George W. Bush

George W. Bush — George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States (2001–2009). Before that he was the 46th Governor of Texas, serving from 1995 to 2000. George Walker Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut at Grace-New Haven Hospital (now Yale – New Haven Hospital), on July 6, 1946, the first child of George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush (née Pierce). He was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas, with his four siblings, Jeb, Neil, Marvin and Dorothy. Another younger sister, Robin, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U.S. Senator from Connecticut. Bush’s father, George H. W. Bush, served as U.S. Vice President from 1981 to 1989 and U.S. President from 1989 to 1993. Bush is of primarily English and German descent, and also has distant Welsh, Irish, French and Scottish ancestry.

In 1948, the family moved to, where President Bush grew up in Midland. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University in 1968 and then served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. In October 1973, Bush was discharged from the Texas Air National Guard and transferred to inactive duty in the Air Force Reserve. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974. President Bush received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School in 1975. He is the only U.S. President to have earned an MBA. Following graduation, he moved back to Midland and began a career in the energy business. After working on his father’s successful 1988 Presidential campaign, President Bush assembled a group of partners that purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989.

In 1977, he was introduced to Laura Welch, a school teacher and librarian by friends at a backyard barbecue. Bush proposed to her after a three-month courtship and they were married on November 5 of that year. The couple settled in Midland, Texas. In 1981, Laura Bush gave birth to fraternal twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, they graduated from high school in 2000 and from the University of Texas at Austin and Yale University, respectively, in 2004. The President and Mrs. Bush have a son-in-law, Henry Hager. The Bush family also includes two dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley.

In 1978, Bush ran for the House of Representatives from Texas’s 19th congressional district. His opponent, Kent Hance, portrayed him as being out of touch with rural Texans; Bush lost the election. He returned to the oil industry and began a series of small, independent oil exploration companies. He created Arbusto Energy, and later changed the name to Bush Exploration. In 1984, his company merged with the larger Spectrum 7, and Bush became chairman. The company was hurt by a decline in oil prices, and as a result, it folded into Harken Energy. Bush served on the board of directors for Harken. Bush moved his family to Washington, D.C. in 1988 to work on his father’s campaign for the U.S. presidency. He worked as a campaign adviser and served as liaison to the media, he assisted his father by campaigning across the country. In December 1991, Bush was one of seven people named by his father to run his father’s 1992 Presidential re-election campaign as “campaign advisor”. Returning to Texas after the successful campaign, he purchased a share in the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in April 1989, 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. The sale of Bush’s shares in the Rangers in 1998 brought him over $15 million from his initial $800,000 investment.

On November 8, 1994, George W. Bush was elected the 46th Governor of Texas. He became the first Governor in Texas history to be elected to consecutive 4-year terms when he was re-elected on November 3, 1998. In Austin, he earned a reputation for his bipartisan governing approach and his compassionate conservative philosophy, which was based on limited government, personal responsibility, strong families, and local control.

Since his election to the Presidency in 2000, President Bush has worked to extend freedom, opportunity, and security at home and abroad. His first initiative as President was the No Child Left Behind Act, a bipartisan measure that raised standards in schools, insisted on accountability in return for federal dollars, and led to measurable gains in achievement – especially among minority students. Faced with a recession when he took office, President Bush cut taxes for every federal income taxpayer, which helped set off an unprecedented 52 straight months of job creation. And President Bush modernized Medicare by adding a prescription drug benefit, a reform that provided access to needed medicine for 40 million seniors and other beneficiaries.

President Bush also implemented free trade agreements with more than a dozen nations; empowered America’s armies of compassion by creating a new Faith-based and Community Initiative; promoted a culture of life; improved air quality and made America’s energy supply more secure; set aside more ocean resources for environmental protection than any predecessor; transformed the military and nearly doubled government support for veterans; pioneered a new model of partnership in development that tied American foreign aid to reform and good governance; launched a global HIV/AIDS initiative that has spared millions of lives; expanded the NATO alliance; forged a historic new partnership with India; and appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The September 11 terrorist attacks were a major turning point in Bush’s presidency, when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil. President Bush responded with a comprehensive strategy to protect the American people. He led the most dramatic reorganization of the federal government since the beginning of the Cold War, reforming the intelligence community and establishing new institutions like the Department of Homeland Security. He built global coalitions to remove violent regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that threatened America; liberating more than 50 million people from tyranny. He recognized that freedom and hope are the best alternative to the extremist ideology of the terrorists, so he provided unprecedented American support for young democracies and dissidents in the Middle East and beyond. In the more than seven years after September 11, 2001, the United States was not attacked again.

Following the inauguration of Barack Obama, Bush and his family flew from Andrews Air Force Base to a homecoming celebration in Midland, Texas, following which they returned to their ranch in Crawford, Texas. They bought a home in the Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, where they planned to settle down.

Since leaving office, Bush has kept a relatively low profile. In 2009, Bush announced that he had begun writing a book, which is expected to be published under the title Decision Points in 2010. The book will focus on “12 difficult personal and political decisions” Bush faced during his presidency. During a pre-release appearance promoting the book, Bush commented on his view of his legacy as president, saying he considered his biggest accomplishment to be keeping “the country safe amid a real danger”, and his greatest failure to be his inability to secure the passage of Social Security reform.