after the Haiti earthquake. In 2013, he opened the George W. Bush Library and Museum on the Southern Methodist University grounds in Dallas, Texas. At the opening, he said that when people come to the library to research his administration, they will find out that he stayed true to his convictions. He has also written a memoir titled Decision Points.

 

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