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___Biography George W. Bushkeywords: George W. Bush Biography, George Walker Bush, President of the United States |
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The 43rd President of the United States |
George W. Bush |
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Intro George Walker Bush became the 43rd and current President of the United States of America in 2001. Immediately prior to attaining the office, he was Governor of the State of Texas. Bush was the winner of one of the closest elections in American history, defeating one of the other candidates, Democratic Vice President Albert Gore, by only 5 electoral votes. (See U.S. presidential election, 2000.) The election results were hotly contested for several weeks until December 12, 2000 when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush in the case Bush v. Gore. Bush took his oath of office and was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2001. Among his cabinet appointees have been: Colin Powell, Secretary of State; Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy; Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior; and Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services. His controversial appointee for US Attorney General was John Ashcroft. Condoleeza Rice is his National Security Advisor. Bush comes from a family with a long history of success in politics. His grandfather Prescott Bush served as Senator from Connecticut, his father George Bush was the 41st President of the United States, and his brother Jeb Bush is the Governor of Florida. Bush is the second U.S. President to be the son of a President; John Quincy Adams was the first. In order to differentiate President Bush from his father, George Bush, many Americans have used his middle initial to identify him: "W" or "Dubya" (phonetic pronunciation). Critics have often used this nickname to refer to him as "President Dubya." More extreme critics often incorporate his name into phrases that refer to his policies, e.g. "Dubya Dubya Three" to refer to his aggressive foreign policy and unilateral rejection of treaties. Personal Life and Education Bush was born in Connecticut and grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas. He has four younger siblings: Jeb, Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy. A younger sister, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953, at the age of three. He followed his father and grandfather in education at Phillips Academy and Yale University, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1968 and where he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon and the Skull and Bones Society. He then received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School. He is the first president with an MBA degree. Bush enrolled in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War and served as an F-102 pilot for a period until he was grounded after failing to appear for a mandatory physical exam and drug test. Controversy exists over whether he broke the law by going Absent Without Leave (AWOL). Bush insists that he did serve as a pilot during his entire tour of duty. However, no documents confirming this have been made available. He had serious problems with alcohol for years after college, including a drunk driving arrest in Maine in 1976. Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and in 1986, he foreswore alcohol and became a born-again Christian, converting from Episcopalian Christianity to his wife's religion, Methodism. They have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. Business and Political Career Bush began his career in the oil industry in 1975 when he formed the oil and gas exploration company Arbusto Energy and continued working in the energy industry until 1986. His forays into the industry were disastrous, losing millions of dollars. In 1978 Bush ran for the House of Representatives and was defeated by the Democratic State Senator Kent Hance. After working on his father's successful 1988 presidential campaign, he assembled a group of partners from his father's close friends and purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. Bush was involved in controversial stock trades while serving on the board of directors of Harken Energy Corp. in 1990. Bush has claimed that he sold Harken stock on the assumption of a positive corporate outlook. However, on April 20 of that year, company President Mikel D. Faulkner told the directors that the company was facing grave financial problems, including a serious cash crisis that was exasperated by pressure from lenders, as well as a slumping oil market. After receiving this dire news, in June Bush sold 212,140 shares of Harken stock. Shortly thereafter, on August 20, Harken reported a $23.2 million quarterly loss. Bush waited 36 weeks to file an SEC form about his sale. An SEC investigation, conducted while Bush's father was President of the United States, declared "the investigation has been terminated as to the conduct of Mr. Bush, and that, at this time, no enforcement action is contemplated with respect to him." but the investigation's termination "must in no way be construed as indicating that the party has been exonerated or that no action may ultimately result". As President, Bush has refused to authorize the SEC to release its full report on the investigation. When reporters asked Bush about his Harken activities, he told them that they "need to look back on the director's minutes", although this would in fact be impossible because Harken has declined to release its board records ever since questions were first raised concerning Bush's activities there. The sale of Harken stock helped pay off a loan for his purchase of a partial interest in the Texas Rangers. He served as managing general partner of the Rangers until he was elected Governor of Texas on November 8, 1994 over incumbent Ann Richards. When the team was sold in 1998, Bush had earned $15,000,000. He went on to become the first Texas governor to be elected to consecutive four-year terms. His tenure in office featured a reputation for bipartisan leadership, and some controversy, even international controversy. During Bush's tenure, Texas saw a sharp rise in capital punishment. His career is remarkable for his rapid political ascent; for example, both the previous president, Bill Clinton, and Bush's opponent, Al Gore, had spent their entire adult lives in politics. Public Image and Personality In both America and Britain, Bush is commonly referred to as "Dubya", in imitation of his pronunciation of the middle initial of his name. As the elder Bush child, "Junior" is a more common nickname with close associates. Bush himself bestows nicknames on nearly everyone he meets, e.g. Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada, longest-serving leader of the G8 with three and a half decades of experience in the Canadian cabinet, is reputedly "Dino" (short for "Dinosaur"). This flippancy sometimes infects others and can backfire either on Bush or on them. In 2000, Bush was overheard privately referring to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a "major league asshole". While opinion is mixed as to whether Clymer is in fact an "asshole", he had previously published editorial comment which directly insulted Mr. Bush. In another famous incident in 2002, Jean Chretien's press secretary, exasperated after a Bush speech at NATO in Europe, was heard to say "what a moron". The reputed lack of intellect of Mr. Bush has caused this word to be used often by his opponents - it was repeated in fact over and over during press coverage of the moron incident, especially on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the US Cable News Network. The Canadian Global News even went so far as to dissect the dictionary meaning of "moron" with a panel on the air, to decide whether Bush met the criteria. The panel was split along predictable political lines. As these incidents suggest, criticism of Bush the candidate and Bush the President have sometimes centered less around policy than on the perception that he was not intelligent. This perception was based on his dissipated youth, his constant verbal gaffes, his lack of interest in policy details, and also on his embrace of Texan culture. See Internet humor/George W. Bush lexicon for an example of the association of Bush with stereotypes of Texans. Questions about Bush's intelligence also became an issue during the 2000 election. Some supporters of Bush's chief opponent in that campaign, Al Gore, often portrayed Bush as intellectually inferior to Gore. Some have attempted to compare their current respective intellectual capacities by going decades back to their academic achievements. According to that criterion, Bush's academic record and background was by and large comparable to Gore's. For example, Bush's verbal SAT score was 566, Al Gore's was 625. In addition, Gore received lower grades in his sophomore year at Harvard University than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale, and Gore earned no degrees higher than a Bachelor of Arts in Government, while Bush earned a Master's degree in Business Administration from Harvard. However, neither the correlation between SAT verbal scores and academic excellence, nor between academic excellence and intelligence, can be established; for example, Rhodes Scholar Bill Bradley's SAT was a low 485, and an academic record does take into account the difficulty of the classes taken or other factors that might impinge on a college record. Following the September 11 attacks, President Bush enjoyed the highest approval ratings in history. High approval ratings are historically common for war time Presidents. Bush maintained his high approval ratings a year later, and as of November, 2002, had the highest approval rating of any President during a mid-term election, since Dwight Eisenhower. However, one poll showed that only a minority of the electorate would vote to reelect him, thus suggesting that the support may be more for his office as commander-in-chief than for him as a leader. That same poll showed that "nearly half either say they'll likely back a Democrat, or that their choice 'depends' on Bush's rival." Democratic and Republican pollsters believe that his campaign for reelection would be as competitive as the 2000 race was. Some polls, on the other hand, show Bush winning easily against likely Democratic rivals such as senator John Kerry, former first lady Hillary Clinton, and his 2000 opponent, former Vice President Al Gore. Some also suggested that Republican Party's historic victory in the 2002 mid-term elections were due to Bush's presumed popularity. Historically, the party in the White House loses seats. But in 2002, during what was expected to be an extremely tight election, the Republicans ended up gaining seats in both houses, and retaking control of the Senate in the process. The party in control of the White House had not gained seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in a mid-term election for 100 years. However, others have argued that the Democrats lost the election because of their timidity in criticizing Bush as a "wartime" President. A New York Times poll taken a month after the midterm elections showed 37% of voters pleased with the outcome, as opposed to nearly 50% who had been pleased with the outcome 1994 midterm election. The poll also found that voters disagreed with Bush's positions on a number of important issues, including the environment (Source: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia) |
 Born: July 6, 1946, New Haven Term of Office: Jan 20, 2001 First Lady: Laura Welch Pierce Hometown: Midland, Texas Profession: Businessman Political Party: Republican Vice President: Richard (Dick) B. Cheney President Bush page at the White House Official Biography of President George W. Bush President Bush Speeches & Statements Biography of Saddam Hussein ...back to the war against Iraq page | |
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