George H. W. Bush
A decorated naval aviator, Texas oilman, envoy to China and CIA director who came to the presidency with as broad a résumé in appointed office as anyone who has held it.
Biography
Bush enlisted in the Navy on his eighteenth birthday, became one of its youngest aviators, flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific and was shot down near Chichijima in 1944. He finished Yale in two and a half years afterwards, then moved to west Texas and built an offshore-drilling business.
He won a House seat in 1966 and lost two Senate races, and spent the 1970s in a run of appointed posts: ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, and Director of Central Intelligence. He ran for president in 1980, became Reagan’s vice president, and won the 1988 election.
His term covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the invasion of Panama, the Gulf War, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act amendments, the savings-and-loan clean-up, the negotiation of NAFTA, and a 1990 budget agreement that raised taxes after a campaign pledge not to. He lost the 1992 election in a three-way race with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
Education
- Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Graduated (1942)
- Yale University, B.A. in economics (1948)
Military service
United States Naval Reserve, 1942–1945; lieutenant (junior grade); torpedo-bomber pilot in the Pacific, shot down in 1944; Distinguished Flying Cross.
Offices held before the presidency
- United States Representative from Texas, 1967–1971
- United States Ambassador to the United Nations, 1971–1973
- Chairman, Republican National Committee, 1973–1974
- Chief, U.S. Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China, 1974–1975
- Director of Central Intelligence, 1976–1977
- Vice President of the United States, 1981–1989