George W. Bush 2001 to present

Born: 1946, New Haven CT

George W. Bush is the second President, after John Quincy Adams, to follow his father to the White House. The first child of 41st President George H.W. Bush, "George W" grew up in Texas, then went to Andover and Yale before earning a Harvard MBA. Returning home to the oil business, he married teacher Laura Welch, and lost a 1978 race for Congress. In 1988, he joined his father's Presidential campaign. In 1989, the lifelong baseball fan formed a group to buy the Texas Rangers and became the team's managing partner. After his father's 1992 loss to Bill Clinton, George W gave politics another try, twice winning the Texas Governorship. There, he championed crime and tax reduction and education and tort reform. In 2000, he defeated Democrat Al Gore in one of the closest and most contested elections in history-one which took five weeks and a Supreme Court ruling to sort out.

The partisan rancor that followed the 2000 election was erased, temporarily, by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Galvanized by the event, George W declared a "war on terror." He sent troops to destroy their operating base in Afghanistan, stepped up domestic law enforcement, and in 2003, invaded Iraq. Though U.S. forces quickly ousted Saddam Hussein, they've labored to create peace and order. The war became a key issue in the 2004 election, when George W narrowly defeated Democrat John Kerry.

Forty-Third President
Republican