George bush Essay -- essays research papers

I. INTRODUCTION Bush, George Herbert Walker (1924- ), 41st president of the United States (1989-1993), president at the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Bush also organized an unprecedented global alliance against Iraq during the Persian Gulf War of 1991, but he was less successful in dealing with U.S. domestic problems and was defeated after one term by Bill Clinton in the 1992 election. II. EARLY LIFE Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, but grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. His parents came from wealthy Midwestern families. His father, Prescott Bush, a partner in a leading Wall Street law firm, was a Republican U.S. senator from Connecticut between 1952 and 1963. Senator Bush was a moderate Republican and a supporter of President Dwight David Eisenhower. Senator Bush strongly opposed the party's far right wing, represented in the 1950s by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who led a campaign against Communist subversion in the United States. Bush's mother, Dorothy Walker, the daughter of a Missouri industrialist, encouraged her children to play sports and learn humility and manners. Bush graduated from Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, in 1942, and joined the United States Navy to fight in World War II. He became a pilot, flying bombing missions against Japan. On one mission his plane was shot down over the Pacific Ocean. Two crewmen died, but Bush survived unharmed and was rescued by a passing submarine within a few hours. Bush returned to the United States in late 1944. Two weeks later, in early 1945, he married Barbara Pierce, a Greenwich woman whose father was a magazine publisher. The couple had six children: sons George, John, Neil, and Marvin, and daughters Robin and Dorothy. Robin died of leukemia at the age of three. Bush entered Yale University in 1945. He majored in economics, became captain of the varsity baseball team, and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1948. He moved his young family to west Texas where, helped by his father's business connections, he went into the oil business, working as an equipment clerk. In 1953 Bush cofounded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation, which drilled for oil in the Permian basin in Texas and elsewhere in the West. The next year, he became president of the Zapata Offshore Company, which specialized in offshore... ...te. The Massachusetts governor proved to be a poor campaigner with a weak grasp for what moved voters. By contrast, Bush skillfully reached out to economic and social conservatives, as well as suburban independents and environmentalists. He criticized Dukakis for his refusal to support the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States in schools, accused him of supporting temporary releases called furloughs for violent criminals in overcrowded prisons, and pointed to what Bush argued was Dukakis's poor record in cleaning up polluted Boston harbor. While promising not to impose new taxes, to cut the capital gains tax, and to continue the Reagan defense program, Bush also vowed to oppose gun control and to try to overturn the 1973 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States that affirmed a woman's right to an abortion. Bush won the election easily, attracting 53 percent of the vote and carrying 40 states and 426 electoral votes. He won the entire South, most of the West and made deep inroads in the industrial Midwest. The election left one obstacle for Bush: the Democrats retained solid majorities in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.