In the 1992 election Bush lost to Governor Bill Clinton, an election notable for the involvement of Texas billionaire and third-party candidate Ross Perot, who won nearly a fifth of the
Trang 1In the 1992 election Bush lost to Governor Bill
Clinton, an election notable for the involvement
of Texas billionaire and third-party candidate Ross
Perot, who won nearly a fifth of the popular vote
despite frequent decisions not to run Key to Bush’s
loss were the recession, the perception that he was out
of touch with the common man (particularly when
compared with the genial Clinton), and the desire for
change to reflect a new state of affairs in the wake of
the cold war
Further reading: Duffy, Michael, and Dan Goodgame
March-ing In Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; Green, John Robert
The Presidency of George Bush Lawrence: Kansas
Univer-sity Press, 2000; Kelley, Kitty The Family: The True Story
of the Bush Dynasty Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2004;
Smith, Jean Edward George Bush’s War New York: Henry
Holt, 1992
Bill Kte’pi
Bush, George W.
(1946– ) U.S president
George Walker Bush was the 43rd president of the
United States, elected in 2000 and serving from 2001 to
2008 His presidency began and remained in
controver-sy, from the issues surrounding the 2000 election to the
aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
The oldest son of President George H W Bush, Bush was raised in Texas where his father had moved
to start his Zapata Oil corporation, and like other men
in his family, attended Yale University where he earned
a degree in history and was a member of the Skull and Bones society While his father and grandfather had served
in the navy during wartime, he served in the Air
Nation-al Guard during the Vietnam War Bush has described this period of his life as irresponsible and informed by bad choices, characterized by excessive drinking After
a failed congressional bid, he spent most of the 1980s working in the oil industry before purchasing a share of the Texas Rangers baseball team, of which he served as general manager from 1989 to 1994
He ran for governor of Texas in 1994, the same year his younger brother Jeb ran for governor of Florida; Jeb lost, but was elected in 1998, the same year George won his reelection by a landslide As governor of Texas, Bush was a noted conservative State executions rose
to higher levels than any other state in modern Ameri-can history, and the line between church and state was worn thin when Bush declared June 10, 2000, to be
“Jesus Day,” a state holiday in memory of Jesus and encouraging reaching out to those in need At the time, Bush was running for president; in an early debate pre-ceding the Republican primaries, he named Jesus (iden-tifying him only by the religious title “Christ”) as the political philosopher he most identified with He won the Republican nomination, picking Dick Cheney—his father’s secretary of defense—as his running mate Voting irregularities in Florida, where Jeb was still governor, made it difficult to determine whether Bush
or Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, had won the state, and the electoral vote in the rest of the country was close enough that the Florida votes would be the tiebreakers Less than one-tenth of 1 percent separated the two can-didates, requiring a series of recounts both by hand and machine, and precipitating a national controversy over reports of vote tampering, problematic ballot designs and the handling of overseas ballots, and the coincidence
of a Bush governing the state The U.S Supreme Court finally ruled that with no time remaining to require a thorough and uniform recount, the state’s then-official count—in favor of Bush—would be upheld Gore con-ceded the election rather than fight the matter further More than any other president in recent memory, even in light of Ronald Reagan’s cold war rhetoric and its resemblance to “fire and brimstone” sermons, Bush has worn his faith on his sleeve, making frequent reference to God and Christian matters in his speeches After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush
George H W Bush and King Fahd (seated, right) meet in the Royal
Pavilion in Saudi Arabia to discuss the situation in Iraq in 1990.