Background

George Bush was born on November 30, 2018, in Milton, Massachusetts. Born to a prominent New England family, George Herbert Walker Bush enjoyed a privileged childhood and a close-knit family. Later in life, Bush would say, "Family is not a neutral word for me. It's a powerful word, full of emotional resonance. I was part of a strong family growing up, and I have been fortunate to have a strong family grow up around me."

His parents, firm believers in the maxim that "from those to whom much is given, much is expected," deeply influenced their second son. By day, his father, Prescott Bush, was a partner in a prestigious Wall Street investment firm, Brown Brothers Harriman. By night, he served as moderator of Greenwich, Connecticut's town meetings. While his father bestowed on young George a sense of duty, his mother, Dorothy Bush, instilled in him a sense of humility. She warned her children against bragging or having "too many 'I's' in that sentence." Prescott and Dorothy raised their five children to be a close-knit group.

Education

The young Bush grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended private schools there and in Andover, Massachusetts. Inseparable from his older brother, Bush begged his parents to allow him to join Prescott at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, a year early. Young George Bush headed off to the prestigious prep school where one of the school's mottoes, "not for self," matched his parents' own values. His junior year, Bush contracted a serious staph infection, which put him in the hospital for six weeks. Bush decided to repeat the year. His brothers and sisters have referred to this as a defining moment in his life: "the making of George Bush." Now with students his own age, he came into his own. He was elected senior class president, captain of the baseball and soccer teams, and was a member of a number of other clubs. His sister Nancy would later recall, "I was terribly popular for a while - everyone wanted to come to our house because they might run into George." Upon graduation from Phillips Academy, Andover, he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. He served from 1942 to 1944 as a torpedo bomber pilot on aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II, flying some 58 combat missions; he was shot down by the Japanese in 1944. For his service, he won the Distinguished Flying Cross. In January 1945 he married Barbara Pierce (Barbara Bush).

Following the family tradition, Bush attended Yale University, graduating in 1948. Bush excelled at sports and captained the Yale baseball team. His membership in the Skull and Bones secret society there later became an issue that his critics used as evidence of elitism.

Career

Rejecting a position in his father’s firm, Bush moved to Texas and became a salesman of oil field supplies. He co-founded the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company (1951), the Zapata Petroleum Corporation (1953), and the Zapata Off-Shore Company (1954).

Meanwhile, back in Connecticut, Bush's father was elected to the United States Senate in 1952. Following his father's example, after having made enough money to secure his family's future, Bush started to explore politics. In 1962, after a decade in office, Bush's father, Prescott Bush, retired from the United States Senate. That same year, his son made his political debut as chairman of the Republican Party in Houston, Texas. George Bush was soon seen as a bright light in the Texas Republican Party. After an unsuccessful United States Senate campaign in 1964, Bush won a seat in the United States Congress in 1966.

He gave up the seat in 1970 to run again for the Senate. He was defeated again, this time by Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, Jr. Shortly after his defeat, Bush was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon to serve as United States ambassador to the United Nations (1971–1972). In 1973, as the Watergate Scandal was erupting, Bush became chairman of the Republican National Committee. In this post, he stood by Nixon until August 1974, when he joined a growing chorus of voices calling on the president to resign.

Later in 1974, President Gerald R. Ford, who had nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president, named a disappointed Bush chief of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing - which was then the senior United States representative in China, because relations between the two countries did not permit the exchange of ambassadors. He served in this capacity until he was asked to head the Central Intelligence Agency in 1976. As CIA director, Bush took steps to ensure that the agency’s activities did not exceed congressional authorization. When Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, Bush resigned and returned to Texas, where in 1979 he announced his candidacy for president.

After declaring that his opponent, the more popular and conservative Ronald W. Reagan, would have to practice "voodoo economics" in order to increase federal revenue by lowering taxes, Bush abandoned his campaign for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in May 1980 and threw his support behind Reagan, who then chose Bush as his running mate. The Reagan-Bush ticket defeated the Democratic ticket of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale by a wide margin in the 1980 presidential election. Bush won Reagan’s loyalty, and the two were reelected in 1984 for a second term in an even greater landslide.

An early and leading candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency in 1988, he secured the nomination and, together with his running mate, Dan Quayle, defeated the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, in the general election, winning 53 percent of the popular vote to Dukakis’s 46 percent. Although Bush had called for "a kinder, and gentler, nation" in his speech accepting the nomination, his campaign was negative, at one point criticizing Dukakis with a phrase - "card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union" - reminiscent of that used by Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the early 1950s. Bush also won supporters with his pledge to continue the Reagan economic program, repeatedly stating: "Read my lips, no new taxes!"

Upon assuming office, Bush made a number of notable senior staff appointments, among them that of General Colin Powell to chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. His other important policymakers included James Baker as secretary of state and William Bennett as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In the course of his presidency, he also nominated two Supreme Court justices, David H. Souter (to replace the retiring William J. Brennan) and the more controversial Clarence Thomas (to replace Thurgood Marshall).

From the outset of his presidency, however, Bush demonstrated far more interest in foreign than domestic policy. On December 20, 1989, he ordered a military invasion of Panama in order to topple that country’s leader, General Manuel Noriega, who - though at one time of service to the U.S. government - had become notorious for his brutality and his involvement in the drug trade. The invasion, which lasted four days, resulted in hundreds of deaths, mostly of Panamanians, and the operation was denounced by both the Organization of American States and the UN General Assembly.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Bush led a worldwide UN-approved embargo against Iraq to force its withdrawal and sent a United States military contingent to Saudi Arabia to counteract Iraqi pressure and intimidation. Perhaps his most significant diplomatic achievement was the skillful construction of a coalition of western European and Arab states against Iraq. Over the objections of those who favored restraint, Bush increased the United States military presence in the Persian Gulf region to about 500,000 troops within a few months. When Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait, he authorized a United States-led air offensive that began on January 16–17, 1991. The ensuing Persian Gulf War culminated in an Allied ground offensive in late February that decimated Iraq’s armies and restored Kuwait’s independence.

Bush’s policy reversal on taxation and his inability to turn around the economy - his failure to put across what he called "the vision thing" to the American public - ultimately proved his downfall. Bush ran a lackluster campaign for reelection in 1992. He faced a fierce early challenge from Patrick Buchanan in the Republican primary and then lost votes in the general election to third-party candidate Ross Perot. Meanwhile, Bush’s Democratic opponent, Bill Clinton of Arkansas, hammered away at the issue of the deteriorating economy. In the oft-repeated words of Clinton strategist James Carville, the key issue of the day was "the economy, stupid!" Bush, the first vice president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 to succeed directly to the presidency via an election rather than the death of the incumbent, lost to Clinton by a popular vote of 37 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent; Perot garnered an impressive 19 percent of the vote. In trying to explain how Bush - always an active man and an avid jogger - could have run such a lifeless campaign and performed so poorly in formal debates with Clinton, some analysts postulated that Bush was hampered by medication he had been taking to treat his atrial fibrillation, reportedly caused by Graves disease. Bush’s campaign managers vehemently denied the theory.

Bush and his wife, Barbara, returned to Houston on the day of Clinton’s inauguration and had little formal involvement with the Republican Party thereafter. His son George W. Bush, a popular two-term governor of Texas, successfully ran for president in 2000, becoming the second son of a president to win the White House; the first was John Quincy Adams in 1824. Another son, Jeb, served as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007 and unsuccessfully ran for president in 2016. In 2005 former presidents Bush and Clinton appeared in a series of televised advertisements to raise funds for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005). Bush was named UN special envoy for the disaster resulting from the Indian Ocean tsunami. In 2011 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Achievements

• Bush, a World War II naval aviator and Texas oil industry executive, began his political career in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1967. During the 1970s, he held a variety of government posts, including CIA director. In 1988, Bush defeated Democratic rival Michael Dukakis to win the White House. In-office, he launched successful military operations against Panama and Iraq.
  
  On the domestic front, Bush, a moderate conservative, signed such important pieces of legislation as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. He made two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court: David Souter in 1990 and Clarence Thomas in 1991.

Works

More photos

• book

  • All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings

    (Though reticent in public, George Bush openly shared his ...)

    1999

Religion

Bush is an Episcopalian. He wore his religious beliefs on his sleeve during his political career, often invoking God and faith as synonymous with American values. He said: "Americans are the most religious people on Earth. And we have always instinctively sensed that God’s purpose was bound up with the cause of liberty."

Politics

Bush's experiences at the United Nations, in China, and at the CIA influenced his foreign policy approach. When the Cold War came to a quiet end in the first half of the Bush presidency, many wondered what this seismic shift would mean. The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union had defined international relations for much of the 20th century. When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in the summer of 1990, Bush saw an opportunity to set a new standard for international cooperation in the post-Cold War world - a world in which the strong nations stood up for and protected smaller, weaker ones. He assembled an unprecedented coalition to condemn Saddam Hussein's actions. The Gulf War - Operation Desert Storm - succeeded in driving Iraq out of Kuwait with minimal American casualties. As a result, Bush enjoyed the highest presidential polling numbers recorded at the time.

Bush supported Mikhail Gorbachev's program of Perestroika, or economic and political restructuring, in the Soviet Union and led a coalition of Western nations that opposed a coup attempt against Gorbachev in August 1991. But Bush opposed the efforts of some republics within the Soviet Union to secede. Gorbachev was succeeded in power by Boris Yeltsin, and the Soviet Union was transformed into the Commonwealth of Independent States at the beginning of 1992. Bush then began to work with Yeltsin and his team of free-market reformers on programs of aid, trade, and nuclear disarmament.

On the strength of his victory over Iraq and his competent leadership in foreign affairs, Bush’s approval rating soared to about 90 percent. This popularity soon waned, however, as an economic recession that began in late 1990 persisted into 1992. Throughout this period, Bush showed much less initiative in domestic affairs, though he initially worked with Congress in efforts to reduce the federal government’s continuing large budget deficits. A moderate conservative, he made no drastic departures from Reagan’s policies - except in taxes. In 1990, in a move that earned him the enmity of his conservative supporters and the distrust of many voters who had backed him in 1988, he reneged on his "read my lips" pledge and raised taxes in an attempt to cope with the soaring budget deficit.

Views

Bush opposed abortion and gun control. He used the veto to prohibit the District of Columbia from funding abortions for poor women and to kill a bill that would have guaranteed unpaid "parental leave" to parents of newborn children.

Bush's life code, as he once put it in a letter to his mother, was "Tell the truth. Don't blame people. Be strong. Do your best. Try hard. Forgive. Stay the course. All that kind of thing."

George H. W. Bush believed in the essential goodness of the American people and in the nobility of the American experiment. He viewed politics as a means to public service and public service as the highest of callings.

Quotations: "It is possible to tell things by a handshake. I like the "looking in the eye" syndrome. It conveys interest. I like the firm, though not bone-crushing shake. The bone crusher is trying too hard to "macho it.: The clammy or diffident handshake - fairly or unfairly - get me off to a bad start with a person."

"Think about every problem, every challenge, we face. The solution to each starts with education."

"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the identity of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."

"I will never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don't care what the facts are."

"A President is neither prince nor pope, and I don't seek a window on men's souls. In fact, I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easy-goingness about each other's attitudes and way of life."

"There is nothing more fulfilling than to serve your country and your fellow citizens and to do it well. And that's what our system of self-government depends on."

Membership

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  Delta Kappa Epsilon , United States

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  Skull and Bones , United States

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  National Rifle Association , United States

Personality

"George is not John Wayne," observed Republican media consultant Roger Ailes. "He’s more like Gary Cooper in High Noon. He’s very gentle. He would much rather talk than fight. But he’s capable of taking care of himself." After eight years of quiet loyalty to Ronald Reagan, during which he developed a reputation for reserve and deference, Bush emerged as a tough, tenacious campaigner in 1988 and as president earned a grudging respect even from longtime critics for his resolute leadership in the Persian Gulf War. During such times of crisis, Bush pointedly hewed to a normal work and recreation schedule to avoid the appearance of a president under siege. In preparing for a televised wartime address to the nation, he had to delete certain references to civilian causalities, according to Newsweek because he choked up with emotion on the lines during rehearsals and did not want to convey an image of weakness to Iraq. Bush adopted an informal diplomatic style, building personal relationships with other world leaders and keeping in frequent telephone contact with them.

As a president, he was more accessible to the press and less scripted than his predecessor. He liked to hold impromptu news conferences with very little formal preparation. He was more persuasive in small groups than before large audiences. He maintained many of the friendships of his wartime and college years for the rest of his life. Longtime friends described him as warm, witty, engaging, generous, considerate, unpretentious, and unerringly polite, but also flighty at times. "He gets giddy when he’s on a roll," noted John White, a friend from Texas and former Democratic national chairman. "George has always been kind of like popcorn on a hot griddle." His awkward gestures, often restrained in public were liked by one observer to those of an errant toy soldier from a Nutcracker ballet chorus. Bush described himself as practical, pragmatic, and down-to-earth. During his twenties and early thirties, Bush was a classic Type A personality, maintaining a breakneck schedule as an independent oilman and worrying constantly over business details. He changes his lifestyle only after a bleeding intestinal ulcer attack literally knocked him to the floor and Dr. Lillo Crain of the Texas Medical Center warned him that he was headed for an early grave. After that he learned to pace himself and ignore problems outside his control.

In a 1995 interview, George H. W. Bush was asked to name a book that had inspired him. In his answer, Bush briefly mentioned Catcher in the Rye and Gentleman’s Agreement but reserved a lot of praise for Tolstoy’s War and Peace. "I had to read that in school," Bush told the interviewer. "It was an inspiring, lengthy treatise. I read it twice. It taught me a lot about life."

Physical Characteristics: Bush stood 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighed about 195 pounds, and had blue eyes and straight brown hair streaked with gray. His most distinctive feature was an uneven grin, a Bush family trademark borne by his father and eldest son. He bore a scar on his forehead from a prep school soccer accident and another on the back of the hand from a bluefish bite. He was left-handed. He was slightly hard of hearing ever since he piloted noisy aircraft during World War II. He was allergic to bee stings and suffered from mild arthritis of the hips, a mild form of glaucoma, and a slightly enlarged prostate. In 1960 he underwent surgery for an intestinal ulcer. In 1989 he had a benign cyst removed from the middle finger of his right hand. In May 1991 he was hospitalized for two days for an irregular heartbeat caused by Graves Disease, a disorder in which the immune system attacks the thyroid gland, which in turn becomes hyperactive. Mrs. Bush suffers from the same disease.

Bush spoke with a slight lisp and tends to talk rapidly in a moderately high-pitched voice, which drops naturally when he forced himself to slow down. The spare syntax of his speech, commonly devoid of first-person pronouns and replete with phrases posing as complete sentences, was the object of widespread parody. Bush dressed conservatively.

Moderate in temperament, Bush was more traditionally conservative than many of his contemporaries understood, in the sense that he sought above all to conserve what was good about the world as he found it. For George Bush conservatism entailed prudence and pragmatism; he eschewed the sudden and the visionary. He spoke with his strong, big hands, making fists to underscore a point, waving dismissively to deflect unwelcome subjects or to suggest that someone was, as he would put it, "way out there," beyond the mainstream, beyond reason, beyond Bush.

George H. W. Bush was a uniquely good man in a political universe where good men were hard to come by. He was a decent man who did what it took to win, a gentlemanly sportsman who was a relentless competitor, a statesman who believed that campaigning was one thing, governing quite other. Bush made no apologies for his preference for action over ideology. Besides, he tended to find a middle course between extremes.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." - Former Texas Governor Ann Richards

Interests

• golf, skydiving

• Politicians

  Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan

• Writers

  Leo Tolstoy, J. D. Salinger, Laura Z. Hobson

• Artists

  Jim Woodson, Sedrick Huckaby, Roger Winter, Bonnie Flood

• Sport & Clubs

  baseball, soccer

• Athletes

  Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Yao Ming, J.J. Watt

• Music & Bands

  The Beach Boys, George Strait, Reba McEntire

Connections

While he was in the Navy, George Bush married Barbara Pierce. The couple met at a country club dance during the Christmas holidays. The couple had six children: George, John, Neil, Marvin, Dorothy, and Robin, who died of leukemia at a young age.

Father:

Prescott Bush

Mother:

Barbara Pierce

Wife:

Barbara Pierce

Daughter:

Dorothy Bush Koch

Son:

Jeb Bush

Daughter:

Pauline Robinson Bush

Son:

George Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.

Son:

Marvin Bush

Son:

Neil Mallon Bush

colleague:

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan appointed Bush a vice president.

colleague:

James Baker

Baker managed George Bush’s successful campaign for the presidential election of 1988 and thereupon was chosen a secretary of state.

colleague:

Nicholas Frederick Brady

Nicholas Frederick Brady was the United States Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

colleague:

Richard Lewis (Dick) Thornburgh

Dick Thornburgh served as the United States attorney general from 1988 to 1991.

colleague:

Clayton Yeutter

Clayton Yeutter was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Marketing and Consumer Services from 1973 to 1974, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity Programs from 1974 to 1975, Deputy Special Representative for Trade Negotiations from 1975 to 1977, United States Trade Representative from 1985 to 1989, United States Secretary of Agriculture (under President George H. W. Bush) from 1989 to 1991, Chairman for the Republican National Committee from 1991 until 1992, Counselor to the President in 1992, and a Senior Advisor at the international law firm Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C.

colleague:

Robert Mosbacher

Robert Mosbacher served as a United States Secretary of Commerce under George H. W. Bush.

colleague:

Elizabeth Hanford Dole

Elizabeth Hanford Dole was appointed a Secretary of Labor by George H. W. Bush.

colleague:

Dick Cheney

Cheney was a secretary of defense during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.

colleague:

Louis Wade Sullivan

Louis Wade Sullivan was appointed the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by George H. W. Bush.

References

• Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush From the Pacific to the presidency, Destiny and Power charts the vicissitudes of the life of this quietly compelling American original. Meacham sheds new light on the rise of the right wing in the Republican Party, a shift that signaled the beginning of the end of the center in American politics.
  2015
• Texas Titans: George H.W. Bush and James A. Baker, III: A Friendship Forged in Power Texas Titans is a story of George Herbert Walker Bush and James Addison Baker, III, two of America's most consequential statesmen of the past fifty years. Two men from opposite areas of the country who found friendship on the tennis courts at the Houston Country Club. Two men who helped transform a world during an era of immense challenges and change.
  2020
• 41: A Portrait of My Father George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, has authored a personal biography of his father, George H. W. Bush, the 41st president. Forty-three men have served as president of the United States.
  2014
• The Quiet Man: The Indispensable Presidency of George H.W. Bush In this unique insider account, John H. Sununu pays tribute to his former boss - an intelligent, thoughtful, modest leader - and his overlooked accomplishments. Though George H. W. Bush is remembered for orchestrating one of the largest and most successful military campaigns in history - the Gulf War - Sununu argues that conventional wisdom misses many of Bush's other great achievements.
  2015
• The Man I Knew: The Amazing Story of George H. W. Bush's Post-Presidency A heartfelt portrait of President George H.W. Bush - and his post-presidential life - by the confidante who knew him best.
  2021
• The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush A groundbreaking look at the lives of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, the most consequential father-son pair in American history, often in their own words. 
  2017