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Presidential Unit Citation. George H. W. Bush's voice. Bush announces the Gulf War. Recorded January 16, 1991. George Herbert Walker Bush [a] (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018) was an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. [2]
- George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum
The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is the...
- Dorothy Bush Koch
Dorothy Walker Bush LeBlond Koch (born August 18, 1959) is...
- George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush's tenure as the 41st president of the...
- George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum
George H. W. Bush, a Republican from Texas, was elected President of the United States on November 8, 1988 and was inaugurated as the nation's 41st president on January 20, 1989, and his presidency ended on January 20, 1993, with the inauguration of Bill Clinton.
- Overview
- Early life and career
- Vice presidency
U.S. President George H.W. Bush served as a torpedo bomber pilot on aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II from 1942 to 1944, flying some 58 combat missions. For his service, he won the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Who was George H.W. Bush's running mate in 1988?
After securing the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency in 1988, George H.W. Bush, together with his running mate Dan Quayle, defeated the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in the general election. He won 53 percent of the popular vote to Dukakis’s 46 percent.
What were some of George H.W. Bush's achievements?
In November 1990 U.S. President George H.W. Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Paris and signed a mutual nonaggression pact, a symbolic conclusion to the Cold War. They also signed treaties sharply reducing the number of weapons that the two superpowers had stockpiled over the decades of Cold War hostility. After Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait, Bush led a worldwide UN-approved embargo to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.
Why did George H.W. Bush send troops to Somalia in 1992?
Bush was the son of Prescott Sheldon Bush, an investment banker and U.S. senator from Connecticut, and Dorothy Walker Bush, scion of a prominent St. Louis, Missouri, family. (Her father established the amateur golf competition known as the Walker Cup.) The young Bush grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended private schools there and in Andover, Massachusetts. 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. His membership in the Skull and Bones secret society there later became an issue that his critics used as evidence of elitism. Rejecting a position in his father’s firm, he moved with his young family to Texas and became a salesman of oil field supplies. He cofounded the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company (1951), the Zapata Petroleum Corporation (1953), and the Zapata Off-Shore Company (1954).
In 1959 he became active in the Republican Party in Houston. After losing a campaign for the U.S. Senate to Democrat Ralph Yarborough in 1964, Bush was elected in 1966 to a safely Republican seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. 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 Pres. Richard M. Nixon to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN; 1971–72). 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.
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U.S. Presidential Firsts
Later in 1974, Pres. Gerald R. Ford, who had nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president, named a disappointed Bush chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing—which was then the senior U.S. 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.
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As vice president, Bush traveled more than one million miles as the administration’s representative. When asked about his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair—in which the Reagan administration, in violation of a law passed by Congress in 1984, used funds from the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund Contra rebels fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua—Bush claimed that he was “out of the loop,” though he did admit knowing about the arms sale to Iran. In 1987 he published an autobiography, Looking Forward (written with Victor Gold).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Recorded July 26, 1990. George Herbert Walker Bush [a] (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018) was an American politician, diplomat, businessman, and statesman. He was the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. Before becoming president, he was the 43rd vice president under Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1989.
Apr 2, 2014 · George H.W. Bush was the 41st President of the United States and served as vice president under Ronald Reagan. He was also the father of George W. Bush, the 43rd President.
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Nov 30, 2018 · George H. W. Bush. George H. W. Bush brought to the White House a wish to make the United States “a kinder and gentler nation.”. Coming from a family with a tradition of public service, George Herbert Walker Bush felt the responsibility to make his contribution both in time of war and in peace.
