Dialogues › Sleep of Reason › George W. Bush

Bush ran for president in 2000 as a compassionate conservative on a platform to increase the size of the armed forces and cut taxes. The close election was in effect decided by the Supreme Court.

Envisioning a $5.6 billion surplus in ten years, in early 2001 Bush called for some of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history. Because of these tax cuts, a discretionary defense budget which more than doubled, and increased domestic and foreign spending, the national debt grew from $5.6 to $11.3 trillion during his administration.

The longest post-World War II recession began in later 2007, marked by a subprime mortgage crisis, housing market drop, and increased oil prices. Bush signed a $170 billion economic stimulus package, the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and there was an $85 billion federal bailout of the American Insurance Group. Job loss in 2008 alone was over 2.6 million.

“I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system,” he said in late 2008.

After September 11, 2001, Bush launched the War on Terror with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush Administration proceeded to assert a right and intention to engage in “preventive war” in response to perceived threat, forming a basis for what became known as the Bush Doctrine. The war in Iraq was presented as necessary because of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Over 4,400 U.S. troops were killed and over 31,900 wounded in Operation Iraqi Freedom as of early 2012. The financial cost of the war to the U.S. is over $845 billion. The war has not “virtually paid for itself through increased Iraqi oil exports,” as had been promised.

Bush said in 2006 to an Iowa crowd, “You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war President. No President wants to be a war President, but I am one.”

Shortly before leaving office he remarked, “I think I was unprepared for war.”

Under Bush, the U.S. withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

The USA PATRIOT Act was passed, designed to reduce restrictions in law enforcement agencies’ gathering of intelligence within the United States and give greater discretion to law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts.

Bush signed an executive order allowing federal funding for a few lines of stem cell research, but all of the lines were cultured in contact with mouse cells, creating safety issues that complicate development and approval of therapies. He later vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which would have allowed federal money to be used for embryonic stem cell research.

No Child Left Behind legislation was passed during the Bush administration. It requires states to test all students at select grade levels in order to receive federal school funding. Critics argue that it is underfunded and its focus on testing and quantitative outcomes comes at the expense of time spent teaching.

Bush graduated from Yale and the Harvard Business School. He served in the Texas and Alabama Air National Guard from 1968-1974 and may have been treated favorably because of his father’s political status. He married in 1977 and has two daughters. His memoir is Decision Points.

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