Bush George

INTRODUCTION

Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. A World War II aircraft carrier pilot in the Pacific, he was discharged in 1945 with a Distinguished Flying Cross. During the war he married Barbara Pierce. They had six children (one died in early childhood). Graduated from Yale University in 1948 with a degree in economics, Bush moved to Texas, where he became wealthy in the oil business.

Turning to politics, Bush ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate in 1964 but won a seat in the US House of Representatives two years later. Re-elected in 1968, he gave up his seat in 1970 to run for the Senate-again unsuccessfully. President Richard M. Nixon then appointed him ambassador to the United Nations (1971-1972), and he was subsequently chairman of the Republican National Committee (1973-1974); chief liaison officer in Beijing (1974-1975), before the United States established full diplomatic relations with China; and director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1976-1977). Bush competed for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1980 but lost to Ronald Reagan. He accepted Reagan's invitation to be his running mate, and became vice-president in 1981.

THE 1988 CAMPAIGN

After winning re-election on the Reagan ticket in 1984, Bush won the 1988 Republican presidential nomination; as his running mate he chose Dan Quayle, a US senator from Indiana. His campaign against Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis was widely regarded as the most negative presidential electioneering in US History. He became the first incumbent vice-president since 1836 to win election to the presidency.

BUSH AS PRESIDENT

Dominating Bush's domestic agenda during 1989, his first year in office, were measures to rescue the nation's savings and loan system and to toughen US efforts against illegal drugs. He responded to rapid political changes in Eastern Europe by offering economic assistance to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland and by encouraging the unification of East and West Germany into a country that would remain a Western ally, retaining its position in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He met with Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR, in December 1989 at Malta, where they agreed to negotiate an end to production of chemical weapons, cut long-range missiles by up to 50 per cent, and reduce conventional forces in Europe. Later that month, Bush ordered more than 24,000 US troops into Panama to oust the government of General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

In 1990 Bush and the Congress engaged in a protracted dispute over the size of the federal budget. In the end Bush retreated from his "no new taxes" pledge and signed a deficit-reduction bill that slowed the growth of spending but also increased taxes. In foreign affairs Bush's leadership was more sure-footed. After Iraq seized Kuwait in August 1990, Bush immediately began an arms build-up in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf War which followed began with five weeks of air bombardment leading to a ground attack by a multinational UN force that drove the Iraqi army from Kuwait in less than 100 hours. Bush's popularity soared after the victory and remained high as he met with Gorbachev in July and signed a strategic arms reduction agreement. During the remainder of 1991 foreign-policy issues, including the breakup of the USSR and the convening on October 30 of the first comprehensive Middle East Peace Conference, continued to claim his attention even as the US economy continued to lag. Both unemployment and the budget deficit increased steadily. By January 1992 Bush's approval rating in opinion polls was half what it had been in early 1991.

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN

In Republican primaries, Bush beat back a challenge from a conservative commentator, Patrick J. Buchanan. In the general election, however, Bush and Quayle were defeated by Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who attacked the Bush administration's performance on the economy, health care, and the environment. During his last weeks in office, Bush remained active in foreign policy. He sent troops to restore order and feed the starving in Som