George W. Bush

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Born into the Bush family, George W. Bush attended public schools in Midland and Houston before moving to Piney Point Village for two years at The Kinkaid School. He then attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he served as head cheerleader and played baseball. From 1964 to 1968, he studied history at Yale University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts while serving as president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and joining the Skull and Bones society. He characterized himself as an average student with a GPA of 77 for his first three years. In May 1968, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, a reserve component of the U.S. Air Force, flying Convair F-102s from Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston. After drilling with the Alabama Air National Guard in late 1972 and early 1973 while working on Winton M. Blount's Senate campaign, he was grounded from flying for missing a physical exam. He received an honorable discharge on November 21, 1974, remaining the most recent president to have served in the military.

In Their Own Story

In 1978, Bush ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to Kent Hance with 46.8 percent of the vote. He later moved to Washington, D.C., in 1988 to serve as a campaign advisor for his father's presidential run and was named an advisor for the 1992 re-election effort. In business, he founded Arbusto Energy in 1977, which merged into Harken Energy Corporation in 1984. By April 1989, he arranged for a group to purchase the Texas Rangers for $89 million, investing $500,000 himself as managing general partner until 1998, when his share sale yielded over $15 million. Declaring candidacy in 1994 alongside his brother Jeb's Florida run, he focused on welfare reform, tort reform, crime reduction, and education. After winning the Republican primary, he defeated incumbent Ann Richards. As governor, he signed concealed weapon permits, sponsored tort reform, increased education funding, set higher school standards, reformed criminal justice, and helped make Texas a leading producer of wind-generated electricity.

Reader's Guide

Bush won the 2000 presidential election by defeating Al Gore in a narrow Electoral College victory that required the Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore to stop a recount in Florida, despite losing the popular vote. In his first term, he signed major tax cuts and the No Child Left Behind Act while pushing for socially conservative measures like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The September 11 attacks reshaped his administration, leading to the war on terror, the Department of Homeland Security, the invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, and the signing of the Patriot Act. In 2003, he initiated the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and ordered the invasion of Iraq citing weapons of mass destruction claims. He was re-elected in 2004 against John Kerry, winning the popular vote. His second term saw failed Social Security reform attempts, appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and criticism over Hurricane Katrina and Abu Ghraib torture revelations. Amid unpopularity, Democrats regained Congress in 2006. He launched an Iraq troop surge in January 2007 and addressed the Great Recession with emergency measures like the Troubled Asset Relief Program before leaving office as one of the least popular presidents, though public opinion improved post-presidency.

Did You Know?

• Bush is the only U.S. president to have earned a Master of Business Administration degree.
• He served as the head cheerleader at Phillips Academy during his senior year and was also a member of Yale's 1st XV rugby union team.
• His initial $606,000 investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team grew to over $15 million when he sold his shares in 1998.
• Bush received the highest recorded approval ratings following the September 11 attacks but left office with some of the lowest ratings in U.S. history during the 2008 financial crisis.
• He lost the popular vote in the 2000 election but won via a narrow Electoral College victory that involved the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore.