George Herbert Walker Bush

• Vice President to:      Ronald Reagan - Republican, from California.
  
  
  • Ronald Reagan served 1981 - 1989. He died in 2004, at the age of 93.
    
    
• Dates Served: Bush served as Vice President from 1981 - 1989, then as President till 1993.
  
• Political Party: Bush is a Republican, from Texas.
  
• Born: 1924.
  
• Age: Bush is 83, as of May, 2008.
  
• The presidential opponents during the 1980 and 1984 campaigns were:
  
  
  • 1980 - Jimmy Carter - Democrat - Incumbant President
    
    
  • 1980 - John Anderson - Independent, but life-long liberal Republican - Illinois Senator
    
    
  • 1984 - Walter Mondale - Democrat - Unemployed former Vice President
    
    
• Campaign issues:
  
  
  • During the 1980 campaign:
    
    
    • The issues this year were inflation and the hostage crisis in Iran. Carter had presided over 4 years of energy shortages, sky-rocketing inflation, and a never-ending budget deficit. The American hostages being held in Iran didn't help his campaign any, and the Republicans milked the problems for all they were worth. The Republicans ran Reagan as their dream candidate, a dashing, affable former Hollywood actor who resurrected many of Barry Goldwater's old agenda; reduced taxes, increased defense spending, a loosening of government regulations of business, and a greater use of nuclear power. He took a hawkish stance on foreign policy, vowing to "make America great again". Carter tried to paint Reagan as a dangerous leader in a tense time in history, but many Americans didn't buy it. They flocked to Reagan with abandon. John Anderson ran as a third-party candidate, backing an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which Reagan opposed. Reagan suggested adding an Amendment banning Abortion, which both Carter and Anderson opposed. Reagan had the upper hand during most of the campaign, since the bad economy made his agenda clear. His slogan was "Are you better off than you were four years ago?". The answer was obvious, and Carter was mowed down under Reagan's landlside victory.
      
      
  • During the 1984 campaign:
    
    
    • The issue this year was that Reagan was unbeatable. It was a loosing battle from the start, but the Democrats ran former-Vice President Mondale as their candidate, trying to go after Reagan's record of unending military buildup, his "Star Wars" program, his involvement with Central American guerillas, and the largest budget deficit in history. But none of it mattered. America was awash in a resurgence of confidence and Reagan looked and acted the role of President more than Mondale could have ever hoped to. The televised debates only reinforced the voters' opinions and on election day Reagan secured the single biggest Electoral victory in US history. He was the man of the hour.
      
      
  
  
• Notable Facts about George Bush Senior:
  
  
  • George Bush is well-connected as far as relatives are concerned. He is:
    
    
    • The son of Prescott Bush, US House Representative and Senator from Connecticut.
      
      
    • A seventh-cousin, four-times-removed, of President Lincoln.
      
      
    • A seventh-cousin, three-times-removed, of President Teddy Roosevelt.
      
      
    • A fifth-cousin, four-times-removed, of President Franklin Pierce.
      
      
    • An eleventh-cousin, once-removed, of President Gerald Ford.
      
      
    • A tenth-cousin, once-removed, of Dan Quayle.
      
      
    • A fourth-cousin, seven-times-removed, of Benedict Arnold.
      
      
    • An eighth-cousin, once-removed, of Winston Churchill.
      
      
    • A ninth-cousin, twice-removed, of Marilyn Monroe.
      
      
    (At least, that's what the official genealogical records in Boston say...)
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: George Bush is, as so many Presidents have been, Episcopalian. He serves regularly as vestryman at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Kenebunkport, Maine. The Bush family has their own official pews at the church, right up front. He has often publically expressed his religious faith, including in his acceptance speech upon winning the nomination for President at the Republican National Convention in 1988. He said, "I am guided by certain traditions. One is that there is a God and he is good, and his love, while free, has a self-imposed cost - we must be good to one another". He says that he and his wife read the Bible daily. His daughter, Dorothy Bush, claims to have been the first person ever publically baptized in Communist China, which she was when the Bush family lived there in 1974, during George's service in Beijing as Chief US Liason for President Nixon.
    
    
  • During World War II, Bush was a fighter pilot and gained notoriety for 2 dramatic incidents. The first incident was in the Fall of 1943 when he was stationed in Virginia, when he was reprimanded for deliberately flying his plane too low over a circus, buzzing a corral in which an elephant got spooked and escaped and fled into the nearby town. (As a result he was nicknamed "Ellie the Elephant" by his fellow-pilots). The other incident was while he was flying bombing missions against the Japanese over the Pacific, in which he was one of only 4 pilots to survive from his original squadron of 14 pilots.
    
    In September of 1944 he was on a bombing mission over some Pacific islands and during his descent over the target his plane was riddled by anti-aircraft gunfire, but intrepid George continued descending despite his cockpit quickly filling with smoke and his wings on fire. He dropped his bombs on target, sputtered out to sea and then bailed out. His tailgunner, however, was already dead in the rear of the plane, having been hit by gunfire. While bailing out George hit the plane's tail, slicing open his scalp and tearing his parachute but managed to land safely in the water, only to get stung by a Portuguese Man-of-War jelly-fish. George remained in the water for 3 hours, paddling his small rubber raft away from the Japanese shore, where Japanese boats had spotted him and were attempting to capture him, but were being kept away from him by other American planes. He later claimed that several thoughts flashed through his mind, including his family, his religious faith, and the importance of the separation of church and state. He was eventually rescued by a US submarine that floated by and he remained on-board for a month while it torpedoed evil Japanese fleets.
    
    George was one lucky pilot, since the islands he was bombing were the Bonin Islands. After the war Japanese officers stationed on these islands were convicted of war crimes, having practiced systematic torture, decapitation, and even cannibalization of captured US soldiers. George was decorated for his valor and soon rotated back home.
    
    
  • After the war ended George and his wife Barbara, along with their 2-year old son George W, moved to Texas in 1948 and went into the oil business, remaining in the state until 1966. He started a company called "Zapata Petroleum" (supposedly because a "Z" name would show up last in the phone book) and struck it rich. He became president of the company and moved it to Houston. In 1966 he sold his interest in the company for $1 million in order to run for political office.
    
    
  • In 1967 he was elected to the US House of Representatives, representing Texas from 1967 - 1971, during which time he pushed for lots of legislation supporting the oil industry.
    
    
  • In 1970 Bush considered giving up his seat in the House of Representatives to run for the Senate. He would run against Texan Lloyd Bentson, who would later run for Vice President 18 year later with Michael Dukakis in the 1988 campaign. Bush visited with ex-President, and Texas icon, Lyndon Johnson for advice as to whether or not to switch Congressional seats. Johnson told him to go for it, saying "The difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit".
    
    George took his advice and ran, and lost. So much for the advice of ex-Presidents.
    
    
  • Having lost his seat in the House, Bush was disgruntled and considered bowing out of politics for good. However then-President Nixon, who had also supported Bush's decision to run for Senate, had promised Bush a job in his Administration if he lost. So Bush went to Nixon and requested a position as ambassador to the UN. After some initial misgivings Nixon gave the post to Bush, despite the complaints of several of his own advisors who were concerned about Bush's lack of diplomatic experience.
    
    
  • While in the UN Bush pressed for the admittance of Communist China into the UN, but allowing "the other China", Taiwan, to retain its UN seat. He lost though, and Taiwan was shown the UN door while Communist China was given their chair.
    
    
  • After Nixon was re-elected in 1972 Nixon made Bush the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, a post he held for a year and a half. During the Watergate scandal Bush was a staunch defender of Nixon to the end, only changing his stance mere days before Nixon resigned. Bush later called his tenure as Chairman a "political nightmare".
    
    
  • Bush's next job was as Chief US Liason to China, serving from 1974 - 1975. When Gerald Ford became President following Nixon's resignation, Bush lobbied Party regulars to be nominated Vice President, and got a majority of supported to back him. But Ford gave the job to Nelson Rockefeller and gave Bush job of representing the US in Communist China. While diplomatic relations had been initiated with China, there was still no official ambassadors, with Bush's title being "Liason".
    
    
  • In 1976 President Ford had offered the post of Director of the CIA to a Washington lawyer, only to be turned down. So he asked George if he'd like to quit his post in China to become the first politician to run the CIA. Bush privately didn't want the job, since the CIA was considered a political dead end, and he really want to be nominated Vice President in Ford's 1976 campaign, but he heeded his father's advice to "never turn down a direct request from the President". He accepted and ran the agency with efficiency, even offering to remain on the job after Jimmy Carter became President. (Carter declined the offer).
    
    
  • After loosing his job in the CIA Bush began preparing to run for President in the 1980 campaign. Bush campaigned for the Republican nomination and by January, 1980 became the main contender against Ronald Reagan. During this time he ridiculed Reagan's "supply-side" economic doctrine, calling it "voodoo economics" during a speech in Pittsburgh in April. He later adamantly denied ever saying it, only to have news anchors happily replay video clips of his speech.
    
    
  • Bush eventually lost the Republican nomination and Reagan, after initially considering naming ex-President Gerald Ford his running mate, selected Bush as his Vice President.
    
    
  • On March 30, 1981, President Reagan was shot by a mentally ill drifter, and Bush immediately flew from Texas to Washington, landing at his own residence and not on the White House lawn as recommended by some of his aids. (He didn't want to look too eager). During Reagan's recuperation Bush presided over Cabinet meetings and made a point of never sitting in Reagan's chair nor conducting any business in the Oval Office, deferring any important decisions until Reagan's return, which he did 2 weeks after the shooting.
    
    
  • On July 13, 1985 President Reagan underwent surgery for intestinal cancer. The surgery lasted 8 hours and during this time all Presidential powers were temporarily transferred to Vice President Bush, who spent the time playing tennis and taking a nap. (Good preparation for his later job as President).
    
    
  • During his tenure as Vice President, Bush kept a low profile. He rarely spoke up during Cabinet meetings and rarely offered any criticism or constructive advice. Many aids expressed their concern that they had no idea what Bush's views were on many policy issues. Reagan's Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, claimed once that Bush's most relevant task each day was helping him come up with a morning joke to motivate the President.
    
    
  • During the Iran-Contra scandal Bush was shown to have been present at numerous meetings in which the deal was hammered out and approved. But after the leak Bush insisted he knew nothing of the arms-for-hostages deal, even claiming total ignorance of the details 2 weeks after the story had been plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the country. He was dogged by accusations of collusion and covering up details, along with Reagan who claimed to not remember authorizing anything, and with Col. Oliver North who proudly lied to Congress when questioned about it. It followed him up into his own Presidential campaign in 1988. During an interview with Dan Rather on CBS one night during his campaign he engaged in a heated shouting match on live television, calling Dan Rather a "pussy", and repeatedly denied any knowledge of details discussed at meetings he personally attended. But he won the election anyway, despite his short temper and protracted accusations of "being a whimp" by the Media.
    
    
  • In 1989 Bush won the Presidential election against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, becoming only the second Vice President ever to be elected directly out of the office of Vice President into the White House. (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson don't count since they only became Vice President as a result of loosing the election for President). In his inaugural speech Bush coined 2 famous phrases, declaring America to henceforth become "a kinder, gentler nation" and urging Americans to join volunteer efforts, becoming like "a thousand points of light".
    
    
  • During his 4 years in the White House Bush went from rising in popularity due to military invasions of Panama and Iraq and being around during the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War, to a sinking approval-rating as the economy went downhill and his anaemic response to it. He was skilled at foreign policy, sending the military into Somalia to aid relief efforts and throwing up on the Japanese Prime Minister during a State Dinner in Tokyo, but his reluctance to address the economy vigorously enough cost him the re-election in 1992.
    
    
  • Since leaving office Bush has spent his time giving speeches and jumping out of airplanes, having decided to take up skydiving in his 70's, since his previous tail-hitting, head-splitting, jelly-fish-stinging attempt 50 years earlier didn't go so well. In 2001 he became only the second ex-President, after John Adams, to see his son inaugurated as President, when George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President, in spite of having lost the popular election.
    

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• Assassination Attempt, March 30, 1981. Only three months into his Presidency, Reagan was walking from the Hilton Hotel in Washington on his way to the Presidential motorcade, and waving to onlookers. In the crowd was John Hinckley Jr, age 25, a drifter who wanted to demonstrate his love for Jodie Foster. He accomplished this by dropping down on one knee, whipping out a gun, and shooting six "Devastator" bullets at the President. (Devastator bullets have small explosives inside of their slugs, designed to explode after entering a victim's body). 2 shots missed, but with the other 4 he managed to hit Reagan in the chest, Press Secretary James Brady in the head, and seriously wounding a Secret Service agent and one policeman. A Secret Service agent pushed Reagan into his limousine and jumped on top of him to shield him. When he saw Reagan coughing up blood he ordered the limousine to speed to the hospital, where Reagan was found to have been shot through the ribs and punctured a lung, with the bullet lodged an inch from his heart. He was seriously hurt, more so than both Presidents McKinley and Garfield had been and they died, but Reagan survived after spending 2 weeks in the hospital, then returning to the White House.
  
  Hinckley was tackled by the crowd and later tried for attempted murder. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Hinckley was a rebel without a cause and had become obsessed with the movie "Taxi Driver" and it's melancholy portrayal of a similarly directionless drifter who tries to assassinate a politician, only to rescue a young prostitute played by Jodi Foster. (Ironically, the movie had been partly based on another real-life would-be assassin, Arthur Bremmer who shot George Wallace in 1972) After watching the film 15 times Hinckley became obsessed with Jodi Foster and began writing her love letters, which she didn't respond to, much to his chagrin. He decided that the only way to get her attention was to try and kill the President, like in the movie. After a 7-week trial Hinckley was found not guilty due to insanity, and was sentenced to a mental institution in Washington DC. After hearing his verdict Hinckley said that the whole incident was "the greatest love offering in history". Jodi Foster still didn't write him back.
  
  
• Final episode of "MASH" is aired, on Sept. 9, 1983.
  
  
• The USSR shoots down Korean commercial airliner #007, which had flown over Soviet air-space, killing all 269 passengers, including US House Representative Lawrence McDonald of Georgia, on September 5, 1983. The US responded by deploying additional missiles in Western Europe to counter similar Soviet missile deployments in Eastern Europe.
  
  
• US military invades Grenada, on October 25, 1983. The island of Grenada in the Caribbean, the smallest nation in the Western Hemisphere, is attacked by US forces during a Marxist coup in the country. The stated reason for the invasion was to rescue American citizens hiding out in a hospital on the island, but the Cuban-backed rebels were ousted and the coup was reversed.
  
  
• 241 US soldiers killed in Beirut, Lebanon on October 23, 1983. Iranian-led Islamic radicals drove a truck into the middle of an American Marine compound in Beirut and blew themselves up. Reagan responded by redeploying US troops on ships offshore in the Mediterranean. The troops were there to maintain peace during the Lebanese Civil War between Muslims and Christians.
  
  
• Cruise ship "Achille Lauro" is hijacked at sea by PLO militants. An Italian cruise ship on it's way to Egypt through the Mediterranean with 104 Americans aboard, the militants held them hostage, demanding the released of imprisoned PLO members in Israel. Frustrated by their demands not being met they killed an elderly passanger confined to a wheelchair by pushing him overboard into the ocean. Egypt offered them safe haven in exchange for surrendering, which they did. Upon leaving Egypt on board a commercial plane, US Navy fighter jets intercepted the plane and diverted it to Sicily, where they were arrested and tried for murder and terrorism, found guilty and sentenced to prison in Italy.
  
  This was just one of several terrorist incidents against Americans overseas, including several hijackings of commercial airlines.
  
  
• The Internet's first domain-name is registered, symbolics.com , on March 15, 1985, by Symbolics Technology, Inc. (Prior to this, all Internet addresses used numbers as addresses, not names)
  
  
• Mikhail Gorbachev is appointed Secretary General of the Soviet Union, initiating "Glasnost" which creates more open relations between the USSR and America.
  
  
• In 1985 President Reagan authorized a deal to sell arms to Iran, who was still fighting with Iraq, in exchange for Iran arranging the release of American hostages who were being held by Islamic militants in Lebanon. The plan called for taking the profits from the sale and diverting them to the Contra rebels who were fighting the Socialist government in Nicaragua at the time. The deal went through and a few American hostages were freed, only to see several more taken elsewhere. Funds were diverted to the Contras, even though this violated recently-passed laws by Congress which forbade government involvement with the Contras, who had a habit of kidnapping villagers in their country and ransacking villages. The deal was exposed by a Lebanese newspaper later that year and Washington saw the biggest scandal since Watergate.
  
  Over a year of investigations followed, accusing several of Reagan's subordinates of destroying documents and lying under oath. When questioned about claims that he had approved the deal, Reagan repeated his now-famous insistence that "I don't recall". Reagan was ultimately exonerated of direct involvement, largely due to missing documents, but was blamed for allowing it to occur due to his "hand's off" approach to managing parts of his Adminstration, allowing broad interpretation of his agenda by "loose canons".
  
  
• Television show "Knight Rider" is finally cancelled, in May of 1986.
  
  
• 1 American killed and 60 injured in a bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin, linked to Libyan militants, on April 5, 1986. Nine days later, on April 14th, US fighter jets attacked Libya, bombing Tripoli, including the home of Libyan leader Moammar Khaddafi, resulting in the death of his adopted daughter. The attack lasted a total of 10 minutes and was met with international criticism.
  
  
• The Koosh Ball is invented by Scott Stillinger, in 1987.
  
  
• Pan Am commercial airline explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and several people on the ground on December 21, 1988. The cause was traced to a bomb left in a cassette player in a suitcase on the plane, planted by 2 Libyan militants. Sanctions were imposed against Libya until the two were eventually extradited 11 years later in 1999 to stand trial in Holland under an international court. One defendant was convicted, the other was acquited.
  
  
• Pauly Shore first appears in a movie in January of 1988, and Western Civilization begins its inevitable decline.