George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush was the 41st President of the United States and held more senior offices before it than almost anyone in modern American history. Born in Massachusetts in 1924 to a banker who became a senator, he enlisted on his eighteenth birthday and became one of the Navy's youngest aviators, flying fifty-eight missions. He was shot down over the Pacific in September 1944 and rescued by a submarine; his two crewmates died. He studied economics at Yale, moved to Texas, and made money in offshore oil drilling. He served two terms in Congress from 1967, then as ambassador to the UN, chairman of the Republican National Committee through Watergate, envoy to China, and director of the CIA. He lost the 1980 nomination to Ronald Reagan, having called his tax plans voodoo economics, and served eight years as vice-president. He won in 1988 promising no new taxes, then raised them in the 1990 budget deal to cut the deficit — a reversal that helped cost him re-election and which is now generally regarded as responsible. His foreign record is the strongest part of it. He managed the collapse of communism and German reunification without triumphalism or violence, signed START and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and assembled a thirty-five-nation coalition that expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 — then deliberately stopped at the border rather than advancing on Baghdad. He signed the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act amendments. His 1988 campaign ran the Willie Horton advertisement. He lost in 1992 to Bill Clinton amid recession, and later became close friends with him. He died in 2018.
- Lived: 1924 CE – 2018 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: 41st President of the United States (1989–93)
