Bush, George Walker (1946-), 43rd president of the United States. Bush, the son of former president George Bush, was born in New Haven, Conn., on July 6, 1946, and grew up in Midland, Tex. He attended the exclusive Phillips Academy--Andover (Mass.), and received degrees from Yale (B.A., 1968) and Harvard (M.B.A., 1975) universities.
During the Vietnam War era Bush served (1968-1973) as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. He married Laura Welsh, a librarian, in 1977. 

        Early Career 

        Bush was first elected to public office relatively late in life. Indeed, Bush admitted on a number of occasions that he lacked a focus in life until he reached his forties. In 1994, at age
48, he won election as governor of Texas. Prior to winning elective office Bush had a varied career. He spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working in the oil and gas business in        Texas. He did make one attempt at elective office, running as the Republican nominee for Congress in 1978 in Texas's 19th House district. He lost the race badly and turned his
attention back to oil prospecting, where his business ran into difficulties.

        In 1987-1988 Bush took a leave from private business to work on his father's presidential campaign as both an adviser and a speechwriter. After the elder Bush won the
presidency, George W. Bush turned his attention to major league baseball. He put together a group of investors to purchase the Texas Rangers team and ultimately became managing general partner of the team from 1989 to 1994. In 1994 Bush undertook what most observers believed was a futile campaign to unseat popular incumbent Democratic governor Ann Richards. During the campaign Richards had mocked Bush as intellectually vacuous, but her obvious contempt for the GOP (Grand Old Party, or Republican) candidate ultimately backfired. Bush proved to be an adept campaigner with strong voter appeal, and he won the election with 53.5% of the vote.

        Governor of Texas 

        During his first term as governor, Bush enjoyed growing popularity in Texas. The state enjoyed substantial prosperity, and the governor seemed to have a knack for pleasing almost
all constituencies. He held firm on antidrug and anticrime measures and on the death penalty, all of which pleased conservatives. He also gratified those same voters with large tax cuts and a far-reaching welfare reform program that required benefit recipients to work. Bush promoted substantial new spending on public education and bilingual programs, to the approval of many Democrats and Hispanic residents and immigrants. He substantially increased state funding for public schools while at the same time promoting the conservative
goals of educational choice through programs such as charter schools and teacher ccountability. 

        2000 Presidential Race

        The Texas governor ran for the GOP presidential nomination initially against a large field of candidates. His ability to attract major party and donor support (the latter on an
unprecedented scale) early on so demoralized the rest of the field that a number of prominent candidates dropped out of the race before a single primary had been held. It appeared to many that Bush would coast to an easy nomination and that the GOP would be united against the presumptive Democratic candidate, Vice Pres. Al Gore. But the Bush campaign and its backers did not anticipate the broad electoral appeal of Arizona senator John McCain, a decorated war hero and national leader for campaign finance reform. McCain decisively won the New Hampshire primary, and suddenly Bush was no longer the front-runner for the nomination by his party. Once again, however, Bush overcame the doubts that others had about his ability to run a good campaign, and he defeated McCain in a sequence of crucial primaries. The Bush-McCain battle at times was a bitter and personal one, and in defeat McCain waited a considerable amount of time before issuing a rather tepid endorsement of the victor. Many observers suggested that the contenders' battle had left Bush's candidacy permanently damaged. Bush proved those observers wrong when he began a quick climb in the national opinion polls and opened a strong lead against Vice President Gore. 

      Just prior to the GOP nominating convention in July 2000, Bush chose former defense secretary Richard Cheney as his running mate. Cheney strengthened the GOP ticket by
adding what Bush clearly lacked, foreign policy and defense-issues experience. Although widely considered weak and inexperienced in foreign policy, Bush offered an appealing set
of policy proposals on the domestic front--the more important area for influencing presidential election outcomes. His social security plan to partially privatize retirement accounts and his education initiatives, including school choice, enabled the GOP presidential nominee to challenge the traditional Democratic advantage on these issues. In line with long-standing Republican interests, he promised massive tax cuts as well. (See CHENEY, Richard B.) 

        Bush's large lead in the national polls began to wither after the Democratic National Convention in August. His campaign in fact seemed to lose focus, and many independent
observers and Republicans alike suggested that Bush was in real danger of losing. For weeks he seemed more interested in discussing campaign minutiae such as the format of the
candidate debates than the larger policy issues that had made him a strong candidate to begin with. Nonetheless, Bush's political fortunes changed for the better, especially after the first presidential candidates' debate on Oct. 3, 2000. Although polls showed that most voters believed that Gore had won the debate because of his superior command of the issues, those same polls suggested that the electorate found Bush to be the more likable and believable candidate. Bush's poll numbers went up substantially, and the Texas governor retained his lead at crucial junctures of the campaign. Bush further helped his cause in the second candidates' debate on October 11. A large number of the questions in that debate concerned foreign policy and defense issues, thereby testing Bush's abilities in areas long considered his weak spots. Although foreign policy experts did not widely praise his performance, Bush nonetheless proved himself to voters as capable enough to be a leader of the free world. Subsequent polls showed that voter concerns about his abilities were easily retired by his debate performance. He continued to hold his ground following the third debate on October 17. 

        Bush clearly benefited in the election from the public's desire for change after eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration. Voter surveys indicated that people perceived Bush as
the candidate of change and Gore the man who represented the status quo. With some uncertainty over the continued strength of the economy and stability abroad, voters seemed
to decide that a change in leadership was good for the country. Bush was narrowly declared the victor on the basis of the electoral vote, although he lost the popular vote. Because
of the extreme closeness of the results in Florida, however, where a decisive 25 electoral votes were at stake, an unprecedented recount was automatically triggered there under
state law. After more than two weeks had passed during which Gore campaign officials predicted vindication on the basis of manual recounts in selected balloting precincts, and
Bush representatives sued in the federal courts to enjoin the action, Bush was certified the winner. He was credited with 49.8% of the popular vote nationwide and 271 electors.
Gore, however, immediately challenged these results on the basis of apparent problems involving the balloting procedures used and an allegedly flawed certification process. The
matter quickly made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in a sharply divided ruling (5-4), decided the case in favor of Bush. 

Source: Mark J. Rozell, Catholic University of America
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