George W. Bush, born on 6 July 1946, was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He is the eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush, and served as governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.
George Walker Bush was born on 6 July 1946 at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce. He was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas. He has five siblings: Robin, Jeb, Neil, Marvin and Dorothy. Robin died of leukaemia at the age of three in 1953. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a US senator from Connecticut, and his father became Ronald Reagan’s vice president and the 41st president.
In his twenties he flew warplanes in the Texas Air National Guard. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1975 he worked in the oil industry, and he later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before being elected governor of Texas in 1994. As governor he sponsored legislation for tort reform, increased education funding and reformed criminal justice, and helped make Texas the leading producer of wind-generated electricity in the United States.
In the 2000 presidential election he defeated Vice President Al Gore. He lost the popular vote but won a narrow and contested Electoral College victory, which involved the Supreme Court decision Bush v. Gore to stop a recount in Florida. In his first term he signed a major tax-cut programme and the No Child Left Behind Act, and in 2003 launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to address the global AIDS epidemic.
The September 11 attacks in 2001 reshaped his administration, leading to the war on terror and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. He ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda, signed the Patriot Act, and ordered the 2003 invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, citing claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda. He also signed the Medicare Modernization Act, which created Medicare Part D.
He won re-election in 2004 against John Kerry, winning the popular vote. In his second term he negotiated free trade agreements, appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and sought major changes to Social Security and immigration, which failed in Congress. He was widely criticised for his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and for the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, and in January 2007 he launched a surge of troops in Iraq. As his presidency ended, the financial crisis and Great Recession led to emergency measures including the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
He recorded both the highest approval ratings after September 11 and some of the lowest during the 2008 financial crisis, and left office as one of the most unpopular presidents, though public opinion of him has improved since. Scholars generally rank him as below average. After his term he returned to Texas and has kept a low public profile. He turned 80 in July 2026.
Image: George W. Bush at a podium with the presidential seal (file photo). Photo: US Department of Housing and Urban Development / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
