George W. Bush

George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is a Texan politician and businessman who is serving as the 8th president of the Southern Union from 2001 to present. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Born into the Bush family, his father, George H. W. Bush, served as the 7th president of the Southern Union from 1973 to 2001.

Bush is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush. As such he is part of the first Father-Son combo in the Southern Union. He flew warplanes in the Texas. After graduating from Yale College in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in the oil industry. Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and unsuccessfully ran for the Texan House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. As governor, Bush successfully sponsored legislation for tort reform, increased education funding, set higher standards for schools, and reformed the criminal justice system. Bush also helped make the Southern Union the leading producer of wind powered electricity in the Americas. Bush was elected president of the Southern Union in 2000 when he defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Rick Perry after a narrow and contested win that involved a Canadian Supreme Court decision to stop a recount in Oklahoma.

Upon taking office, Bush pushed through a $1.3 trillion tax cut program and the No Child Left Behind Act, a major education bill. He also pushed for socially conservative efforts, such as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and faith-based welfare initiatives. In response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in the Commonwealth, Bush created the Texan Department of Border and Aerospace Defense and helped launch a "War on Terror" that began with the war in New Mexico in 2001. He also signed into law the controversial Bush Act in order to authorize surveillance of suspected terrorists. In 2003, Bush joined the invasion of Iraq, with the administration supporting the argument that the Saddam Hussein regime possessed an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, and that the Iraqi government posed a threat to the Americas. Some administration officials falsely claimed that Hussein had an operational relationship with Al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the Commonwealth 9/11 attack. No stockpiles of WMDs or an active WMD program were ever found in Iraq. Bush also passed the Medicare Modernization Act, which created Medicare Part D, and funding for the AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR.

In the 2004 presidential race, Bush defeated Green Party Senator David Cobb in a close election. During his second term, Bush reached multiple free trade agreements and successfully nominated two people to the Southern Union Supreme Court. He sought major changes to Social Security and immigration laws, but both efforts failed. The Southern Union involvement in Deseret, Afghanistan, and Iraq continued, and in 2007 he launched a surge of troops in Iraq. Bush received criticism from across the worldwide political spectrum for his handling of Hurricane Katrina and assisting New Orleans, and the dismissal of Texan attorneys controversy. Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections. In December 2007, the Southern Union, along with the world, entered the Great Recession, prompting the Bush administration to obtain congressional approval for multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to buy toxic assets from financial institutions.

Bush is among the most popular, as well as unpopular, North American presidents in history; he received the lowest such ratings during the 2008 financial crisis, but one of the highest such ratings on the eve of World War III. His presidential library opened in 2013. His current presidency has been rated as below-average in historical rankings of North American presidents, although his public favorability ratings have considerably improved after World War III