Bush, George Herbert Walker 1924-
41st President of the USA

Born in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of a Connecticut senator, he served in the US navy (1942-45), becoming its youngest pilot, and after the war received a degree in economics from Yale and established an oil-drilling business in Texas. In 1966 he devoted himself to politics, and was elected to the House of Representatives. After his second unsuccessful bid for the senate in 1970 (his first was in 1964), he became US ambassador to the UN. During the Watergate scandal he was chairman of the Republican National Committee (1973-74) under President Nixon, and during the Ford administration he served as US envoy to China (1974-75), and then became director of the CIA (1976). In 1980 he sought the Republican presidential nomination, but lost to Ronald Reagan, later becoming his Vice-President. He became President in 1988, defeating the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis. His administration (1989-93) was marked by his aggressive foreign policy, which included ordering the invasion of Panama (1989) to oust Manuel Noriega and presiding over the US-led UN coalition to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War (1991). He signed nuclear arms limitation treaties with the USSR and Russia and the North American Free Trade Agreement (1992) with Canada and Mexico. His domestic record was considerably weaker, however, and in the 1992 presidential elections he lost the presidency to Democrat Bill Clinton. His autobiography, Looking Forward, was published in 1988.

Bibliography: Mark Sufrin, George Bush (1989)