President George W. Bush: Foreign and Domestic Policy. Bush George Sr. - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information
In Milton, Massachusetts.
Father - Prescott Sheldon Bush - an influential figure in the Republican Party, was a partner in the New York firm Brown, Brothers, Harriman and Company, and from 1952 to 1963 - a senator from the state of Connecticut. Mother - Dorothy Walker - from the New York banking clan of Walkers.
George Bush spent his childhood in Greenwich (Connecticut).
In 1936 he entered the prestigious military school- Phillips Academy in Andover (Massachusetts). Upon graduation in June 1942, six months after the United States entered World War II, he enlisted in the Navy.
After completing a ten-month flight training course, Bush was commissioned as a junior officer on June 9, 1943, becoming the youngest naval aviator.
George W. Bush flew 58 combat missions in the Southwest Pacific war zone. On September 2, 1944, Bush's plane was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire, and he, ordering the crew to abandon the plane, jumped with a parachute. All crew members survived, except one. On the water, the pilots were picked up by sailors from an American submarine. For his participation in hostilities, George W. Bush was awarded the Navy Officer's Cross and three combat medals.
George Bush Sr. opened an account in the popular social network Twitter.
The first message that the former American leader left on the microblogging service concerned the memorial service that took place in South Africa for the ex-president of that country, Nelson Mandela.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
Polozova E.
It"s a very good question, very direct, and I"m not going to answer it.
– George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States
George Bush Sr., or George Herbert Walker Bush, was a prominent figure in American politics at the end of the 20th century. During his life, he managed to be a senator, a diplomat, the director of the CIA, and a vice president (under Ronald Reagan), and the 41st President of the United States. And that's not to mention the fact that he was only the second president in US history whose son (George W. Bush) also won the election and ended up in the White House.
George Herbert Walker Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924, the son of Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush. George grew up in New England, in the state of Connecticut, from which his father was a senator. His parents, who valued hard work and service to society above all else, were able to pass on their values to the boy. After graduating from Phillips Academy, he, “inspired” by the attack on Pearl Harbor, deferred enrolling in Yale University and went to the front, choosing the Navy as his duty station. There, Bush became the youngest pilot in the US Navy. In the future, the young man will become the last US president to take a direct part in World War II.
George HW Bush in the cockpit of an Avenger aircraft, 1944
Family and university
Bush served until the very end of the war. He then accepted an offer to attend Yale University, where he received a bachelor's degree in economics in 1948. There he excelled not only academically, but also in sports, and was captain of the baseball team. Like his father, he was a member secret society"Skull & Bones".
His personal life did not bypass him at this time either: just a few weeks after returning from the theater of war, on January 6, 1945, George H. W. Bush married Barbara Pierce. They had six children: George Walker Bush, Pauline Robinson “Robin” Bush, who died of leukemia at the age of 4, John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, Neil Mallon Bush, Marvin (Marvin Pierce Bush) and Dorothy (Dorothy Bush). Two of Barbara and George's children followed in their father's footsteps and became politicians: George Jr., 43rd President of the United States, and John, 43rd Governor of Florida.
Bush Family
Political career
After the head of the family graduated from university, the Bushes moved to West Texas. There, George Sr. decided to go into the oil business. The choice turned out to be correct: by the age of 40 he became a millionaire.
Immediately after creating his own oil production company, he decided to try his hand at politics. In 1964, he ran for the Senate as a Republican representative, but was defeated.
Two years later, in 1966, he sold his oil business and finally devoted himself to politics. In November of the same year, he was elected to the House of Representatives and re-elected in 1968; during these four years he was also a member of the budget commission.
In 1970, he decided it was time for a second run for the Senate, but that too failed. But in December he was appointed permanent representative of the United States to the UN. The spring of 1973 was marked by another appointment - to the post of chairman of the Republican National Committee.
It was he who, in 1974-1975, as the head of the American diplomatic mission in China, Bush prepared the visits of Henry Kissinger and President Gerald Ford to the PRC.
For almost exactly a year, from January 30, 1976 to January 20, 1977, Bush Sr. served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
(Vice)presidency
Bush ran for president twice. His first attempt, in 1980, ended in failure: he lost to Ronald Reagan in the primary internal party elections. Nevertheless, Reagan invited Bush to become his vice president. Together they managed to beat the Democrats and occupy the White House for two terms.
President R. Reagan and Vice President J.G.W. Bush - official portrait
During his tenure as vice president from 1981 to 1989, George H. W. Bush was responsible for several areas of domestic policy, such as overseeing the reduction state control prices and business and coordinated counteraction to drug trafficking, and also visited other countries on official visits.
Bush's second election campaign turned out to be much more successful: in 1988, he won the primaries and then the national elections, thus becoming the 41st President of the United States. His vice president was Dan Quayle, a Republican senator from Indiana.
The four years of Bush's presidency occurred during a difficult period: the end of the forty-year Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Soviet Union ceased to exist, Bush-backed Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. Bush met with both him and Russian President Boris Yeltsin seven times. Treaties on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive weapons were signed (START-1 in 1991 and START-2 in 1993).
He also “succeeded” in other areas of foreign policy: for example, it was he who sent American troops to Panama to overthrow the regime of General Manuel Noriega there. He also sent 425,000 American troops to help Kuwait after the invasion of the country by the troops of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. First there were weeks of bombing and fighting, and then a hundred-hour battle known as Operation Desert Storm. It was there that the million-strong Iraqi army was defeated.
However, neither the diplomatic nor the military triumphs of George Bush Sr. could overcome internal problems - the deteriorating economic situation, rising crime in cities, shortages. Therefore, it was not he who won the 1992 election, but Democrat Bill Clinton.
Post-presidency
After leaving the presidency, George HW Bush did not leave politics. In 2006, he served as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's Special Envoy for Earthquake Relief in South Asia. He also served as chairman of the National Constitution Center of Philadelphia from 2006-2008. He is also actively involved in the life of the Presidential Library and Museum, named in his honor, as well as the School of Government and Civil Service, located at Texas A&M University.
Bush Sr. did a lot of charity work. At the request of his son George W. Bush, he and President Bill Clinton helped raise funds for victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricane Katrina in the United States. In 2008, the 41st and 42nd Presidents of the United States established a special fund to raise money to rebuild Gulf Coast infrastructure; They were “prompted” to do this by another hurricane – Ike. He is also a life member of several charities.
In 1993, George H. W. Bush received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II, the third president to receive this honor.
November 17, 2010 The White house announced that the 41st President of the United States will be awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor.
George Herbert Walker Bush born June 12, 1924 in Milton, Massachusetts, and raised in New England. His father, Precott Bush, was a highly respected Wall Street banker who served on the supervisory boards of large businesses and represented Connecticut in the Senate in Washington from 1952 to 1963. George W. Bush attended Philipps Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, one of the most prestigious boarding schools on the East Coast. After graduating from school in 1942, Zgoda served as a naval pilot, then 2 and a half years of study at the famous Yale University in Connecticut. During the war, Bush married on January 6, 1945, Barbara Pierce, whom he had met three years earlier. They moved to Texas in 1948, and Bush became a manager and entrepreneur in the oil industry. Coming from the East Coast establishment and socialized in New England, Bush immediately donned a cowboy hat and, in his political career, behaved, by necessity, as both an East Coast Tory and a Texas entrepreneur. From Texas began a march through all political institutions, a gradual rise to the presidency: chairman of the Republican Party in Houston, Texas; US Representative to the United Nations and China People's Republic; Director of the CIA; after a failed attempt to become a presidential candidate, vice president under Reagan. Bush not only met political system USA from various points of view, but also gradually became a master at negotiating, concluding compromises and creating consensuses, in short: he was a diplomat, experienced in party, internal and foreign policy.
His presidency was based on this wealth of experience. In the Bush administration, policy was made by experts, in the Foreign Office and the Treasury, along with James Baker and Nicholas Brady, there were close personal confidants who were very experienced in politically. Bush's personnel policy differed sharply from personnel policy Reagan: experienced, pragmatic, non-ideologized, mainstream politicians and bureaucrats were recruited. No more than 20% of Reagan's political officials were deliberately retained in individual agencies. Also unlike Reagan, Bush was drawn into the routine affairs of the White House and the legislative process. At the same time, he clearly gave priority to foreign policy. Quite early on, they began to distinguish between two Bush presidencies, namely, relatively successful in foreign policy and unsuccessful in domestic policy. True, Bush was considered conservative, but his presidency was not subject to any kind of program; he had problems, as he himself said, with “obvious things.” It was impossible not to see Bush's rhetorical deficit; he lacked the ability to electrify, mobilize the public, or even more so to manipulate it. In these conditions, the “plus” was his wife Barbara, with whom he had a harmonious family life and who, thanks to her motherly disposition, won the sympathy of many of her compatriots.
During the four years of Bush's presidency, there was radio silence on domestic policy. Much energy, however, was required to take on the heavy legacy of the Reagan administration: the state budget deficit, government debts and the collapse of many savings banks that went bankrupt on speculation during the years of boom in land and house prices. At the same time, the state budget deficit was a double-edged sword. It would narrowly limit the policy space of any president. At the same time, it could be used as an excuse for the president, who was not going to take the initiative in domestic politics anyway. The Bush administration's meager domestic policy output was the passage of the Americans with Disabilities and Air Protection Act. From the newly elected president's claim to go down in history as the president of education or defense environment in subsequent years there were no signs. In doing so, he could gain the support of the Congress, with which he maintained cooperative relations and with whose members he had excellent personal relations. Bush also failed to use his great popularity after winning the Gulf War to implement a broad domestic political agenda. Against the advice of his staff, he proclaimed a minimalist concept that dealt only with crime control and transportation policy. An economic and political disaster that carried more weight than the meager domestic policy results was Bush's announcement that, despite his own repeated promises, he would raise taxes because of the government deficit. At all, economic policy And economic development became the Achilles heel of his administration, which ultimately cost him his re-election: economic growth and individual real income stagnated, the trade deficit, especially with Japan, continued to grow, and the number of unemployed increased by 3 million. Shortly before Election Day 1992, this dissatisfaction was reflected in a public opinion poll: 80% of respondents believed that the government was leading in the wrong direction and that the country's economic well-being was at risk; Pessimism and a depressive mood spread.
In foreign policy, Bush had successes: in 1989, he began an intervention in Panama to arrest the local dictator Noriega, who was involved in the international drug trade; he adapted to rapidly changing relations between East and West by supporting the German unification process earlier and more energetically than Germany's other NATO partners; together with Foreign Secretary James Baker, he defused the debt crisis in Latin America and once again set in motion the peace process between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Above all, however, he made an impressive display of military power when he sent 540,000 American troops (10% of them women) to the Persian Gulf in 1990-91 to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait on behalf of the United Nations. Operation Desert Storm, in which the armed forces of the international coalition created by Bush broke the resistance of the Iraqis within 42 days, caused short-term euphoria among the American public, who hoped that it had overcome the “trauma of Vietnam.” However, it soon became clear that Bush did not have a long-term concept in foreign policy either. What he meant by the “new world order” he proclaimed remained unclear. His decisions were apparently made intuitively, but were carried out by a team of such brilliant politicians as James Baker, Dick Channey, Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell. These were the people who brought the US as the only remaining "superpower" into the new emerging international system.
Thus, Bush is one of a number of 20th-century presidents who ruled for only one term and were denied re-election: William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. Although (or perhaps precisely because) George W. Bush was president during a period of national and international turmoil, he left virtually no visible traces behind him and can be seen as a transitional president.
BUSH George (Sr.) BUSH George (Sr.)
BUSH George (full George Herbert Walker Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush) (b. June 12, 1924, Milton, Massachusetts), American statesman, 41st President of the United States (1989-1993)
Born into the family of banker and senator from Connecticut, Prescott Bush. During World War II, he served as a torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific Ocean and flew 58 combat missions. In 1944 he was shot down by the Japanese. Graduated from Yale University (cm. YALE UNIVERSITY)(1948), was engaged in the oil business in Texas. He was a Republican member of the House of Representatives (1966-1970), US Representative to the UN (1971-1972), Chairman of the Republican National Committee (1973-1975), Chief of the US Diplomatic Mission in China (1974-1976), Director of the CIA (1976-1975). 1977).
At the 1980 Republican National Convention, he lost the championship to Ronald Reagan. (cm. REAGAN Ronald). In the 1980 presidential election, he was elected vice president (1981-1989), succeeding Reagan as president, defeating Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election. In general, Bush followed the Reagan political course. In 1989, he ordered a military invasion of Panama to overthrow the power of General Manuel Noriega. The central event in President Bush's foreign policy was the Gulf War, which was caused by the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq. Bush promoted the UN-approved embargo against Iraq (1990), and when Iraq refused to withdraw troops from the occupied country, he authorized military operation"Desert Storm" (cm. DESERT STORM)"on the liberation of Kuwait (1991).
During the years of Bush's presidency, the camp of socialism collapsed, the USSR, the main strategic enemy of the United States in the second half of the 20th century, collapsed. Despite successes in foreign policy, the economic decline in American economy predetermined Bush's defeat in the 1992 elections from Bill Clinton (cm. CLINTON Bill). Bush's eldest son, George W. Bush, was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and president of the United States in 2000. Another son, Jeb Bush, was elected governor of Florida (1998).
encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .
See what "BUSH George (senior)" is in other dictionaries:
George BUSH (full George Walker Bush) (b. July 6, 1946, New Haven, Connecticut), American statesman, 43rd President of the United States (since 2001). Eldest son of George H. W. Bush (see BUSH George (Sr.)). Graduated... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
George Herbert Walker Bush George Herbert Walker Bush ... Wikipedia
George Herbert Walker Bush George Herbert Walker Bush ... Wikipedia
George Herbert Walker Bush George Herbert Walker Bush ... Wikipedia
George Bush Famous people: Bush, George Herbert Walker (Bush Sr.) 41st President of the United States (1989 1993). Bush, George Walker (Bush Jr.) 43rd President of the United States (2001 2009). Other: The aircraft carrier "George Bush" is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the class... ... Wikipedia
George Bush. Bush, George Herbert Walker (Bush Sr.) 41st President of the United States. Bush, George Walker (Bush Jr.) 43rd President of the United States. The aircraft carrier "George Bush" is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of the "Nimitz" class ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people with this last name, see Bush. George Herbert Walker Bush George Herbert Walker Bush ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people with this last name, see Bush. George Walker Bush George Walker Bush ... Wikipedia
Bush, George, Jr.- 43rd President of the United States of America 43rd President of the United States, served two terms (2001-2009). Former Governor of Texas (1995 2001), son of former US President George Herbert Walker Bush (Sr.). After the terrorist attacks... ... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers
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Former president, ex-head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Republican George H. W. Bush. He was the last politician of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office.
The head of a large political dynasty, the father of former White House head George W. Bush and ex-Governor of Florida Jeb Bush, last years was confined to a wheelchair, suffering from a severe form of Parkinson's disease. Earlier in April of this year, Bush's wife Barbara, with whom he lived for 73 years, passed away. By the way, a day after his wife’s funeral, Bush Sr. ended up in the intensive care unit of a Houston hospital with blood poisoning.
The 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, who served as head of the White House from 1989 to 1993, was born on June 12, 1924 in the town of Milton, Massachusetts, in the family of the famous American banker and senator Prescott Bush. His father's fortune and position contributed to the fact that from an early age George Bush had the opportunity to receive an elite education.
However, the future head of the White House did not take advantage of the privileges and, despite his mother’s fierce protests, went to the front lines during World War II at the age of 17. His decision, he said, was made after the attack on the American base at Pearl Harbor. As a result, at that time, 17-year-old George W. Bush became the youngest pilot in the history of the US Navy.
His last words became the phrase: “I love you, son”
He served in the American army until the very end of the war, without being injured, although in 1944 his fighter was shot down over Pacific Ocean. After returning from the war, he married (he and Barbara Pierce eventually had six children), and entered the forge of the American elite - the prestigious Yale University, receiving a bachelor's degree in economics. After graduating from Yale, Bush and his family moved to Texas, where he founded his own oil company, which allowed him to accumulate funds to campaign for a successful election to the House of Representatives.
From then on, he began a distinguished 40-year career as a public servant, during which he served as US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States Ambassador to China, Director of the CIA, and finally Vice President of the United States under Ronald Reagan. After the end of the latter's two presidential terms, Bush was nominated as the US presidential candidate from the Republican Party and won the election against Democrat Michael Dukakis, thus becoming the second vice president in US history to move to the head of the White House. “I am a person who sees life in terms of missions - missions given and missions completed,” - this is how George W. Bush formulated his political credo, speaking to his supporters in 1988 at a rally in New Orleans. He said he would "absolutely keep America moving forward" and strive "for a better America."
As TheNewYorkTimes notes, Bush was a "skilled bureaucratic and diplomatic player" who, as president, was able to end the Cold War era and the threat of nuclear holocaust by signing strategic treaties to reduce lethal weapons with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. After the breakup Soviet Union the then head of the White House made a lot of efforts to liberalize the countries of Eastern Europe and remove them “from the orbit of Moscow.” It was Bush Sr. who decided to launch Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which, contrary to his plan, did not lead to the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein. His rating, the NYT recalls, soared to 85 percent during the four-day aerial bombardment of Baghdad. It was the pinnacle of his presidency, but it "lulled him to sleep." Saddam was never overthrown. And soon, America, like two decades before, after Vietnam, received thousands of demoralized military personnel who developed serious mental illnesses. Not to mention the fact that the Iraqi campaign launched in January 1991, which led to the transfer of a hundred thousand troops and a huge amount of equipment to the other side of the Atlantic, cost billions of dollars in holes in the American budget. By the way, Bush inherited from Reagan a huge budget deficit of $220 billion at that time, which he was never able to eliminate.
George H. W. Bush did not win re-election to populist Democrat Bill Clinton, largely because his ratings collapsed under the weight of the economic downturn and his conspicuous inattention to internal problems U.S.A. During his reign, when the Americans first modern history felt the consequences of the worsening economic situation, Bush Sr. made a serious strategic mistake: under pressure from Congress and his advisers, at such a difficult time for his fellow citizens, he decided to increase the tax rate for US citizens.
Therefore, voters began to perceive this president as a politician “out of touch with Everyday life", even despite all his successes on the international stage. According to former US Secretary of State James Baker, who worked side by side with Bush for several decades, he became the most underrated president in the history of the United States, but the best of those who ruled America for during one presidential term.
After leaving the post of head of the White House, 69-year-old Bush practically stopped working political activity, blessing his namesake son for the presidency. As his son's popularity declined, assessments of Bush Sr.'s reign rose in the United States. Many Americans praised his "tact and restraint," and in a 2012 public opinion poll, 59 percent of US citizens expressed approval of George H. W. Bush's performance as President of the United States in the early 1990s. It got to the point where Democrats, including future President Barack Obama, recalled Bush Sr.'s activities as a way to rebuke his son. Bush Sr. himself, in his book of memoirs in 2015, reproached for the miscalculations of Bush Jr. those neocons of American politics who had been with him in politics for a long time and who became, in a way, the curators of his son, Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whom he called "a swaggering and boastful man." It was these two politicians who ultimately convinced Bush Jr. to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the 2000s, George Bush Sr. traveled extensively around the world, carrying out his life's work - "completing White House missions." He, along with his formerly hated Bill Clinton, began raising funds for the victims of the tsunami that devastated Asia in 2004, and for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005.
If the name of the 41st President of the United States appeared in the press in last decade, then solely due to health problems. However, on his 90th birthday, George Bush Sr. amazed the United States by managing, albeit with an instructor, to make a parachute jump. He has performed them every five years since his 75th birthday. He was constantly hospitalized with various exacerbating diseases, most recently in May of this year due to a sharp drop in blood pressure and general weakness.
America is ruthless even to its former presidents. A year ago, Bush Sr. was accused of nothing less than sexual harassment. Roslyn Corrigan in interview The Time said that in 2003, when she was 16, ex-president US ran his hand down her back below her waist as she posed for a photo with him and her mother. She became the sixth woman to accuse Bush Sr of "harassment" in similar circumstances. They all blamed the 41st President of the United States for the fact that while taking photographs, he put his hand below their waist and tried to stroke them. It would be nice if we were talking about a healthy young man who deliberately pestered women. However, it was still difficult to regard as harassment the gestures of an elderly, sick man who was practically speechless, poorly oriented in his surroundings, and had been confined to a wheelchair for five years.
Now Bush Sr. has finally had enough. And he went into a world free from such absurdity and absurdity.
Excerpts from a 1997 interview
This interview with George HW Bush was published in 1997. The talented Russian journalist Alexander Afanasyev traveled to the USA specifically to meet with him. Alas, he left us untimely.
Mr. President, how did World War II begin for you?
George Bush Sr.: As you may remember, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place in December 1941. I was attending boarding school in Massachusetts at the time. When I heard the news about the attack on Pearl Harbor, I immediately decided for myself: I want to serve my own country!
Were you afraid of dying?
George Bush Sr.: Now it seems strange to me that I went through some trials, that I managed to survive. It is hard to explain.
Eisenhower said: There are no atheists in trenches.
George Bush Sr.: Yes it's true. And I grew up in a family where they believed in God, and therefore it was easy for me to say prayers.
Which soldiers do you think are more courageous?
George Bush Sr.: I don't think that on a national level there is any reason why some soldiers would stand out over others, unless, of course, you take into account the fact that the fighter believes in the just cause for which he is fighting. But if you are fighting for something you don’t believe in, then you cannot be the same fighters as the soldiers of Leningrad, defending their family, their homeland from invaders.