George W. Bush

Served as President from 2001-2008
Era: The Present Era
American Identity and Culture
During Bush’s presidency, the infamous 9/11 occurred where planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It was an act of terrorism that devastated the entire nation. There were also other terrorist attacks on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the downing of a fourth plane in Pennsylvania. Altogether, these events claimed the lives of over three thousand Americans and pushed the American public to call for war.
Economic Transformations and Globalization
Congress passed a $1.35 trillion tax cut to be spread over ten years in 2001. This bill gave taxpayers and immediate $300 or $600 rebate, reduced all tax brackets, and increased both child credit and limits for IRA and 401(k) contributions. When the tax cut passed, the government ran a surplus and the stock market was at a high. Unfortunately, the stock market crashed in 2000 and experienced its first recession in 2001 since the early 1990s. The unemployment rose to six percent in 2002 while the number of people living in poverty also increased. To fight the recession, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to 1.25 percent which was the lowest in fifty years. By 2004, there was more than a $400-billion annual deficit.
Environment
President Bush’s conservative agenda included drilling for gas and oil in the Alaska wildlife refuge and voluntary environmental standards. In 2002, he announced the Clears Skies Act which was aimed at amending the Clear Air Act to reduce pollution of emission trading programs. Critics argued that this only succeeded in weakening the original legislation because it allowed higher emission rates of pollutants that were previously illegal. In 2007, Bush pledged to rely less on foreign oil by reducing fossil fuel consumption and working toward increasing alternative fuel production. However, due to high oil prices in 2008, he lifted a ban on offshore drilling.
Politics and Citizenship
The largest government reorganizations since the creation of the Department of Defense after World War II occurred during Bush’s presidency. The Homeland Security Department combined over twenty federal agencies with one-hundred seventy thousand employees, including Customs, Immigration and Naturalization, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. However, the FBI and CIA were left out of the new department. They were also criticized by a bipartisan national commission on terrorism for not being able to uncover the September 11 plot. Under increasing pressure from the public, Congress finally passed a majority of the commission’s recommendations which included the creation of a Director of National Intelligence to coordinate the intelligence activities of competing bureaucracies.
Slavery and its legacies in North America
Within the Bush administration, Condoleeza Rice was the first female African American secretary of state. She was also the first woman to be named as National Security Advisor (during Bush’s first term). In 2003, the Washington Post reported that Rice was important in forming Bush’s position on race-based preferences. Rice has stated that "while race-neutral means are preferable," race can be taken into account as "one factor among others" in university admissions policies. Also in 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race in admissions decisions. It reaffirmed that universities could take race into consideration as one factor among many when selecting incoming students.
War and Diplomacy
In January 2002, in his first State of the Union address, President Bush called the nations of Iraq, North Korea, and Iran as the “axis of evil.” Although American intelligence failed to find a link between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration pursued an attack on Iraq before Hussein could build and distribute “weapons of mass destruction,” both nuclear and biological, to terrorists. It was criticized for going to war with faulty intelligence, but defended the war as a part of the campaign against terrorism and bringing democracy to the Middle East. In 2005, the Iraqis held their first free election and created a national assembly, which selected a prime minister, cabinet ministries, and a committee to write a new constitution.