George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He
was sworn into office on January 20, 2001, re-elected on November
2, 2004, and sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005. Before
his Presidency, he served for 6 years as Governor of the State of
Texas.
President Bush was born July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut,
to Barbara and George H.W. Bush – later the 41st President of the
United States. In 1948, the family moved to Texas where President
Bush grew up in Midland and Houston. He received a bachelor’s
degree in history from Yale University in 1968 and then served as a
pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. President Bush received a
Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in
1975. Following graduation, he moved back to Midland and began a
career in the energy business. After working on his father’s
successful 1988 Presidential campaign, President Bush assembled a
group of partners that purchased the Texas Rangers baseball
franchise in 1989.
On November 8, 1994, George W. Bush was elected the 46th
Governor of Texas. He became the first Governor in Texas history to
be elected to consecutive 4-year terms when he was re-elected on
November 3, 1998. In Austin, he earned a reputation for his
bipartisan governing approach and his compassionate conservative
philosophy, which was based on limited government, personal
responsibility, strong families, and local control.
Since his election to the Presidency in 2000, President Bush has
worked to extend freedom, opportunity, and security at home and
abroad. His first initiative as President was the No Child Left
Behind Act, a bipartisan measure that raised standards in schools,
insisted on accountability in return for federal dollars, and led
to measurable gains in achievement – especially among minority
students. Faced with a recession when he took office, President
Bush cut taxes for every federal income taxpayer, which helped set
off an unprecedented 52 straight months of job creation. And
President Bush modernized Medicare by adding a prescription drug
benefit, a reform that provided access to needed medicine for 40
million seniors and other beneficiaries.
President Bush also implemented free trade agreements with more
than a dozen nations; empowered America’s armies of compassion by
creating a new Faith-based and Community Initiative; promoted a
culture of life; improved air quality and made America’s energy
supply more secure; set aside more ocean resources for
environmental protection than any predecessor; transformed the
military and nearly doubled government support for veterans;
pioneered a new model of partnership in development that tied
American foreign aid to reform and good governance; launched a
global HIV/AIDS initiative that has spared millions of lives;
expanded the NATO alliance; forged a historic new partnership with
India; and appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel
Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The most significant event of President Bush’s tenure came on
September 11, 2001, when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on
American soil. President Bush responded with a comprehensive
strategy to protect the American people. He led the most dramatic
reorganization of the federal government since the beginning of the
Cold War, reforming the intelligence community and establishing new
institutions like the Department of Homeland Security. He built
global coalitions to remove violent regimes in Afghanistanand Iraq
that threatened America – liberating more than 50 million people
from tyranny. He recognized that freedom and hope are the best
alternative to the extremist ideology of the terrorists, so he
provided unprecedented American support for young democracies and
dissidents in the Middle East and beyond. In the more than seven
years after September 11, 2001, the United States was not attacked
again.
President Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush, a former teacher
and librarian whom he met at a friend’s backyard barbeque. The
President and Mrs. Bush have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, and
a son-in-law, Henry Hager. The Bush family also includes two dogs,
Barney and Miss Beazley.
This information is from the whitehouse.org website.