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Coordinates | 27°50′″N48°25′″N |
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Name | Barbara Bush |
Birth date | June 08, 1925 |
Birth place | Flushing, New York, U.S. |
Occupation | former First Lady of the United States |
Order | First Lady of the United States |
Term start | January 20, 1989 |
Term end | January 20, 1993 |
Predecessor | Nancy Reagan |
Successor | Hillary Rodham Clinton |
Religion | Episcopalian |
Spouse | George H. W. Bush |
Children | George W. Bush, Robin Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Marvin Bush and Dorothy Bush Koch |
Relations | Marvin Pierce and Pauline Robinson |
Order2 | Second Lady of the United States |
Term start2 | January 20, 1981 |
Residence | Houston, Texas |
Term end2 | January 20, 1989 |
Predecessor2 | Joan Mondale |
Successor2 | Marilyn Quayle |
Signature | Barbara Bush Signature.svg |
Barbara Pierce Bush (born June 8, 1925) is the wife of the 41st President of the United States George H. W. Bush, and served as First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993. She is the mother of the 43rd President George W. Bush and of the 43rd Governor of Florida Jeb Bush. Previously she had served as Second Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
Barbara Pierce was born in Flushing, New York attended Rye Country Day School from 1931 to 1937, and attended boarding school in South Carolina. She met George Herbert Walker Bush at age 16, and the two married in 1945, while he was on leave during his deployment as a Naval officer in World War II. They would have six children together. The Bush family soon moved to Midland, Texas; as George Bush entered political life, Barbara raised their children.
As wife of the Vice President and then President, Barbara Bush has supported and worked to advance the cause of universal literacy. She founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy while First Lady. Since leaving the White House, she has continued to advance this cause.
Barbara attended Rye Country Day School from 1931 to 1937 and later boarding school at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina (from 1940 to 1943). After a year-and-a-half, the two became engaged to be married, just before he went off to World War II as a Navy torpedo bomber pilot. He named three of his planes after her: Barbara, Barbara II, and Barbara III. When he returned on leave, she had dropped out of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts; She became involved with many literacy organizations, served on literacy committees and chaired many reading organizations. Eventually, she helped develop the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. During the early 1980s, statistics showed that 35 million adults could not read above the eight-grade level and that 23 million were not able to read beyond a fourth-grade level. Mrs. Bush appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss the situation. She also appeared regularly on Mrs. Bush's Story Time, a national radio program that stressed the importance of reading aloud to children.
She was also active with the White House Historical Association and worked to revitalize the White House Preservation Fund, which she renamed the White House Endowment Trust. The trust raises funds for the ongoing refurbishment and restoration of the White House. She met her goal of raising $25 million towards the endowment.
Bush was known for her affection for her pet English Springer Spaniel Millie and wrote a child's book about Millie's new litter of puppies. Barbara Bush became the first U.S. First Lady to become a recipient of the Henry G. Freeman Jr. Pin Money Fund, receiving $36,000, most of which she gave to favorite charities.
Several schools have been named for her: three primary schools and two middle schools in Texas and an elementary school in Mesa, Arizona. Also named for her is the Barbara Bush Library in Harris County, Texas and the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine.
Bush was initiated into Beta Sigma Phi women's fraternity as an alumna honor initiate, a national honorary member of Gamma Sigma Sigma in 1987, and also was initiated into the Texas Eta chapter (Texas A&M; University) of Pi Beta Phi women's fraternity in 2002 as an alumna honor initiate. Even before her initiation, she served as honorary chairperson of the fraternity's literacy philanthropy.
She serves on the Boards of AmeriCares and the Mayo Clinic, and heads the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. In 2006, it was revealed that Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush–Clinton Katrina Fund on the condition the charity do business with an educational software company owned by her son Neil Bush.
Because of the remarkable coincidence of three cases of auto-immune disease in one household, the Secret Service tested the water in the White House, at Camp David, at the Vice President's residence, and at Walker's Point (Bush's home in Maine) for lithium and iodine, two substances "known to cause thyroid problems".
In November 2008 Bush was hospitalized for abdominal pains. On November 25, a dime-sized hole in her small intestine, that was caused by an ulcer, was closed by surgeons. She was released December 2, 2008 and was reported to be doing well.
Bush underwent aortic valve replacement surgery on March 4, 2009; she was released from the hospital on March 13, 2009.
In 1984, Bush told the press that she could not say on television what she thought of then Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, but "it rhymes with rich".
During her husband's 1992 presidential campaign, Barbara Bush stated that abortion and homosexuality are personal matters and argued that the Republican Party platform should not take a stand on it, saying that "The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, platforms and conventions." Her personal views on abortion were not known, although her friends reported at that time that she "privately supported abortion rights".
She also explained, "I hate abortions, but I just could not make that choice for someone else."
On March 18, 2003, two days before the beginning of the war on Iraq, ABC's Good Morning America asked her about her family's television viewing habits; she replied:
While visiting a Houston relief center for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Bush told the radio program Marketplace,
The remarks generated controversy. Later, Bush donated money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, but it was revealed that some of that money was earmarked by her to go to a software company owned by her son, Neil Bush.
Category:1925 births Category:Living people Category:American Episcopalians Category:American people of English descent Category:Bush family Category:First Ladies of the United States Category:Parents of Presidents of the United States Category:People from Midland, Texas Category:People from Queens Category:Rye Country Day school alumni Category:Second Ladies of the United States Category:Smith College alumni Category:Spouses of members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Spouses of Texas politicians Category:Texas Republicans
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Coordinates | 27°50′″N48°25′″N |
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Caption | Palin at the 2010 Time 100 Gala |
Name | Sarah Palin |
Order1 | 9th |
Office1 | Governor of Alaska |
Term start1 | December 4, 2006 |
Term end1 | July 26, 2009 |
Lieutenant1 | Sean Parnell |
Predecessor1 | Frank Murkowski |
Successor1 | Sean Parnell |
Office2 | Chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission |
Term start2 | 2003 |
Term end2 | 2004 |
Governor2 | Frank Murkowski |
Predecessor2 | Camille Oechsli Taylor |
Birth place | Sandpoint, Idaho, U.S. |
Ethnicity | English, Irish and German |
Alma mater | University of Hawaii at HiloHawaii Pacific CollegeNorth Idaho CollegeMatanuska-Susitna College |
Spouse | Todd Palin (m. 1988) |
Children | Track (b. 1989)Bristol (b. 1990)Willow (b. 1994)Piper (b. 2001)Trig (b. 2008) she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party, as well as the first female vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party. |
Title | Sarah Palin succession and navigation boxes |
State | collapsed |
List1 |
Category:1964 births Category:21st-century women writers Category:Alaska city councillors Category:Alaska Republicans Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American broadcasters of Irish descent Category:American evangelicals Category:American fishers Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:American politicians of Irish descent Category:American television sports announcers Category:American women mayors Category:American women state governors Category:American women writers Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Beauty pageant contestants Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Converts to evangelical Christianity from Roman Catholicism Category:Female United States vice-presidential candidates Category:Governors of Alaska Category:Living people Category:Mayors of Wasilla, Alaska Category:National Rifle Association members Category:Palin family Category:People from Sandpoint, Idaho Category:Republican Party (United States) vice presidential nominees Category:Tea Party movement Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 2008 Category:University of Idaho alumni Category:Women in Alaska politics Category:Writers from Alaska Category:Writers from Idaho Category:Fox News Channel people
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Coordinates | 27°50′″N48°25′″N |
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Name | Mitt Romney |
Alt | Portrait of Mitt Romney |
Order | 70th |
Office | Governor of Massachusetts |
Term start | January 2, 2003 |
Term end | January 4, 2007 |
Lieutenant | Kerry Healey |
Predecessor | Jane Swift (acting) |
Successor | Deval Patrick |
Birth date | March 12, 1947 |
Birth place | Detroit, Michigan |
Birthname | Willard Mitt Romney |
Nationality | American |
Party | Republican |
Residence | Belmont, Massachusetts San Diego, California |
Spouse | Ann Romney |
Children | Tagg (b. 1970), Matt (b. 1971), Josh (b. 1975), Ben (b. 1978), Craig (b. 1981) |
Alma mater | Brigham Young University (B.A.)Harvard Business School (M.B.A.) Harvard Law School (J.D.) |
Profession | Businessman, Politician |
Religion | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
Signature | Mitt Romney Signature.svg |
Romney is the son of George W. Romney (the former Governor of Michigan) and Lenore Romney. He was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and served as a Mormon missionary in France. He attended Stanford University and Brigham Young University as an undergraduate, then earned a joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He entered the management consulting business which led to a position at Bain & Company, eventually serving as its CEO to lead it out of crisis. He was co-founder and head of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm, which during his time there became highly profitable and one of the largest such firms in the nation. He ran as the Republican candidate in the 1994 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts but lost to incumbent Edward M. Kennedy. Romney organized and steered the 2002 Winter Olympics as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and helped turn the troubled games into a financial success.
Romney won the election for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. In his one term, he presided over a series of spending cuts and increases in fees while the state's finances improved. He signed into law the landmark Massachusetts health care reform legislation, which provided near-universal health insurance access via subsidies and state-level mandates. Romney was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election, winning several caucuses and primaries but ultimately losing to John McCain. Since then he has published a book, , and also given speeches and raised campaign funds on behalf of fellow Republicans. He is widely seen as a front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2012 presidential election.
When Mitt was five, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Mitt idolized him, read automotive trade magazines and kept abreast of automotive developments, and aspired to be an executive in the industry himself one day. His father also presided over the Detroit Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to which the family belonged.
in Bloomfield Hills, which Mitt Romney attended for grades 7-12]] Mitt went to public elementary schools, Mitt had a steady set of chores growing up and worked summer jobs, including one as a security guard at a Chrysler plant. Initially a manager for the hockey team and a pep squad member, The two informally agreed to marriage after his senior prom in June 1965, which was shortly followed by his graduation.
Romney attended Stanford University for a year. He became demoralized, and later recalled it as the only time in his life when "most of what I was trying to do was rejected."]] On June 16, 1968, Romney was involved in a serious automobile accident while driving fellow missionaries on dangerous roads in southern France. Trapped between the steering wheel and door, the unconscious and seriously injured Romney had to be pried from the car; a French police officer mistakenly wrote Il est mort in his passport. Romney had suffered broken ribs, a fractured arm, a concussion, and facial injuries, but recovered quickly without needing surgery. He was quite nervous that she had been wooed by others while he was away, and indeed she had dated others, but at their first meeting following his return they reconnected and agreed to get married as soon as possible. The following day the couple flew to Utah for a wedding ceremony at the Salt Lake Temple.
At the culturally conservative Brigham Young, Romney continued to be sheltered from much of the upheaval of the era, and did not join in the few protests against the war or against the LDS Church's policy against giving full membership to blacks.
The Romneys' first son, Tagg, was born in 1970 while both were undergraduates at Brigham Young, living in a $75-a-month basement apartment. They subsequently had Matt (born 1971), Josh (born 1975), Ben (born 1978) and Craig (born 1981).
Romney still wanted to pursue a business career, but his father, who by now was serving in President Richard Nixon's cabinet as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, recommended that a law degree would be valuable. Thus Romney became one of only 15 students to enroll at the recently-created joint Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration four-year program coordinated between Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Fellow students noted Romney's strong work ethic and buttoned-down appearance;
During his years in business, Romney tithed constantly, giving millions of dollars to the LDS Church. From 1986 to 1994 he presided over the Boston Stake, which included more than a dozen congregations in eastern Massachusetts.
Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to serve as the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games Organizing Committee. Although gone, Romney received a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities.
Romney's campaign was effective in portraying Kennedy as soft on crime, but had trouble establishing its own positions in a consistent manner. By mid-September 1994, polls showed the race to be approximately even. Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused both on Romney's seemingly shifting political views on issues such as abortion and on the treatment of workers at a paper products plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital. Kennedy and Romney held a widely watched late October debate without a clear winner, but by then Kennedy had pulled ahead in polls and stayed ahead afterward. Romney spent over $7 million of his own money, with Kennedy spending more than $10 million from his campaign fund, mostly in the last weeks of the campaign (this was the second-most expensive race of the 1994 election cycle, after the Dianne Feinstein–Michael Huffington Senate race in California).
In the November general election, despite a disastrous showing for Democrats overall, Kennedy won the election with 58 percent of the vote to Romney's 41 percent, He had stepped down as Boston Stake president in order to run for the Senate, and while still teaching Sunday School, was largely uninvolved in the long and somewhat controversial construction of a Mormon temple in Belmont.
Before Romney came on, the event was running $379 million short of its revenue benchmarks. The Games had also been damaged by allegations of bribery involving top officials, including prior Salt Lake Olympic Committee president and CEO Frank Joklik. Joklik and committee vice president Dave Johnson were forced to resign. Romney's appointment faced some initial criticism from non-Mormons, and fears from Mormons, that it represented cronyism or gave the games too Mormon an image. He became the public face of the Olympic effort, appearing in countless photographs and news stories and even on Olympics souvenir pins. not counting the $224.5 million in security costs contributed by outside sources. Romney broke the record for most private money raised by any individual for an Olympics games, summer or winter.
Romney and his wife contributed $1 million to the Olympics, and he donated to charity the $1.4 million in salary and severance payments he received for his three years as president and CEO. He wrote a book about his experience titled . Romney was widely praised for his successful efforts with the 2002 Winter Olympics including by President George W. Bush, The role gave him experience in dealing with federal, state, and local entities, a public persona he had previously lacked, and the chance to re-launch his political aspirations. Prominent GOP activists campaigned to persuade Romney to run for governor. One poll taken at that time showed Republicans favoring Romney over Swift by more than 50 percentage points. In March 2002, Swift decided not to seek her party's nomination, and so Romney was unopposed in the Republican party primary.
Romney ran as a political outsider again. The campaign was the first to use microtargeting techniques, in which fine-grained groups of voters were reached with narrowly tailored messaging. Romney contributed over $6 million to his own campaign during the election, a state record at the time.
Romney supported raising various fees by more than $300 million, including those for driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and gun licenses. The cuts also included a $140 million reduction in state funding for higher education, which led state-run colleges and universities to increase tuition by 63 percent over four years.
The combined state and local fee burden in Massachusetts increased during Romney's governorship but still was below the national average. According to the Tax Foundation, that per capita burden was 9.8 percent in 2002 (below the national average of 10.3 percent), and 10.5 percent in 2006 (below the national average of 10.8 percent).
Romney was at the forefront of a movement to bring near-universal health insurance coverage to the state, after a business executive told him at the start of his term that doing so would be the best way he could help people. After positing that any measure adopted not raise taxes and not resemble the previous decade's failed "Hillarycare" proposal, Romney formed a team of the state's top experts that beginning in late 1994 came up with a set of proposals more innovative and ambitious than incremental ones from the Democratic legislature. gave Romney's plan a positive reception, which encouraged Democratic legislators to work with it. The bill also establishes means-tested state subsidies for people who do not have adequate employer insurance and who make below an income threshold, by using funds previously designated to compensate for the health costs of the uninsured. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including a controversial $295-per-employee assessment on businesses that do not offer health insurance and provisions guaranteeing dental benefits to Medicaid recipients. Romney said of the measure overall, "There really wasn't Republican or Democrat in this. People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It's liberal in the sense that we're getting our citizens health insurance. It's conservative in that we're not getting a government takeover."
At the beginning of his governorship, Romney opposed same-sex marriage and civil unions, but advocated tolerance and supported some domestic partnership benefits. In May 2004 Romney instructed town clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but citing a 1913 law that barred out-of-state residents from getting married in Massachusetts if their union would be illegal in their home state, no marriage licenses were to be issued to out-of-state same-sex couples not planning to move to Massachusetts. Romney's position on some other social issues, such as abortion rights, abstinence-only sex education, and therapeutic cloning, also evolved into a more conservative stance during his time as governor. Given a prime-time appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, Romney was already being discussed as a potential 2008 presidential candidate. Midway through his term, Romney decided that he wanted to stage a full-time run for president, and on December 14, 2005, Romney announced that he would not seek re-election for a second term as governor. As chair of the Republican Governors Association, Romney traveled around the country, meeting prominent Republicans and building a national political network; Romney's frequent out-of-state travel contributed towards declining his approval rating declining in public polls towards the end of his term. The weak condition of the Republican state party was one of several factors that led to Democrat Deval Patrick's lopsided win over Republican Kerry Healey in the 2006 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Romney's term ended January 4, 2007.
The assets that Romney's campaign began with included his résumé of success in the business world and his rescuing of the Salt Lake Olympics, Romney also had solid political experience as governor together with a political pedigree courtesy of his father, a strong work ethic and energy level, and a large, wholesome-looking family that seemed so perfect as to be off-putting to some voters. was in remission and would be an active participant in his campaign, helping to soften his image. Romney's liabilities included having run for senator and served as governor in one of the nation's most liberal states, having taken some positions there that were opposed by the party's conservative base, and subsequently shifting those positions. polls indicated that about a quarter of Republican voters, and a quarter of voters overall, said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who was a Mormon. He proved the most effective fundraiser of any of the Republican candidates, with his Olympics ties helping him with fundraising from Utah residents and from sponsors and trustees of the games. Romney's staff suffered from internal strife and the candidate himself was indecisive at times, constantly asking for more data before making a decision. Persistent questions about the role of religion in Romney's life, as well as Southern Baptist minister and former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls based upon an explicitly Christian-themed campaign, led to the December 6, 2007, "Faith in America" speech. and echoed Senator's John F. Kennedy's famous speech during his 1960 presidential campaign in saying "I will put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law." Romney largely avoided discussing the specific tenets of his faith, instead stressing that he would be informed by it and that, "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone." Of the 60 percent of caucus-goers who were evangelical Christians, Huckabee was supported by about half of them while Romney by only a fifth. A couple of days later, Romney won the lightly-contested Wyoming Republican caucuses. At a Saint Anselm College debate, Huckabee and McCain pounded away at Romney's image as a flip flopper. (Romney's staff would conclude that competing as a candidate of social conservatism and ideological purity rather than of pragmatic competence had been a mistake. On January 19, Romney won the lightly-contested Nevada caucuses, but placed fourth in the intense South Carolina primary, where he had effectively ceded the contest to his rivals. McCain gained further momentum with his win in South Carolina, leading to a showdown between him and Romney in the Florida primary.
For ten days, Romney campaigned intensively on economic issues and the burgeoning subprime mortgage crisis, while McCain repeatedly and inaccurately asserted that Romney favored a premature withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. McCain won key last-minute endorsements from Florida Senator Mel Martinez and Governor Charlie Crist, which helped push him to a five percentage point victory on January 29. Trailing McCain in delegates by a more than two-to-one margin, Romney announced the end of his campaign on February 7 during a speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. received about 4.7 million total votes, and garnered about 280 delegates.
Romney endorsed McCain for president a week later. He soon founded the Free and Strong America PAC, a political action committee whose stated mission was to raise money for other Republican candidates and to promote Republican policies. His efforts earned McCain's respect and the two developed a warmer relationship; he was on the nominee's short list for the vice presidential running mate slot, where his experience in matters economic would have balanced one of McCain's weaknesses. McCain, behind in the polls, opted instead for a high-risk, high-reward "game changer" and selected Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Romney continued to work for McCain's eventually unsuccessful general election campaign.
Romney's book, , was released on March 2, 2010; an 18-state promotional book tour was undertaken. The book, which debuted atop the New York Times Best Seller list, avoided anecdotes about Romney's personal or political life and focused much of its attention on a substantive presentation of his views on economic and geopolitical matters. Immediately following the passage the same month of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Romney attacked the landmark legislation as "an unconscionable abuse of power" and said the act should be repealed. The hostile attention it held among Republicans created a potential problem for the former governor, since the new federal law was in many ways similar to the Massachusetts health care reform passed during Romney's term; as one Associated Press article stated, "Obamacare ... looks a lot like Romneycare."
Polls of various kinds showed Romney remaining in the forefront of possible 2012 presidential contenders. In nationwide opinion polling for the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries, he has often led polls or been in the top three along with Palin and Huckabee. He finished first in the CPAC straw poll in 2009 and second in 2010, and won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll in 2010. A January 2010 National Journal poll of political insiders found that a majority of Republican insiders, and a plurality of Democratic insiders, predicted Romney would become the party's 2012 nominee. Pew Research Center and Gallup Poll results showed that during 2009 and 2010, more in the general public were viewing him favorably (36 to 40 percent) than unfavorably (28 to 29 percent); this was a marked improvement from the days of his 2008 presidential campaign, when the reverse had been true. Romney also stood to possibly gain from the Republican electorate's tendency to nominate candidates who had previously run for president and were "next in line" to be chosen.
Romney campaigned heavily for Republican candidates around the nation in the 2010 midterm elections, and raised the most funds of any of the prospective 2012 Republican presidential candidates.
For much of his business career, Romney had no tangible record of political positions taken. Until his 1994 U.S. Senate campaign, he was registered as an Independent.
As a candidate for, and then as, Governor of Massachusetts, Romney at first again generally operated in the mold established by Weld and followed by Weld's two other Republican successors, Paul Cellucci and Swift: restrain spending and taxing, be tolerant on social issues, protect the environment, be tough on crime, try to appear post-partisan. one particular difference is that while George was willing to defy political trends, Mitt has been much more willing to adapt to them. Journalist and author Daniel Gross sees Romney as approaching politics in the same terms as a business competing in markets, in that successful executives do not hold firm to public stances over long periods of time, but rather constantly devise new strategies and plans to deal with new geographical regions and ever-changing market conditions.
Indeed, throughout his business, Olympics, and political career, Romney's instinct has been to apply the "Bain way" towards problems. Romney's technocratic instincts have thus always been with him; in his public appearances during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign he sometimes gave PowerPoint presentations rather than conventional speeches. Upon taking office he became, in the words of The Boston Globe, "the state's first self-styled CEO governor."
People magazine included Romney in its 50 Most Beautiful People list for 2002. In 2004, Romney received the inaugural Truce Ideal Award for his role in the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2008, he shared with his wife Ann the Canterbury Medal from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, for "refus[ing] to compromise their principles and faith" during the presidential campaign.
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/New York Times Bush public opinion polling by Gallup/USA Today from February 2001 to December 2007. Blue denotes "approve", red "disapprove", and green "unsure". Large increases in approval followed the September 11 attacks, the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War, and the capture of Saddam Hussein.]] George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, has elicited a variety of public perceptions regarding his policies, personality, and performance as a head of state. In the U.S. and elsewhere, journalists, polling organizations, and others have documented the expression of an evolving array of opinions of President Bush. Time magazine named George W. Bush as its Person of the Year for 2000 and 2004, citing him as the most influential person during these two years. According to Time, the distinction goes to the person who, for good or ill, has most affected the course of the year; it is therefore not necessarily an honor or a reward. As the President's tenure evolved, George W. Bush finished his presidency with the lowest approval rating of any American President in world history (19%).
The approval ratings of George W. Bush have, at different points in time, run the gamut from high to all-time record low. Bush began his presidency with ratings near 50%. In the time of national crisis following the September 11 attacks, polls showed approval ratings of greater than 85%, peaking in one October 2001 poll at 92%, Afterward, his ratings steadily declined as the economy suffered and the Iraq War initiated by his administration continued. By early 2006, his average rating was near 40%, and in July 2008, a poll indicated a near all-time low of 22%. A September 2008 poll recorded his approval rating as 19%, a record low for any sitting U.S. President.
Bush was also subject to criticism in the international community for his foreign policy. He was, at times, targeted by the global anti-war and anti-globalization campaigns. Street protests sometimes occurred during Bush's diplomatic visits to other countries. His policies were the subject of heated criticism in the 2002 elections in Germany and the 2006 elections in Canada.
Though no official "IQ" test score for Bush has been found, the score he received on his SAT during his final year of prep school at the exclusive Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts is known. He scored 1206, which has been correlated to an I.Q. of 120. The score that Bush received on his qualifying test for the military suggests that his IQ was in the mid 120's, placing him in the 95th percentile of the population for intelligence. An article published in the journal Political Psychology, estimated Bush's IQ at 125. The same study estimated the IQ of Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton at 149.
Bush's detractors tended to focus on various linguistic errors made by him during his public speeches, (colloquially known as Bushisms). His mispronunciation of certain words was ridiculed in the media and in popular culture. Even as early as the 2000 presidential debates, it was the subject of a Saturday Night Live sketch (see Strategery). Perhaps his most famous mispronunciation is that of "nucular" instead of "nuclear", although he is not the only American president to have done this, and Merriam-Webster Online considers this an acceptable, alternative pronunciation.
Bush began his presidency with approval ratings near 50%. Following the September 11 attacks, Bush held approval ratings of greater than 85%, among the highest for any President. Since then, his approval ratings and approval of his handling of domestic, economic, and foreign policy issues steadily declined, and despite consistent efforts to do so, President Bush and his Administration were unable to rally public support for the last three years, with each year seeing a steady decline in the Administration's support level to the point of Bush eventually dropping to a 19% approval rating and 77% disapproval rating, both records for a sitting president.
In 2002, Bush had the highest approval rating of any president during a midterm congressional election since Dwight D. Eisenhower. In an unusual deviation from the historical trend of midterm elections, the Republican Party regained control of the Senate and added to its majority in the House of Representatives. Typically, the President's party loses congressional seats in the midterm elections; 2002 marked only the third midterm election since the Civil War that the party in control of the White House gained seats in both houses of Congress (others were 1902 and 1934).
In 2003, Bush's approval spiked upward at the time of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in February. The upward trend continued through the invasion of Iraq in March. By late 2003, when presidential opponents began their campaigns in earnest, his approval numbers were in the low to middle 50s. Most polls tied the decline to growing concern over the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq and a slow recovery from the 2001 recession. Polls of May 2004 showed anywhere from a 53% to a 46% approval rating.
In April 2006, the president's approval continued to decline. Four states continue to maintain a positive approval rating: Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Nebraska. His disapproval rating in traditionally red states had risen, with higher than 60% of voters disapproving in Ohio, Florida, Arkansas, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, Missouri, and Iowa. Even in his conservative-spun homestate of Texas, disapproval reached 51 percent. His disapproval rating in several American states had reached an all time high, with more than 70% disapproving in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, Vermont, and New York. His highest approval rating stood at 55% in Utah, and his lowest, 24%, in Rhode Island.
In polls conducted between August 7 and August 16, 2006, Bush's average approval rating was 37.0%, and his average disapproval rating was 57.3%.
A poll taken in mid September 2006 indicated that 48 percent of Americans believed the war with Iraq has made the U.S. less safe, while 41 percent believed the war has made the U.S. safer from terrorism. Another poll shows that a majority of Americans, by a margin of 61 to 35 percent, believe that the United States is not better off because of Bush's policies.
At the conclusion of 2006, an AP-AOL News telephone poll of 1,004 adults found President George W. Bush to be both the "top villain" and "top hero" of the year. Bush was followed in the "villain" poll by Osama bin Laden, who took in 8 percent to Bush's 25 percent; Saddam Hussein (6 percent); and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (5 percent). In the hero poll, Bush's 13 percent was followed by: Soldiers/troops in Iraq (6 percent), Jesus Christ (3 percent), Barack Obama (3 percent), and Oprah Winfrey (3 percent).
Polls conducted after Bush's troop surge strategy was announced in January 2007 showed his approval rating had dropped to approximately 32%.
On February 13, 2008, an average of major polls indicated that Bush's approval rating stood at 33.3%. Earlier polls asked conditional versions of the impeachment question. For example, Zogby International on November 2, 2005 asked whether respondents agreed with the statement, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." Americans agreed with this, 53% to 42%. A poll by Newsweek on October 19, 2006 revealed that 51% of respondents believed that the impeachment of George W. Bush should be a priority. An August 2008 poll found that 41% of Americans thought that George W. Bush is the worst President in United States history, while 50% disagreed. Democratic 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry cited Bush's lack of swift action, calling into question the incumbent's leadership capabilities, and concluding: "Americans want to know that the person they choose as president has all the skills and ability, all of the mental toughness, all of the gut instinct necessary to be a strong commander in chief." The 9/11 Commission later released a summary of Bush's closed-door testimony, which stated that Bush's "instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis". It went on to say "The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." This was impossible, as no televised footage of the first plane crashing into the tower was broadcast until the afternoon of that day. The White House explained his remarks as "a mistaken recollection".
After Bush was re-elected, he made Social Security reform a top priority. He proposed options to permit Americans to divert a portion of their Social Security tax (FICA) into secured investments, creating a "nest egg" that he claimed would enjoy steady growth. This led Democrats to label the program a "privatization" of Social Security. Bush embarked on a 60-day tour to shore up public support for the plan, attacking the political reaction against reforms. Ultimately, Congressional Republicans could not reach a consensus on the plan, and the Democrats were unanimously opposed. Bush was left without any political will to pass his reforms. The issue was dropped, and the status quo maintained.
Bush has been increasingly forced to defend his actions on many fronts and has been unable to generate widespread support in the nation as a whole. After the Democratic Party regained control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, MSNBC reported that "The war in Iraq, scandals in Congress and declining support for Bush and Republicans on Capitol Hill defined the battle for House and Senate control".
Calling Bush "The Mother of All Big Spenders", the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute writes that "Sadly, the Bush administration has consistently sacrificed sound policy to the god of political expediency". Cato's Chris Edwards said, "When he gives speeches now, you hear him bashing the Democrats on overspending. It sounds ridiculous, because we know he's a big spender." "After running up $3 trillion in new debt - including more than half a trillion dollars for what some have called his flawed Iraq policy - some people find it astounding that the president is once again lecturing Congress about fiscal responsibility and fiscal priorities," stated Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).
Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve for 18 years, serving under six Presidents and who describes himself as "a lifelong Libertarian Republican", writes in his book The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World that Bush and the congressional Republicans "swapped principle for power". "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences".
Greenspan, again promoting his book, also says "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil" and "getting Saddam out of there was very important, but had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, it had to do with oil." With regards to the costs of the war in Iraq, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will come to between one and one and a half trillion dollars by 2010.
In fact, according to the former World Bank vice-president, Joseph Stiglitz, when factors like medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen are added in, the cost to date is closer to $3.3 trillion. However, continues Stiglitz, "Three trillion is a very conservative number, the true costs are likely to be much larger than that... The money being spent on the war each week would be enough to wipe out illiteracy around the world ... Just a few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered," he said.
The relaxed regulation under the Bush presidency are regarded to have been a major contributing factor to the subprime mortgage crisis, and there are fears that the United States and the world economy could slide into another Great Depression.
A Harper's magazine column by Linda Bilmes, a lecturer in Public Finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Joseph Stiglitz titled "The $10 trillion hangover: Paying the price for eight years of Bush", "estimate that the cost of undoing the Bush administration’s economic choices, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the collapse of the financial system, soaring debt and new commitments to interest payments and Medicare, all add up to over $10 trillion". See also National Debt Graph: Bush Sets 50-Year Record. The National debt from George Washington to the beginning of Ronald Reagan's term totaled about one trillion dollars.
The controversial dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2006, and their replacement by interim appointees, led critics to argue that the administration had undermined both the integrity of the Department of Justice and the non-partisan tradition of U.S. Attorneys. Others likened the event to Watergate, referring to it as Gonzales-gate, and members of Congress from both parties called for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Bush came under more criticism when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast region during the early hours of August 29, 2005. In the wake of the hurricane, two levees protecting New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain collapsed, leading to widespread flooding. In the aftermath of this disaster, thousands of city residents, unable to evacuate prior to the hurricane, became stranded with little or no relief for several days, resulting in lawless and unsanitary conditions in some areas. Blame for inadequate disaster response was partially attributed to state and local authorities, but public outcry in the disaster's early hours was largely directed at the Bush administration, mainly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security alleging weak crisis management and coordination. In fact a Canadian search-and-rescue team actually made it to a New Orleans suburb five days before U.S. aid arrived.
Others have identified political conservatism as the overriding cause of problems in the way the disaster was handled. These critics argue that the alleged unreadiness of the United States National Guard, negligence of federal authorities, and haplessness of officials such as Michael Brown did not represent incompetence on the part of the federal authorities, but were instead natural and deliberate consequences of the conservative philosophy embraced by the Bush administration, especially "sink or swim" policies to force reductions in government expenditure and privatize key government responsibilities such as disaster preparedness, both of which resulted in the systematic dismantling of FEMA by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Criticism led to the resignation of FEMA director Michael Brown, and eventually, Bush himself accepted personal responsibility for what he deemed "serious problems in the federal government's response" in a September 15, 2005 press conference. Several politicians called for either congressional or independent investigations, claiming that the Executive Branch cannot satisfactorily investigate itself.
In Texas Chainsaw Management (2007) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. argues that "The verdict on George W. Bush as the nation's environmental steward has already been written in stone. No president has mounted a more sustained and deliberate assault on the nation's environment. No president has acted with more solicitude toward polluting industries. Assaulting the environment across a broad front, the Bush administration has promoted and implemented more than 400 measures that eviscerate 30 years of environmental policy." Kennedy has also written a book Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. See also the website BushGreenWatch.
George W. Bush has also been criticized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, representing over 20 Nobel Laureates, who accuse him of failing to acknowledge basic science on environmental issues. The group says that the Bush administration has engaged in intentional suppression and distortion of facts regarding the environment.
In the waning days of his administration, Bush sought rule changes which would negatively impact a wide range of environmental issues.
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Bush has taken a significant amount of criticism for his decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 and his handling of the situation afterwards. As Bush organized the effort, made the case, and ordered the invasion himself, he has borne the brunt of the criticism for the undeclared war. A Newsweek poll taken in June 2007 showed a record 73% of respondents disapproving of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.
Bush has stated that "We do not torture." Yet, many people and governments and non-governmental organizations disagree and have staged several protests. These sentiments are partly a result of the Pentagon's suggestion that the president can decide whether normal strictures on torture still apply if it outweighs the security of the nation, and because the Bush administration has repeatedly acted against attempts to restrict controversial interrogation techniques, including signing statements by Bush to exclude himself from the laws created by the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 as well as vetoing legislation that would have made waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods illegal. Furthermore, some are concerned by the Bush Administration's use of Extraordinary rendition, where individuals are sent to other countries where torture can easily occur without any form of oversight. Bush defends this practice on the basis that:
A Pentagon memo lists many interrogation techniques which were requested and approved during Bush's presidency on the basis that "The current guidelines for interrogation procedures at GTMO limit the ability of interrogators to counter advanced resistance". The Bush administration's connection to these controversial interrogation techniques has been one of the main considerations in the movement to impeach George W. Bush.
These controversial enhanced interrogation techniques have in several cases become military policy and in response to Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse controversy Germany had looked into seeking to charge Rumsfeld and two others with warcrimes.
Opinions of Bush from outside the U.S. are less than favorable. For example, a global sampling in 2005 of 21 nations found that 58% of those sampled believed that the president's reelection would have a negative impact on their peace and security. Only 26% believed it would have a positive one.
, Northern Ireland, in April 2006, depicting the local population's perception of his foreign policy and relationship with the British government
Photo by Patrick McAleer]]
In 18 of the 21 countries surveyed around the world, a majority of respondents were found to hold an unfavorable opinion of Bush. Respondents indicated that they judged his administration as "negative" for world security.
Bush fares slightly better in Italy, where just over half of the population has a negative view, but much worse in other countries. “Three-quarters of those in Spain and more than 80% in France and Germany had a negative view of President Bush's role in world affairs."
A 2010 Siena College poll of 238 Presidential scholars found that Bush was ranked 39th out of 43, with poor ratings in handling of the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence.
The billboard was mentioned on Rush Limbaugh’s talk radio show as some callers mentioned the billboard did exist. It was later discovered to have been created and sponsored by an anonymous source who wanted to remain that way as per the billboard owner Schubert & Hoey Outdoor Advertising. Later, Mike Rivard, one of the six business owners from Minnesota, came forward and told Fox News that one of the reasons why they did it was they thought it was a hilarious message, and the image they used was found online.
Category:George W. Bush Category:Public image of American politicians Category:Living people Category:Billboards Category:Internet memes
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