George W. Bush biography George W. Bush (born July 6, 1946, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.) 43rd president of the United States (2001–09), who led his country’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and initiated the Iraq War in 2003. Narrowly winning the electoral college vote in 2000 over Vice Pres. Al Gore in one of the closest and most-controversial elections in American history, George W. Bush became the first person since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to be elected president despite having lost the nationwide popular vote. Before his election as president, Bush was a businessman and served as governor of Texas (1995–2000).

Early life

George H.W. Bush and his family, 1964

The Bush family in 1964 in Houston, Texas. Parents George and Barbara Bush are shown sitting on the loveseat, their sons George W. Bush perching on the arm and Jeb Bush standing centre.

George W. Bush at Yale University

George W. Bush at Yale University, 1964.

Bush was the eldest of six children of George H.W. Bush, who served as the 41st president of the United States (1989–93), and Barbara Bush. His paternal grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U.S. senator from Connecticut (1952–63). The younger Bush grew up largely in Midland and Houston, Texas. From 1961 to 1964 he attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, the boarding school from which his father had graduated. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University, his father’s and grandfather’s alma mater, in 1968. Bush was president of his fraternity and, like his father, a member of Yale’s secretive Skull and Bones society; unlike his father, he was only an average student and did not excel in athletics.

In May 1968, two weeks before his graduation from Yale and the expiration of his student draft deferment, Bush applied as a pilot trainee in the Texas Air National Guard, whose members were less likely than regular soldiers to fight in the Vietnam War. Commissioned a second lieutenant in July 1968, he became a certified fighter pilot in June 1970. In the fall of 1970, he applied for admission to the University of Texas law school but was rejected. Although Bush apparently missed at least eight months of duty between May 1972 and May 1973, he was granted an early discharge so that he could start Harvard Business School in the fall of 1973. His spotty military record resurfaced as a campaign issue in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

George W. Bush and his family, 1993

George W. Bush with his wife, Laura, and the couple’s daughters, Jenna (left) and Barbara, 1993.

After receiving an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1975, Bush returned to Midland, where he began working for a Bush family friend, an oil and gas attorney, and later started his own oil and gas firm. He married Laura Welch, a teacher and librarian, in Midland in 1977. After an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1978, Bush devoted himself to building his business. With help from his uncle, who was then raising funds for Bush’s father’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush was able to attract numerous prominent investors. The company struggled through the early 1980s until the eventual collapse of oil prices in 1986, when it was purchased by the Harken Energy Corporation. Bush received Harken stock, a job as a consultant to the company, and a seat on the company’s board of directors.

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U.S. Presidential Firsts

In the same year, shortly after his 40th birthday, Bush gave up drinking alcohol. “I realized,” he later explained, “that alcohol was beginning to crowd out my energies and could crowd, eventually, my affections for other people.” His decision was partly the result of a self-described spiritual awakening and a strengthening of his Christian faith that had begun the previous year, after a conversation with the Rev. Billy Graham, a Bush family friend.

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, 1992

George W. Bush (left) and his father, George H.W. Bush, walking on the South Lawn at the White House, 1992.

After the sale of his company, Bush spent 18 months in Washington, D.C., working as an adviser and speechwriter in his father’s presidential campaign. Following the election in 1988, he moved to Dallas, where he and a former business partner organized a group of investors to purchase the Texas Rangers professional baseball team. Although Bush’s investment, which he made with a loan he obtained by using his Harken stock as collateral, was relatively small, his role as managing partner of the team brought him much exposure in the media and earned him a reputation as a successful businessman. When Bush’s partnership sold the team in 1998, Bush received nearly $15 million.

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Governor of Texas

In 1994 Bush challenged Democratic incumbent Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas. A major issue in the campaign concerned Bush’s sale of all his Harken stock in June 1990, just days before the company completed a second quarter with heavy losses. An investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1991 into the possibility of illegal insider trading (trading that takes advantage of information not available to the public) did not uncover any wrongdoing. Bush won the election with 53 percent of the vote (compared with 46 percent for Richards), thus becoming the first child of a U.S. president to be elected a state governor.

George W. Bush: swearing-in as governor

George W. Bush (centre) being sworn in as governor of Texas, January 17, 1995.

George W. Bush: reelection as governor

George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, walking under an arch of swords to celebrate his reelection as governor of Texas, 1999.

As governor, Bush increased state spending on elementary and secondary education and made the salaries and promotions of teachers and administrators contingent on their students’ performance on standardized tests. His administration increased the number of crimes for which juveniles could be sentenced to adult prisons following custody in juvenile detention and lowered to 14 the age at which children could be tried as adults. Throughout his tenure Bush received international attention for the brisk use of capital punishment in Texas relative to other states. Bush signed into law several measures aimed at tort reform, including one that imposed new limits on punitive damages and another that narrowed the legal definition of “gross negligence.” Reelected in 1998 with nearly 70 percent of the vote, Bush became the first Texas governor to win consecutive four-year terms (in 1972 voters had approved a referendum that extended the governor’s term from two years to four).

George W. Bush

George W. Bush at a campaign rally in Clinton, South Carolina, 2000.

Bush formally announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June 1999. He described his political philosophy as “compassionate conservatism,” a view that combined traditional Republican economic policies with concern for the underprivileged. Despite Bush’s refusal to give direct answers to questions about his drinking and possible use of illegal drugs (he implied that he had not used illegal drugs since 1974), he won the Republican nomination, taking a strong lead in public opinion polls over Vice Pres. Al Gore, the Democratic Party nominee; Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate; and political journalist Patrick Buchanan, the nominee of the Reform Party. His running mate was Dick Cheney, former chief of staff for Pres. Gerald Ford and secretary of defense during the presidency of Bush’s father.

U.S. presidential election of 2000

A Florida judge examining a challenged vote at an operations centre in Plantation, Florida, during a recount of the state’s U.S. presidential election ballots, 2000.

As the general election campaign continued, the gap in the polls between Bush and Gore narrowed to the closest in any election in the previous 40 years. On election day the presidency hinged on the 25 electoral votes of Florida, where Bush led Gore by fewer than 1,000 popular votes after a mandatory statewide machine recount. After the Gore campaign asked for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties, the Bush campaign filed suit in federal court to stop them. For five weeks the election remained unresolved as Florida state courts and federal courts heard numerous legal challenges by both campaigns. Eventually the Florida Supreme Court decided (4–3) to order a statewide manual recount of the approximately 45,000 “undervotes”—ballots that machines recorded as not clearly expressing a presidential vote. The Bush campaign quickly filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to delay the recounts until it could hear the case; a stay was issued by the court on December 9. Three days later, concluding (7–2) that a fair statewide recount could not be performed in time to meet the December 18 deadline for certifying the state’s electors, the court issued a controversial 5–4 decision to reverse the Florida Supreme Court’s recount order, effectively awarding the presidency to Bush. By winning Florida, Bush narrowly won the electoral vote over Gore by 271 to 266—only 1 more than the required 270 (one Gore elector abstained).

With his inauguration, Bush became only the second son of a president to assume the nation’s highest office; the other was John Quincy Adams (1825–29), the son of John Adams (1797–1801).

Presidency of George W. Bush

Early initiatives

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, 2001

George W. Bush sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, with his father, George H.W. Bush, looking on, 2001.

Bush was the first Republican president to enjoy a majority in both houses of Congress since Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s. Taking advantage of his party’s strength, Bush proposed a $1.6 trillion tax-cut bill in February 2001. A compromise measure worth $1.35 billion was passed by Congress in June, despite Democratic objections that it unfairly benefited the wealthy. In the same month, however, control of the Senate formally passed to the Democrats after Republican Sen. James Jeffords left his party to become an independent. Subsequently, many of Bush’s domestic initiatives encountered significant resistance in the Senate.

In a report issued in May 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group, a task force headed by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, called for increasing the production of fossil fuels and nuclear power in the country by opening more federal lands to mining and oil and gas exploration, extending tax credits and other subsidies to energy companies, and easing environmental regulations. In July a coalition of nonprofit organizations filed suit to make public the secret deliberations of the task force and the identities of the groups it met with. (The case was decided in the administration’s favour by the Supreme Court in June 2004.)

In foreign affairs, the Bush administration announced that the United States would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol on reducing the emission of gases responsible for global warming, which the United States had signed in the last days of the Bill Clinton administration, because the agreement did not impose emission limits on developing countries and because it could harm the U.S. economy. The administration also withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and attempted to secure commitments from various governments not to extradite U.S. citizens to the new International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction it rejected.

The September 11 attacks

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September 11 attacks

Smoke and flames erupting from the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center after the attacks on September 11, 2001; both towers subsequently collapsed.

George W. Bush learning of the September 11 attacks

George W. Bush (seated) talking on the phone as advisers watch a television report about the World Trade Center, at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, September 11, 2001; Bush was visiting the school at the time of the attacks.

George W. Bush on Air Force One after the September 11 attacks

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush conferring with his chief of staff aboard Air Force One, September 11, 2001.

On September 11, 2001, Bush faced a crisis that would transform his presidency. That morning, four American commercial airplanes were hijacked by Islamist terrorists. Two of the planes were deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, destroying both towers and collapsing or damaging many surrounding buildings, and a third was used to destroy part of the Pentagon building outside Washington, D.C.; the fourth plane crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after passengers apparently attempted to retake it (see September 11 attacks). The crashes—the worst terrorist incident on U.S. soil—killed some 3,000 people.

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George W. Bush at a National Security Council meeting after the September 11 attacks

(From left to right) Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney at a National Security Council meeting one day after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

George W. Bush speaking on the September 11 attacks

George W. Bush addressing reporters in the Oval Office of the White House, September 13, 2001.

The Bush administration accused radical Islamist Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, al-Qaeda (Arabic: “the Base”), of responsibility for the attacks and charged the Taliban government of Afghanistan with harbouring bin Laden and his followers (in a videotape in 2004, bin Laden acknowledged that he was responsible). After assembling an international military coalition, Bush ordered a massive bombing campaign against Afghanistan, which began on October 7, 2001. U.S.-led forces quickly toppled the Taliban government and routed al-Qaeda fighters, though bin Laden himself remained elusive (he was eventually killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011). In the wake of the September 11 attacks and during the war in Afghanistan, Bush’s public-approval ratings were the highest of his presidency, reaching 90 percent in some polls.

Domestic measures

George W. Bush on Air Force One discussing the September 11 attacks

U.S. president George W. Bush on Air Force One, September 11, 2001.

George W. Bush: speech after the September 11, 2001, attacks

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush addressing the country from the Oval Office on September 11, 2001.

George W. Bush at the World Trade Center

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush addressing a crowd as he stands on rubble at the World Trade Center site in New York City three days after the September 11 attacks of 2001.

Immediately after the September 11 attacks, domestic security and the threat of terrorism became the chief focus of the Bush administration and the top priority of government at every level. Declaring a global “war on terrorism,” Bush announced that the country would not rest until “every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” To coordinate the government’s domestic response, the administration formed a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, which began operating on January 24, 2003.

George W. Bush: signing of USA PATRIOT Act

Pres. George W. Bush signing the USA PATRIOT Act in the East Room of the White House, Washington, D.C., October 26, 2001.

In October 2001 the Bush administration introduced, and Congress quickly passed, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (the USA PATRIOT Act), which significantly but temporarily expanded the search and surveillance powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law-enforcement agencies. (Most of the law’s provisions were made permanent in 2006 by the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act.)

George W. Bush: 2002 State of the Union address

George W. Bush delivering the State of the Union address to Congress, January 29, 2002.

In January 2002 Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens and others in the United States without first obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. When the program was revealed in news reports in December 2005, the administration insisted that it was justified by a September 2001 joint Congressional resolution that authorized the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. Subsequent efforts in Congress to provide a legal basis for the spying became mired in debate over whether telecommunications companies that cooperated with the NSA should be granted retroactive immunity against numerous civil lawsuits. Legislation granting immunity and expanding the NSA’s surveillance powers was finally passed by Congress and signed by Bush in July 2008.

Treatment of detainees

In January 2002, as the pacification of Afghanistan continued, the United States began transferring captured Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan to what became a special prison complex at the country’s permanent naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Eventually hundreds of prisoners were held at the facility without charge and without the legal means to challenge their detentions (see habeas corpus). The administration argued that it was not obliged to grant basic constitutional protections to the prisoners, because the base was outside U.S. territory; nor was it required to observe the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians during wartime, because the conventions did not apply to “unlawful enemy combatants.” It further maintained that the president had the authority to place any individual, including an American citizen, in indefinite military custody without charge by declaring him an enemy combatant.

internment facility, Camp Delta, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

The entrance to an internment facility at Camp Delta, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The prison complex at Guantánamo became the focus of international controversy in June 2004, after a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that significant numbers of prisoners had been interrogated by means of techniques that were “tantamount to torture.” (The Bush administration had frequently and vigorously denied that the United States practiced torture.)

Abu Ghraib prison

Scene from Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure (2008), about the U.S. military scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

The leak of the report came just two months after the publication of photographs of abusive treatment of prisoners by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (see below Iraq War). In response to the Abu Ghraib revelations, Congress eventually passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which banned the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners in U.S. military custody. Although the measure became law with Bush’s signature in December 2005, he added a “signing statement” in which he reserved the right to set aside the law’s restrictions if he deemed them inconsistent with his constitutional powers as commander in chief.

In June 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, declared that the system of military commissions that the administration had intended to use to try selected prisoners at Guantánamo on charges of war crimes was in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs American rules of courts-martial. Later that year, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which gave the commissions the express statutory basis that the court had found lacking; the law also prevented enemy combatants who were not American citizens from challenging their detention in the federal courts.

In separate programs run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), dozens of individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism were abducted outside the United States and held in secret prisons in eastern Europe and elsewhere or transferred for interrogation to countries that routinely practiced torture. Although such extrajudicial transfers, or “extraordinary renditions,” had taken place during the Clinton administration, the Bush administration greatly expanded the practice after the September 11 attacks. Press reports of the renditions in 2005 sparked controversy in Europe and led to official investigations into whether some European governments had knowingly permitted rendition flights through their countries’ territories, an apparent violation of the human rights law of the European Union (see also European law).

In February 2005 the CIA confirmed that some individuals in its custody had been subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding (interrupted or controlled drowning, often called simulated drowning), which was generally regarded as a form of torture under international law. The CIA’s position that waterboarding did not constitute torture had been based on the legal opinions of the Justice Department and specifically on a secret memo issued in 2002 that adopted an unconventionally narrow and legally questionable definition of torture. After the memo was leaked to the press in June 2004, the Justice Department rescinded its opinion. In 2005, however, the department issued new secret memos declaring the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. The new memos were revealed in news reports in 2007, prompting outrage from critics of the administration. In July 2007 Bush issued an executive order that prohibited the CIA from using torture or acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, though the specific interrogation techniques it was allowed to use remained classified. In March 2008 Bush vetoed a bill directed specifically at the CIA that would have prevented the agency from using any interrogation technique, such as waterboarding, that was not included in the U.S. Army’s field manual on interrogation.

The Iraq War

Road to war

In September 2002 the administration announced a new National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It was notable for its declaration that the United States would act “preemptively,” using military force if necessary, to forestall or prevent threats to its security by terrorists or “rogue states” possessing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons—so-called weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, Bush and other high administration officials began to draw worldwide attention to Iraqi Pres. Ṣaddām Ḥussein and to suspicions that Iraq possessed or was attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. In November 2002 the Bush administration successfully lobbied for a new Security Council resolution providing for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. Soon afterward Bush declared that Iraq had failed to comply fully with the new resolution and that the country continued to possess weapons of mass destruction. For several weeks, the United States and Britain tried to secure support from other Security Council members for a second resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq (though administration officials insisted that earlier resolutions provided sufficient legal justification for military action). In response, France and Russia, while agreeing that Iraq had failed to cooperate fully with weapons inspectors, argued that the inspections regime should be continued and strengthened.

As part of the administration’s diplomatic campaign, Bush and other officials frequently warned that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that it was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, and that it had long-standing ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush announced that Iraq had attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons. The subsequent determination that some intelligence reports of the purchase had relied on forged documents complicated the administration’s diplomatic efforts in the United Nations. Meanwhile, massive peace demonstrations took place in several major cities around the world.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Finally, Bush announced the end of U.S. diplomacy. On March 17 he issued an ultimatum to Ṣaddām, giving him and his immediate family 48 hours to leave Iraq or face removal by force. Bush also indicated that, even if Ṣaddām relinquished power, U.S. military forces would enter the country to search for weapons of mass destruction and to stabilize the new government.

Iraq War

Explosions illuminating the skies of Baghdad during the U.S.-led air bombardment of the city, March 2003.

After Ṣaddām’s public refusal to leave and as the 48-hour deadline approached, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, to begin on March 20 (local time). In the ground phase of the Iraq War, U.S. and British forces quickly overwhelmed the Iraqi army and irregular Iraqi fighters, and by mid-April they had entered Baghdad and all other major Iraqi cities and forced Ṣaddām’s regime from power.

In the wake of the invasion, hundreds of sites suspected of producing or housing weapons of mass destruction within Iraq were investigated. As the search continued without success into the following year, Bush’s critics accused the administration of having misled the country into war by exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq. In 2004 the Iraq Survey Group, a fact-finding mission comprising American and British experts, concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to produce them at the time of the invasion, though it found evidence that Ṣaddām had planned to reconstitute programs for producing such weapons once UN sanctions were lifted. In the same year, the bipartisan 9-11 Commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) reported that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Ṣaddām, who went into hiding during the invasion, was captured by U.S. forces in December 2003 and was executed by the new Iraqi government three years later.

Occupation and insurgency

Iraq War: George W. Bush with sailors

Pres. George W. Bush with sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003.

Although the Bush administration had planned for a short war, stabilizing the country after the invasion proved difficult. From May 1, when Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq, to the end of December 2003, more than 200 U.S. soldiers were killed as a result of attacks by Iraqis. During the next four years the number of U.S. casualties increased dramatically, reaching more than 900 in 2007 alone. (The number of Iraqis who died during the invasion and insurgency is uncertain.) Widespread sectarian violence, accompanied by regular and increasingly deadly attacks on military, police, and civilian targets by militias and terrorist organizations, made large parts of the country virtually ungovernable. The increasing numbers of U.S. dead and wounded, the failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction, and the enormous cost to U.S. taxpayers (approximately $10 billion per month through 2007) gradually eroded public support for the war; by 2005 a clear majority of Americans believed that it had been a mistake. By the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2008, some 4,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed. As the death toll mounted, Bush’s public-approval ratings dropped, falling below 30 percent in many polls.

Iraq War: car bomb

U.S. Army soldiers surveying the scene where a car bomb exploded in front of a hotel in Baghdad, January 2004.

While acknowledging that it had underestimated the tenacity of the Iraqi resistance, the Bush administration maintained that part of the blame for the continuing violence lay with Iran, which it accused of supplying weapons and money to Iraqi-based terrorist groups. In his State of the Union address in 2002, Bush had warned that Iran (along with Iraq and North Korea) was part of an “axis of evil” that threatened the world with its support of terrorism and its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2006–07 the United States joined other members of the Security Council in condemning Iran’s nuclear research program. The administration’s repeated warnings concerning a possible Iranian nuclear weapon led to speculation that Bush was contemplating military action against the country. In December 2007, however, the administration’s suspicions were contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus report of U.S. intelligence agencies, which declared with “high confidence” that in 2003 Iran had abandoned attempts to develop a nuclear weapon.

Foreign aid

In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush proposed an ambitious program to address the humanitarian crisis created by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in 15 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. With a budget of $15 billion over a five-year period, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) aimed to supply life-extending medications to 2 million victims of HIV/AIDS, to prevent 7 million new cases of the disease, and to provide care for 10 million AIDS sufferers and the orphaned children of AIDS victims. The program was widely praised in the United States, even by Bush’s critics, and generated enormous goodwill toward the Bush administration in Africa. Medical professionals and public health officials welcomed the greater availability of retroviral drugs but generally objected to the program’s requirement that one-third of prevention funds be spent on teaching sexual abstinence and marital fidelity.

In January 2004 the Bush administration established the Millennium Challenge Corporation to distribute development aid to poor countries that demonstrated a commitment to democracy, free enterprise, and transparent governance. The agency’s innovative approach allowed recipient countries to design and manage their own multiyear programs to reduce poverty and promote economic growth. By 2008 the corporation had approved some $5 billion in grant requests, though relatively little of the money had been dispersed.

The Bush administration’s foreign aid programs were designed to serve its declared foreign policy goal of promoting democracy abroad, especially in parts of the world plagued by poverty and war. In eastern Europe, Bush supported expanding the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a means of securing democracy and stability in war-ravaged or formerly communist countries. During his presidency NATO gained seven new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Domestic affairs

George W. Bush: National Prayer Breakfast

U.S. Pres. George W. Bush (left) and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (centre) listening to Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, address the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C., 2004.

In December 2001 Bush successfully negotiated with the Democratic-controlled Senate legislation that provided federal funding to religious, or “faith-based,” charities and social services. The measure, he argued, would end long-standing discrimination in federal funding against churches and other religious groups that provided needed social services in poor communities. The bill was passed by the Senate despite objections from many Democratic senators that it violated the constitutional separation of church and state. A White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was created in January 2001.

In 2002 the U.S. economy continued to perform poorly, despite having recovered from a recession the previous November. Widespread corporate accounting scandals, some of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history, and fears over war and terrorism all contributed to consumer uncertainty and a prolonged downturn in the financial markets. Despite the economic turmoil, Bush’s personal popularity enabled the Republicans to regain a majority in the Senate in midterm elections in November 2002 (though the party also lost three state governorships). With both houses of Congress under Republican control, Bush secured passage of a second tax cut of $350 billion in May 2003.

Education

In January 2002 Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which introduced significant changes in the curriculum of the country’s public elementary, middle, and high schools and dramatically increased federal regulation of state school systems. Under the law, states were required to administer yearly tests of the reading and mathematics skills of public school students and to demonstrate adequate progress toward raising the scores of all students to a level defined as “proficient” or higher. Teachers were also required to meet higher standards for certification. Schools that failed to meet their goals would be subject to gradually increasing sanctions, eventually including replacement of staff or closure.

In the first years of the program, supporters pointed to its success in increasing the test scores of minority students, who historically had performed at lower levels than white students. Indeed, in the 2000 presidential campaign Bush had touted the proposed law as a remedy for what he called “the soft bigotry of low expectations” faced by the children of minorities. Critics, however, complained that the federal government was not providing enough funding to implement the program’s requirements and that the law had usurped the states’s traditional control of education as pr