Almost done, folks. That’s right—I’m almost done with my very loooonng Presidential Reading Project. I really can’t believe that it’s been exactly two years since I decided to do this and the fact that I’ve kept with it…well…I’m floored. I’ve never shown such resolve before. Maybe you all are witnessing a new me. Ha!
Anyways, it was time for George W. Bush, a president that I was very, relatively speaking, familiar with and whom I had looked forward to reading about. I also want you to note that I watched my third (third!!) Oliver Stone-directed presidential movie. I watched JFK when I read about JFK; I watched Nixon when I read about Nixon and recently I watched W. when I read about George W. I’ll just say this about the movie, W.: 1.) It does a pretty good job with characterization and is fairly accurate about quotes and dates and such and, 2.) I can really tell that Oliver Stone does not care for George W. Just saying.
Bookwise, things just weren’t as easy as finding a popular movie. There aren’t any comprehensive biographies on George W. yet so I decided to read two books. I didn’t want to, mind you, but the circumstances demanded it. First of all, I checked out a juvenile biography because it was extremely current and I wanted at least one book to include everything. Secondly, I turned to a specialty book on Bush’s presidential years to make sure I got, in detail, a handle on all that occurred then. Thus I read, in order, George W. Bush: A Biography by Clarke Roundtree (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011) and Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W Bush by Robert Draper (New York: Free Press, 2007). For the most part, all the quotes that I use are from Roundtree while I mainly used Draper for background info.
George Walker Bush was the first born son of George H.W. and Barbara Bush. He was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, CT but at the age of four he was living in Midland, TX. In 1953, his sister, Robin, died of leukemia and her death would seriously affect her older brother. “This tragedy would haunt him for years. He began having nightmares” (p. 18). George was a rambunctious child and often acted out in school. He loved all sports, especially baseball and was middle-of-the-road in academics.
In 1959, the family moved to Houston, uprooting George from his friends in Midland. The move had been deemed necessary to aid Poppy’s (George H.W.) political rise and George W. jumped right into the fray for his dad. He helped campaign for his father and was devastated when Poppy lost that election. “George W. Bush cried the night his father lost. He had worked hard on his father’s campaign, taping a 30-second spot in Spanish to reach Hispanic voters, riding on the campaign bus, delivering signs, compiling briefing books, and running errands” (p. 23).
At this time, Bush was shipped off to his father’s old boarding school in Massachusetts—Phillips Academy. Even though he disliked being away from Texas, he threw himself into the experience by joining the Spanish club, engaged in JV sports, and became the head cheerleader. During the summers, he held jobs in a law firm and on a ranch. He did not do well academically in this environment. However, much to everyone’s surprise (even though he was a legacy), Bush was accepted to Yale University and began attending there in 1964 where he encountered more challenges in the classroom. “George’s academic work at Yale fell far short of his father’s Phi Beta Kappa achievement. He finished his freshmen year in the bottom 20 percent of his class and graduated with a C average” (p. 27). However, Bush was a popular man around campus, earning a coveted spot in Skull and Bones and becoming president of Delta Kappa Epsilon. He was also known for his pranks and was arrested once for trying to tear down the uprights at Princeton.
He graduated in 1968 and immediately joined the Air National Guard to ensure that he would be kept away from Vietnam. He was signed to a six year program and then made a first lieutenant. Other than that, though, Bush was rather at a loose end, dating around and drinking a lot. He helped his father campaign again in 1970 for a Senate seat which Poppy would also lose. “He [George W.] traveled around the state, sometimes speaking on behalf of his father” (p. 37). His father went to great effort to find his oldest son some gainful employment so George W. ended up working as a fertilizer salesman, for Project PULL (Professional United Leadership League, an inner-city program) and on an oil rig.
“George’s weak performance in school, his National Guard commitment, his indirection, and his failure to find the right woman was making his younger brother a much better prospect to carry on the family tradition of business success followed by political service” (p. 39). As you might expect, there was some sibling rivalry in the Bush family (after all, the Bushes were hypercompetitive people.) Inevitably Jeb, the married, steady one, just looked like the better brother and this rankled George W. In retaliation, George W. applied and was accepted to Harvard Business School where he eventually received a Masters in Business Administration by 1975.
That same year he returned to Texas and became a landsman for various oilmen, traveling throughout the state searching for potential oil. His personal life was still very unsteady during this time and in fact, he was arrested for drunk driving in 1976 with this 17-year-old sister, Dorothy, in the car. “But George also began participating in community and civic life in Midland, attending First Presbyterian Church regularly, teaching Sunday school, volunteering to run the United Way
campaign, playing touch football, and coming out for the Midland Angels AA baseball games” (p. 41). In 1977, Bush began to see a political future for himself and so ran for Congress. He lost but that same year he met Laura Welch at a party (she was a librarian) and was smitten. They were married on November 5, 1977 and three years later, they were blessed with a set of twin girls they named after both grandmothers: Jenna and Barbara. Bush formed a company called Bush Exploration, which eventually became Arbusto Energy. After several years (and before the company became insolvent), he sold it to become a consultant, making a good bit of money in the process (also in the grand Bush tradition). In this way, George was in a perfect position to move to Washington DC in 1987 to lead his father’s campaign for the presidency. Because of his increased responsibilities, George W. realized that it was time to stop drinking so that he wouldn’t embarrass Poppy or hurt his father’s chances in the national election. He also recommitted his life to God and became a self-professed born-again Christian. “George’s new sobriety and his new passion for Christianity made him an ideal choice to reach out to the conservative religious movement that had supported Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980” (p. 46).
Thanks largely to George W.’s handling of the campaign, Poppy Bush became the 41st President of the United States. Unsure what to do with himself, George and Laura (and the girls) headed back to Texas where George was able to combine his love of baseball with a lucrative job offer: he became a co-owner of the Texas Rangers. Even though Bush contributed relatively little in the way of cash, he was a vibrant force of good for the franchise. “But Bush’s greatest contribution was in helping the team get a new ballpark to replace the small and aging Arlington Stadium” (p. 50). Bush’s worst move as co-owner? No doubt it was trading Sammie Sosa to Chicago.
Bush loved his job but politics was still calling his name. So, in 1994, he decided to run for governor of the state of Texas against the highly-favored Democratic incumbent, Ann Richards. Was it a coincidence that Jeb had also recently announced his campaign for the governor of Florida? Hmm. To become electable, George began to amass a variety of savvy people around him, including Karl Rove, a brilliant political adviser. “Rove recommended focusing the campaign on four conservative ideas: increasing school accountability, limiting civil lawsuits, toughening laws for crimes by juveniles, and reforming welfare” (Roundtree, p. 54). Surprisingly, Bush won and so the whole family moved to Austin. While in office, he took on tort and literacy reform and education, advocating vouchers. He was re-elected governor in 1998.
“By this point, Bush had a fairly well-developed philosophy of the role of government and a list of national problems that he believed needed to be tackled” (Roundtree, p. 64). It was time to announce that George was ready for the big stage so he entered the 2000 Republican primaries where he bested John McCain and capturing the nomination. George chose Dick Cheney (his father’s Secretary of Defense) as his vice presidential running mate and geared up to battle Al Gore, the Democratic nominee. The election results were not immediately clear however due to antiquated balloting techniques in Florida. The contested election results were sent to the Supreme Court in Bush vs Gore where it was eventually decided that George W. Bush was the winner and thus the 43rd President of the United States.
“As the news media reported, several factors snatched victory from Gore. Perhaps the most publicized was the infamous butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County. The Democrat in charge of elections there was trying to cram all the candidates’ names on a one-page ballot and split the page into a butterfly form, with names on either side of the punch holes in the center. This made it harder to identify which punch holes were meant for which candidates. Thousands of elderly Jewish voters left the polls complaining that they weren’t sure whether they had punched the correct hole for Gore…In Seminole and Martin counties, the GOP had mailed absentee ballots to their constituents and accidently left off required voter identification numbers. When the voters failed to add this information, Republican staffers got permission from a local Republican official to correct these ballots, in plain violation of Florida state law. Secretary of State Katherine Harris waived requirements that overseas ballots—most coming from members of the armed services—include postmarks as required by law, and these votes heavily favored Bush. Finally, Ralph Nader, the liberal consumer advocate who made a third-party run as the Green Party candidate, was the third-highest vote getter in Florida. Although he won just under 100,000 votes statewide, he peeled off thousands of votes from Gore, which would have easily won him the election” (p. 77)
Bush took over the presidency without a clear public mandate but that fact did not deter him from promoting his social conservative agenda. He tackled issues such as euthanasia abortion, stem cell research, education (NCLB), and tax breaks across the board (“He also relied on a supply-side argument from economics, that if you give money back to Americans, they will spend it or invest it and grow the economy faster” (p. 82)). He began the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, dealt with Enron and expanded Medicare while Cheney, unusual for a VP, became very involved in all environmental policy, including an Energy Task Force.
However, the quotidian existence of Bush’s presidential life drastically changed on September 11, 2001, barely nine months into his presidency. It is clear that Bush and his administration were aware of Al-Qaeda and the threat it posed to the US at least a month beforehand but Bush was assured that investigations into it were
pending. “A week later, on September 11, 2001, a plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. (EST)…He [Cheney] turned on the news to see the coverage of the aftermath in time to see a second plane crash into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on live television at 9:03 (EST). At that minute, Bush was entering the elementary school to begin his visit [in Sarasota, FL]. The president was introduced to the elementary school students and was about to begin reading a book, My Pet Goat, with the class when his chief of staff, Andy Card, whispered in his ear: ‘A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack’” (p. 89-91). The reason Bush was criticized at this moment is due to the fact that he allowed the students to continue reading (he didn’t want to upset them) before he left and held a press conference outside. Later on, Bush was removed to Louisiana, then Nebraska before he was rerouted to Washington DC. In the end, there would be four downed planes: 2 went into the World Trade Centers, 1 destroyed a good bit of the Pentagon, and 1 was taken down by its own passengers, crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. “Bush’s blood was boiling. He was already over the shock of the attack and ready to deliver some Texas justice to the terrorists” (p. 92).Then there was an Anthrax scare. To combat the growing terror, Bush pushed the USA Patriot Act through Congress, along with a Terrorist Survey Program, and created the newest cabinet position, the Department of Homeland Security. Bush then announced the War on Terror which was to he began by wiping out the Al-Qaeda forces housed in Afghanistan. “A confluence of personal and practical factors would shape Bush’s approach to fighting this war in a way that would make him one of the most controversial presidents in recent history” (p. 101).
The war in Afghanistan (otherwise known as Operation Enduring Freedom) began on October 7, 2001 with bombings of the two biggest (only?) cities there. “In consultation with Cheney, Bush made one of the most controversial decisions of his presidency: He would treat those captured in the war on terrorism as ‘enemy combatants,’ denying them access to the courts, trying them (if at all) in military commissions, and holding them indefinitely without charge if necessary” (p. 107-108). Afghanistan could not hold up against this kind of war and promptly surrendered.
Flush with victory, Bush began suspiciously eyeing Iraq. George W. hated Saddam Hussein, as did his father, but whereas Bush #41 didn’t feel he had enough support to take out Saddam in the nineties, George W. did. He claimed (on false evidence) that Iraq was amassing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and that a “coalition” needed to take care of this before it got worse…or before Saddam gave these WMDs to the terrorists. Thus, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003 by bombing Baghdad and overrunning the country. Less than a month later, Baghdad fell but the Bush administration was not quite ready to handle the care of a nation of leaderless Iraqis. And, in a way, Bush, himself, promulgated this problem. “Bush’s tendency to delegate, to avoid asking probing questions and digging into details, and to stop the destructive infighting among his departments contributed to a lack of coherency and effectiveness in the postwar operation” (p. 119).
The situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, making the American occupiers look really bad. “Predictably, the lack of security, frequent electricity outages, little progress on handing over authority to Iraquis, and widespread unemployment exacerbated by Bremer’s [U.S. Administrator heading the Coalition Provisional Authority] policies led to growing discontent in the Iraqi population” (p. 123). This discontent then spawned a number of suicide bombings which, in turn, only provoked Bush into increasing troop numbers to Iraq. “But the hopes for success were hindered by what became a chicken-and-egg problem: On the one hand, the United States could not win the support of the Iraqi people so long as unemployment remained high, basic services such as electricity and water was spotty, and the security situation remained dangerous. On the other hand, with mounting attacks, it was difficult to bring in civilian workers to fix sewers, electrical grids, and the like, or to free up already-strapped American forces to undertake some of those tasks” (p. 125). It didn’t help either that Bush’s motivation for invasion (i.e. the WMDs) was a complete fabrication and therefore no evidence was ever found in Iraq.
Several scandals occurred during this time, including the Valerie Plame affair (when someone in the government—Rove—leaked her cover to the press in retaliation against her husband’s anger against the WMD idea) and the Abu Ghraib scandal (in which pictures, posted on the internet, were taken by American military personnel depicting naked Iraqi prisoners in various humiliating positions).
Then just like that—it was time for another presidential election. For the 2004 campaign, Bush was again nominated by the Republicans while his opponent became John Kerry. Bush won, though not by a great amount, and immediately waded into the congressional fray to tackle the politically-lethal issue, Social Security reform. Even though Bush threw the entire weight of his office behind it, this issue singlehandedly solidified Democratic opposition, turning it into one huge legislative failure. It didn’t help Bush’s ratings either that the US was starting to feel the effects of a housing crisis and it was apparent that a major recession was brewing in the wings. Add all that to the on-going war in Iraq and Bush’s approval rating plummeted.
Just as the War on Terror seemed to take over Bush’s first term, Hurricane Katrina would provide the same suffocating effect on his second term. In August 2005, a Category 3 hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, slamming cities from Florida all the way to Texas. Unfortunately, the city of New Orleans bore the brunt of the storm and,
though many people had already evacuated, many others did not and were caught in a truly awful situation. The levees broke, flooding the city and killing thousands. Elsewhere, people sought refuge at the Superdome but were left there without food, water, and other necessities. In the end, most people blamed the problems with FEMA and its inept director, Mike Brown (who was fired a couple months later.) The government’s poor response to this natural disaster would ultimately reflect negatively on Bush himself. “The Hurricane Katrina debacle left Bush hobbled for the rest of his presidency. With three years left to go, he began resembling a lame duck, incapable of mustering the kind of support he had enjoyed in his first term” (p. 143).Bush also had to deal with the Terri Shiavo issue (whether or not to withdraw the feeding tube which would allow her to die) and immigration policy (supposedly there was to be a fence built!?!) He also raised quite a bit of money to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. “Bush is credited with helping to save tens of millions of Africans suffering from HIV/AIDS” (p. 158). In January 2009, Bush handed over the reins of government to the new president, Barack Obama.
The Bushes retired to Preston Hollow, an area in Dallas, TX where Bush wrote Decision Points, was a speaker in the Get Motivated series and also got involved with the Clinton Bush Haiti fund. George W. can be seen at some sporting events and just last year, broke ground at Southern Methodist University (Laura’s alma mater) for his presidential library. For the most part, though, Bush has kept a low profile, allowing his predecessor to have plenty of time, alone, in the national spotlight.
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