Presidents: George W. Bush

George W. Bush was the 43rd President and the son of a former president, George H. W. Bush. Following the September 11 attacks, he launched the War on Terror.

George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut. He was the first child born to George Herbert Walker and Barbara Pierce Bush. He was primarily raised in Texas.

His younger sister, Robin, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953. He had four additional siblings, Jeb, Neil, Marvin and Dorothy.

In high school he played baseball and was the head cheerleader. Upon graduation, he attended Yale University, graduating from there in 1968. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1975 with a M.B.A. degree. He is the only U.S. president to have earned an M.B.A.

In May 1968, Bush was commissioned into the Texas Air National Guard.He was honorably discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974.

In 1977, Bush established Arbusto Energy, a small oil exploration company, although it did not begin operations until the following year. He later changed the name to Bush Exploration. In 1984, his company merged with the larger Spectrum 7, and Bush became chairman.

At a backyard barbecue in 1977, friends introduced him to Laura Lane Welch, a school teacher and librarian. Bush proposed to her after a three-month courtship, and they married on November 5 of that year. On November 25, 1981, Laura Bush gave birth to fraternal twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna.

In 1978, Bush ran for the House of Representatives from Texas’s 19th congressional district, but lost.

Prior to his marriage, Bush had multiple episodes of alcohol abuse. Bush says his wife has had a stabilizing effect on his life,and attributes to her influence his 1986 decision to give up alcohol.

Bush moved his family to Washington, D.C., in 1988 to work on his father’s campaign for the U.S. presidency. He served as a campaign adviser and liaison to the media, and assisted his father by campaigning across the country.

In April 1989, Bush purchased a share in the Texas Rangers baseball franchise, where he served as managing general partner for five years. He actively led the team’s projects and regularly attended its games, often choosing to sit in the open stands with fans.

In 1994, Bush ran for Governor of Texas. His campaign focused on four themes: welfare reform, tort reform, crime reduction, and education improvement. His brother was also campaigning for Governor of Florida. George won his campaign, but Jeb did not become Governor of Florida until 1999. Bush used a budget surplus to push through Texas’s largest tax-cut, $2 billion. In 1998, he won re-election.

In June 1999, he announced his intention to run for president. He won the Republican National Convention and asked Dick Chaney to be his running mate. He campaigned against Al Gore and the election results were so close, especially in Florida, that they had to be recounted. Bush was the first person to win an American presidential election with fewer national votes than another candidate since Benjamin Harrison in 1888.

George W. Bush was sworn in on January 20, 2001. His ambitions were initially for a domestic agenda, but that changed eight months into his presidency with the September 11 terrorist attacks.

One of the administration’s early major initiatives was the No Child Left Behind Act, which aimed to measure and close the gap between rich and poor student performance, provide options to parents with students in low-performing schools, and target more federal funding to low-income schools.

The September 11 terrorist attacks were a major turning point in Bush’s presidency. That evening, he addressed the nation from the Oval Office, promising a strong response to the attacks. On September 14, he visited Ground Zero and

addressed the gathering via a megaphone while standing on a heap of rubble, to much applause: “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

The War of Terrorism began, expanding to invasions in both Afghanistan and Iraq and the overturn and death of Saddam Hussein.

In 2005, he began his second term. Hurricane Katrina, one of the most damaging natural disasters in U.S. history, struck early in Bush’s second term.

He also dealth with Medicare changes, prescription drug benefit and AIDS relief and passed the Patriot Act.

In December 2007, the United States entered the longest post–World War II recession. Many economists and world governments determined that the situation became the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Bush has been an avid reader throughout his adult life, preferring biographies and histories. During his time as president, Bush read the Bible daily, 14 Lincoln biographies and 186 books in the last three years of his presidency.

Bush has received both the highest approval ratings after the September 11 attacks and the lowest with the 2008 financial crisis.

For his part, Bush said in 2013, “Ultimately history will judge the decisions I made, and I won’t be around because it will take time for the objective historians to show up. So I am pretty comfortable with it. I did what I did.”

Upon leaving the White House in 2009, George and Laura Bush returned to their home in Texas.

Since leaving office he often makes appearances at events in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area, especially at the Texas Rangers game.

In 2010, he released his memoirs and in 2014, a biography of his father. In 2017, he released his own portraits of veterans in the book Portraits of Courage.

In January 2010, at President Obama’s request, Bush and Bill Clinton established the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund to raise contributions for relief and recovery efforts following the 2010 Haiti earthquake earlier that month.

On May 2, 2011, President Obama called Bush, who was at a restaurant with his wife, to inform him that Osama bin Laden had been killed.

George Bush also enjoys playing golf and has taken up oil painting since leaving the White House.

President Bush’s legacy continues to develop today. Several historians and commentators hold the view that Bush was one of the most consequential presidents in American history.

Bryon Williams of The Huffington Post referred to Bush as “the most noteworthy president since FDR” and said that the Patriot Act “increased authority of the executive branch at the expense of judicial opinions about when searches and seizures are reasonable” as evidence. Bush’s administration presided over the largest tax cuts since the Reagan administration, and his homeland security reforms proved to be the most significant expansion of the federal government since the Great Society.

Only the passage of time will reveal his true influence on the United States.

He continues to be present at various memorials, funerals, inaugurations, openings and other events of significant importance.