On July 6, Bush’s birthday, anti-Trump lawyer George Conway used the social media site X to send a unique salutation: “Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Could you do the country a big favor and urge it not to elect a certain convicted felon and psychopath whom I assume you detest as much as the rest of us? Thanks in advance!”

Friends and associates said there’s no real reason for Bush to engage.

For one thing, Bush is a Republican, and believes that a food fight with Trump would only help the Democrats, they said. Bush probably wouldn’t gain much by it either.

Bush also feels, whatever the provocation, he owes Trump the same respect as all his other presidential colleagues.

“He just doesn’t want to be in the game any more,” said presidential historian Mark Updegrove, who pointed out that Bush uses the same phrase as Trump to describe the political environment: Swamp.

Said Updegrove: “When I spoke to Bush shortly after he left the presidency, he said, ‘the scene is a swamp out there right now, and I don’t want to get in the swamp.’ … Since then it’s only gotten swampier.”

Updegrove, author of “The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush,” said Trump-type Republicans wouldn’t respond to Bush criticism anyway.

“His influence in the party has waned,” he said. “It’s an entirely different party.”

Bush still has a public policy life

Friends and associates said Bush has only withdrawn, mostly, from political life – not public life.

The former president does speak out frequently on policy issues, mostly through his work with the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It houses the Bush Institute, a nonpartisan policy organization, as well as his presidential museum.

The former president and his wife appear at events devoted to subjects that animated his presidency, including education, immigration, and help for veterans and military families. Another frequent topic is “strengthening democracy, and advancing free societies.”

“What he’s wanted to do is to have the institute and the center focus on the issues that were important to him and Mrs. Bush when they were in Washington,” said David J. Kramer, executive director of the George W. Bush Institute.

That also means the institute likes to avoid politics as much as possible, especially in these volatile times.

“A lot of things get very polarized very quickly,” Kramer said.

Author, painter

Since leaving office, Bush has performed a more tradition role for former presidents: Book author.

A memoir of his White House years, “Decision Points,” came out in 2010. He also wrote a short biography of President George H.W. Bush entitled “41: A Portrait of My Father,” published in 2014.

The younger Bush has also pursued a non-traditional pastime: Painting. Two books of portrait paintings have touched on Bush-era issues, veterans and migrants.

“Portraits in Courage: A Commander-in-Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors,” came out in 2017. Then came “Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants,” published in 2021.

None of these books include the word “Trump.”

A little politics – in private

Bush also periodically comments on the news. After a private event in October, his office agreed to publicize his remarks about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

“Don’t be surprised if Israel takes whatever actions necessary to defend herself,” Bush said at the event moderated by Updegrove. “It’s going to be ugly for a while.”

Over the years, Bush has hosted dozens of fundraisers for favored Republican candidates. This year’s list has included Republican Senate candidates Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Larry Hogan of Maryland. He also has an upcoming event for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who faces her next reelection in 2026 and opted to skip this week’s RNC in Milwaukee to attend, among others, an event honoring the retiring director of her state’s Potato Board.

An event in 2021 drew attention from Trump, as Bush headlined a fundraiser for Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a GOP member of the congressional committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. She is also the daughter of Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, who has criticized Trump several times over the years.

“Bush is the one who got us into the quicksand of the Middle East,” Trump said in a statement that criticized the fundraiser.

Bush did not respond.

Higher approval

Bush’s reticence to inject himself into politics has paid off in terms of public opinion.

His approval ratings are consistently more than 60%, well above what they were in his later years as president, noted Jared Cohen, author of “Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search For Purpose Beyond the White House.”

In the book – which is sold at the Bush museum bookstore – Cohen noted that Bush has prospered with public opinion even though his Republican successor, Trump, rejected many of his policies (and Democrats never approved him in the first place).

“He moved on from politics, and in an age when everything is political, that’s earned him respect.” Cohen said.

For his part, Bush still likes to joke that historians are still debating aspects of “the first George W” – George Washington.

“Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I’m comfortable with the fact that I won’t be around to hear it,” Bush wrote in the epilogue of his memoir. “That’s a decision point only history will reach.”

After receiving an M.B.A. from Harvard in 1975, Bush returned to Midland, where he began working for a Bush family friend, an oil and gas attorney, and later started his own oil and gas firm. He married Laura Welch, a teacher and librarian, in Midland in 1977. After an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1978, Bush devoted himself to building his business. With help from his uncle, who was then raising funds for Bush’s father’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush was able to attract numerous prominent investors. The company struggled through the early 1980s until the eventual collapse of oil prices in 1986, when it was purchased by the Harken Energy Corporation. Bush received Harken stock, a job as a consultant to the company, and a seat on the company’s board of directors.

In the same year, shortly after his 40th birthday, Bush gave up drinking alcohol. “I realized,” he later explained, “that alcohol was beginning to crowd out my energies and could crowd, eventually, my affections for other people.” His decision was partly the result of a self-described spiritual awakening and a strengthening of his Christian faith that had begun the previous year, after a conversation with the Rev. Billy Graham, a Bush family friend.

After the sale of his company, Bush spent 18 months in Washington, D.C., working as an adviser and speechwriter in his father’s presidential campaign. Following the election in 1988, he moved to Dallas, where he and a former business partner organized a group of investors to purchase the Texas Rangers professional baseball team. Although Bush’s investment, which he made with a loan he obtained by using his Harken stock as collateral, was relatively small, his role as managing partner of the team brought him much exposure in the media and earned him a reputation as a successful businessman. When Bush’s partnership sold the team in 1998, Bush received nearly $15 million.

Governor of Texas

In 1994 Bush challenged Democratic incumbent Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas. A major issue in the campaign concerned Bush’s sale of all his Harken stock in June 1990, just days before the company completed a second quarter with heavy losses. An investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1991 into the possibility of illegal insider trading (trading that takes advantage of information not available to the public) did not uncover any wrongdoing. Bush won the election with 53 percent of the vote (compared with 46 percent for Richards), thus becoming the first child of a U.S. president to be elected a state governor.

As governor, Bush increased state spending on elementary and secondary education and made the salaries and promotions of teachers and administrators contingent on their students’ performance on standardized tests. His administration increased the number of crimes for which juveniles could be sentenced to adult prisons following custody in juvenile detention and lowered to 14 the age at which children could be tried as adults. Throughout his tenure Bush received international attention for the brisk use of capital punishment in Texas relative to other states. Bush signed into law several measures aimed at tort reform, including one that imposed new limits on punitive damages and another that narrowed the legal definition of “gross negligence.” Reelected in 1998 with nearly 70 percent of the vote, Bush became the first Texas governor to win consecutive four-year terms (in 1972 voters had approved a referendum that extended the governor’s term from two years to four).

Bush formally announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in June 1999. He described his political philosophy as “compassionate conservatism,” a view that combined traditional Republican economic policies with concern for the underprivileged. Despite Bush’s refusal to give direct answers to questions about his drinking and possible use of illegal drugs (he implied that he had not used illegal drugs since 1974), he won the Republican nomination, taking a strong lead in public opinion polls over Vice Pres. Al Gore, the Democratic Party nominee; Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate; and political journalist Patrick Buchanan, the nominee of the Reform Party. His running mate was Dick Cheney, former chief of staff for Pres. Gerald Ford and secretary of defense during the presidency of Bush’s father.

As the general election campaign continued, the gap in the polls between Bush and Gore narrowed to the closest in any election in the previous 40 years. On election day the presidency hinged on the 25 electoral votes of Florida, where Bush led Gore by fewer than 1,000 popular votes after a mandatory statewide machine recount. After the Gore campaign asked for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties, the Bush campaign filed suit in federal court to stop them. For five weeks the election remained unresolved as Florida state courts and federal courts heard numerous legal challenges by both campaigns. Eventually the Florida Supreme Court decided (4–3) to order a statewide manual recount of the approximately 45,000 “undervotes”—ballots that machines recorded as not clearly expressing a presidential vote. The Bush campaign quickly filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to delay the recounts until it could hear the case; a stay was issued by the court on December 9. Three days later, concluding (7–2) that a fair statewide recount could not be performed in time to meet the December 18 deadline for certifying the state’s electors, the court issued a controversial 5–4 decision to reverse the Florida Supreme Court’s recount order, effectively awarding the presidency to Bush. By winning Florida, Bush narrowly won the electoral vote over Gore by 271 to 266—only 1 more than the required 270 (one Gore elector abstained).

With his inauguration, Bush became only the second son of a president to assume the nation’s highest office; the other was John Quincy Adams (1825–29), the son of John Adams (1797–1801).

Presidency of George W. Bush

Early initiatives

Bush was the first Republican president to enjoy a majority in both houses of Congress since Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s. Taking advantage of his party’s strength, Bush proposed a $1.6 trillion tax-cut bill in February 2001. A compromise measure worth $1.35 billion was passed by Congress in June, despite Democratic objections that it unfairly benefited the wealthy. In the same month, however, control of the Senate formally passed to the Democrats after Republican Sen. James Jeffords left his party to become an independent. Subsequently, many of Bush’s domestic initiatives encountered significant resistance in the Senate.

In a report issued in May 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group, a task force headed by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, called for increasing the production of fossil fuels and nuclear power in the country by opening more federal lands to mining and oil and gas exploration, extending tax credits and other subsidies to energy companies, and easing environmental regulations. In July a coalition of nonprofit organizations filed suit to make public the secret deliberations of the task force and the identities of the groups it met with. (The case was decided in the administration’s favour by the Supreme Court in June 2004.)

In foreign affairs, the Bush administration announced that the United States would not abide by the Kyoto Protocol on reducing the emission of gases responsible for global warming, which the United States had signed in the last days of the Bill Clinton administration, because the agreement did not impose emission limits on developing countries and because it could harm the U.S. economy. The administration also withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and attempted to secure commitments from various governments not to extradite U.S. citizens to the new International Criminal Court, whose jurisdiction it rejected.

The September 11 attacks

On September 11, 2001, Bush faced a crisis that would transform his presidency. That morning, four American commercial airplanes were hijacked by Islamist terrorists. Two of the planes were deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, destroying both towers and collapsing or damaging many surrounding buildings, and a third was used to destroy part of the Pentagon building outside Washington, D.C.; the fourth plane crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after passengers apparently attempted to retake it (see September 11 attacks). The crashes—the worst terrorist incident on U.S. soil—killed some 3,000 people.

The Bush administration accused radical Islamist Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, al-Qaeda (Arabic: “the Base”), of responsibility for the attacks and charged the Taliban government of Afghanistan with harbouring bin Laden and his followers (in a videotape in 2004, bin Laden acknowledged that he was responsible). After assembling an international military coalition, Bush ordered a massive bombing campaign against Afghanistan, which began on October 7, 2001. U.S.-led forces quickly toppled the Taliban government and routed al-Qaeda fighters, though bin Laden himself remained elusive (he was eventually killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan in 2011). In the wake of the September 11 attacks and during the war in Afghanistan, Bush’s public-approval ratings were the highest of his presidency, reaching 90 percent in some polls.

Domestic measures

In October 2001 the Bush administration introduced, and Congress quickly passed, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (the USA PATRIOT Act), which significantly but temporarily expanded the search and surveillance powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law-enforcement agencies. (Most of the law’s provisions were made permanent in 2006 by the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act.)

In January 2002 Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens and others in the United States without first obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. When the program was revealed in news reports in December 2005, the administration insisted that it was justified by a September 2001 joint Congressional resolution that authorized the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. Subsequent efforts in Congress to provide a legal basis for the spying became mired in debate over whether telecommunications companies that cooperated with the NSA should be granted retroactive immunity against numerous civil lawsuits. Legislation granting immunity and expanding the NSA’s surveillance powers was finally passed by Congress and signed by Bush in July 2008.

Treatment of detainees

In January 2002, as the pacification of Afghanistan continued, the United States began transferring captured Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan to what became a special prison complex at the country’s permanent naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Eventually hundreds of prisoners were held at the facility without charge and without the legal means to challenge their detentions (see habeas corpus). The administration argued that it was not obliged to grant basic constitutional protections to the prisoners, because the base was outside U.S. territory; nor was it required to observe the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians during wartime, because the conventions did not apply to “unlawful enemy combatants.” It further maintained that the president had the authority to place any individual, including an American citizen, in indefinite military custody without charge by declaring him an enemy combatant.

The prison complex at Guantánamo became the focus of international controversy in June 2004, after a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that significant numbers of prisoners had been interrogated by means of techniques that were “tantamount to torture.” (The Bush administration had frequently and vigorously denied that the United States practiced torture.)

The Iraq War

Road to war

In September 2002 the administration announced a new National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It was notable for its declaration that the United States would act “preemptively,” using military force if necessary, to forestall or prevent threats to its security by terrorists or “rogue states” possessing biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons—so-called weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, Bush and other high administration officials began to draw worldwide attention to Iraqi Pres. Ṣaddām Ḥussein and to suspicions that Iraq possessed or was attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. In November 2002 the Bush administration successfully lobbied for a new Security Council resolution providing for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. Soon afterward Bush declared that Iraq had failed to comply fully with the new resolution and that the country continued to possess weapons of mass destruction. For several weeks, the United States and Britain tried to secure support from other Security Council members for a second resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force against Iraq (though administration officials insisted that earlier resolutions provided sufficient legal justification for military action). In response, France and Russia, while agreeing that Iraq had failed to cooperate fully with weapons inspectors, argued that the inspections regime should be continued and strengthened.

As part of the administration’s diplomatic campaign, Bush and other officials frequently warned that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that it was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, and that it had long-standing ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush announced that Iraq had attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Niger for use in nuclear weapons. The subsequent determination that some intelligence reports of the purchase had relied on forged documents complicated the administration’s diplomatic efforts in the United Nations. Meanwhile, massive peace demonstrations took place in several major cities around the world.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Finally, Bush announced the end of U.S. diplomacy. On March 17 he issued an ultimatum to Ṣaddām, giving him and his immediate family 48 hours to leave Iraq or face removal by force. Bush also indicated that, even if Ṣaddām relinquished power, U.S. military forces would enter the country to search for we

After Ṣaddām’s public refusal to leave and as the 48-hour deadline approached, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, to begin on March 20 (local time). In the ground phase of the Iraq War, U.S. and British forces quickly overwhelmed the Iraqi army and irregular Iraqi fighters, and by mid-April they had entered Baghdad and all other major Iraqi cities and forced Ṣaddām’s regime from power.

In the wake of the invasion, hundreds of sites suspected of producing or housing weapons of mass destruction within Iraq were investigated. As the search continued without success into the following year, Bush’s critics accused the administration of having misled the country into war by exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq. In 2004 the Iraq Survey Group, a fact-finding mission comprising American and British experts, concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to produce them at the time of the invasion, though it found evidence that Ṣaddām had planned to reconstitute programs for producing such weapons once UN sanctions were lifted. In the same year, the bipartisan 9-11 Commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) reported that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Ṣaddām, who went into hiding during the invasion, was captured by U.S. forces in December 2003 and was executed by the new Iraqi government three years later.

apons of mass destruction and to stabilize the new government.

After Ṣaddām’s public refusal to leave and as the 48-hour deadline approached, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, called Operation Iraqi Freedom, to begin on March 20 (local time). In the ground phase of the Iraq War, U.S. and British forces quickly overwhelmed the Iraqi army and irregular Iraqi fighters, and by mid-April they had entered Baghdad and all other major Iraqi cities and forced Ṣaddām’s regime from power.

In the wake of the invasion, hundreds of sites suspected of producing or housing weapons of mass destruction within Iraq were investigated. As the search continued without success into the following year, Bush’s critics accused the administration of having misled the country into war by exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq. In 2004 the Iraq Survey Group, a fact-finding mission comprising American and British experts, concluded that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to produce them at the time of the invasion, though it found evidence that Ṣaddām had planned to reconstitute programs for producing such weapons once UN sanctions were lifted. In the same year, the bipartisan 9-11 Commission (the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) reported that there was no evidence of a “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Ṣaddām, who went into hiding during the invasion, was captured by U.S. forces in December 2003 and was executed by the new Iraqi government three years later.

Occupation and insurgency

While acknowledging that it had underestimated the tenacity of the Iraqi resistance, the Bush administration maintained that part of the blame for the continuing violence lay with Iran, which it accused of supplying weapons and money to Iraqi-based terrorist groups. In his State of the Union address in 2002, Bush had warned that Iran (along with Iraq and North Korea) was part of an “axis of evil” that threatened the world with its support of terrorism and its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. In 2006–07 the United States joined other members of the Security Council in condemning Iran’s nuclear research program. The administration’s repeated warnings concerning a possible Iranian nuclear weapon led to speculation that Bush was contemplating military action against the country. In December 2007, however, the administration’s suspicions were contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus report of U.S. intelligence agencies, which declared with “high confidence” that in 2003 Iran had abandoned attempts to develop a nuclear weapon.

Foreign aid

In his State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush proposed an ambitious program to address the humanitarian crisis created by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in 15 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. With a budget of $15 billion over a five-year period, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) aimed to supply life-extending medications to 2 million victims of HIV/AIDS, to prevent 7 million new cases of the disease, and to provide care for 10 million AIDS sufferers and the orphaned children of AIDS victims. The program was widely praised in the United States, even by Bush’s critics, and generated enormous goodwill toward the Bush administration in Africa. Medical professionals and public health officials welcomed the greater availability of retroviral drugs but generally objected to the program’s requirement that one-third of prevention funds be spent on teaching sexual abstinence and marital fidelity.

In January 2004 the Bush administration established the Millennium Challenge Corporation to distribute development aid to poor countries that demonstrated a commitment to democracy, free enterprise, and transparent governance. The agency’s innovative approach allowed recipient countries to design and manage their own multiyear programs to reduce poverty and promote economic growth. By 2008 the corporation had approved some $5 billion in grant requests, though relatively little of the money had been dispersed.

The Bush administration’s foreign aid programs were designed to serve its declared foreign policy goal of promoting democracy abroad, especially in parts of the world plagued by poverty and war. In eastern Europe, Bush supported expanding the membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a means of securing democracy and stability in war-ravaged or formerly communist countries. During his presidency NATO gained seven new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Domestic affairs

Education

In January 2002 Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act, which introduced significant changes in the curriculum of the country’s public elementary, middle, and high schools and dramatically increased federal regulation of state school systems. Under the law, states were required to administer yearly tests of the reading and mathematics skills of public school students and to demonstrate adequate progress toward raising the scores of all students to a level defined as “proficient” or higher. Teachers were also required to meet higher standards for certification. Schools that failed to meet their goals would be subject to gradually increasing sanctions, eventually including replacement of staff or closure.

In the first years of the program, supporters pointed to its success in increasing the test scores of minority students, who historically had performed at lower levels than white students. Indeed, in the 2000 presidential campaign Bush had touted the proposed law as a remedy for what he called “the soft bigotry of low expectations” faced by the children of minorities. Critics, however, complained that the federal government was not providing enough funding to implement the program’s requirements and that the law had usurped the states’s traditional control of education as provided for in the Constitution. Others objected that the law was actually eroding the quality of education by forcing schools to “teach to the test” while neglecting other parts of the curriculum, such as history, social science, and art.

Medicare

In December 2003 Bush won Congressional approval of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), a reform of the federally sponsored health insurance program for elderly Americans. Widely recognized as the most far-reaching overhaul of Medicare to date, the MMA enabled Medicare enrollees to obtain prescription drug coverage from Medicare through private insurance companies, which then received a government subsidy; it also vastly increased the number of private insurance plans through which enrollees could receive medical benefits. Although many members of Congress from both parties criticized the MMA as needlessly complex and expensive (its cost was estimated in January 2004 at $534 billion over 10 years), a bipartisan majority accepted the measure as an imperfect but necessary compromise that would bring a much-needed insurance benefit to senior citizens. Some conservative Republicans, however, rejected the MMA on both fiscal and philosophical grounds, and many Democrats objected to a provision in the plan that prevented Medicare administrators from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices.

Reelection

In 2004 Bush focused his energies on his campaign for reelection against his Democratic challenger, U.S. Sen. John Kerry. According to opinion polls, the candidates entered the fall elections in a virtual dead heat. Bush’s key campaign platform was his conduct of the war on terrorism, which he linked with the war in Iraq. Kerry countered that the Iraq War had been poorly planned and executed and that Bush had neglected domestic priorities. The election was notable for the prominent role played by independent political-action groups in organizing and fund-raising and for the influence of highly partisan blogs as alternative sources of political news. Bush defeated Kerry with a slim majority of the electoral and popular vote, and the Republicans increased their majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Social Security and immigration

The major domestic initiative of Bush’s second term was his proposal to replace Social Security (the country’s system of government-managed retirement insurance) with private retirement savings accounts. The measure attracted little support, however, mainly because it would have required significant cuts in retirement benefits and heavy borrowing during the transition to the private system.

Bush also proposed a reform of immigration laws that would have allowed most of the estimated 12 million people living in the country illegally to remain temporarily as “guest workers” and to apply for U.S. citizenship after returning to their home countries and paying a fine (though citizenship would not be guaranteed). Although the proposal was supported by some prominent Democrats, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, most other Democrats and many members of Bush’s own party remained wary of the idea. Some conservative critics denounced the program as an amnesty that would encourage a new wave of illegal immigration, while liberal opponents warned that it would create a permanent underclass of poor and disenfranchised workers. More than two years of debate produced no reform legislation, though Bush did sign a measure that authorized the construction of a 700-mile (1,127-km) fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Environmental and science policy

The Bush administration’s environmental policies reflected its conviction that economic development could be accomplished without serious harm to the environment and that limits on development, where necessary, should be achieved through voluntary cooperation by industry rather than regulation by government. In keeping with the recommendations of the energy task force, the administration’s proposed Clear Skies Act would have introduced a cap-and-trade system to regulate major sources of air pollution by power plants throughout the country. Although the measure would have reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and mercury by 70 percent by 2016, critics charged that the reductions were less than what would be achieved by enforcing the existing Clean Air Act. Largely because of disagreements about whether the Clear Skies Act should regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, the measure died in the Senate in 2005. Despite this setback, the administration soon implemented the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a regional cap-and-trade system for 28 Eastern states and the District of Columbia.

After the Supreme Court ruled in April 2007 that greenhouse gas emissions by automobiles constitute a form of air pollution under the Clean Air Act, Bush signed energy legislation that imposed increases in automobile fuel economy standards by the year 2020. In December, however, the Environmental Protection Agency blocked a proposal by California and 16 other states to issue regulations that would have required fuel economies greater than those called for in the new federal law.

The Bush administration was frequently accused of politically motivated interference in government scientific research. Critics charged that political appointees at various agencies, many of whom had little or no relevant expertise, altered or suppressed scientific reports that did not promote administration policies, restricted the ability of government experts to speak publicly on certain scientific issues, and limited access to scientific information by policy makers and the public. Numerous complaints by environmental and scientific groups led to Congressional hearings in 2007 on political interference in the work of the Surgeon General of the United States and in research on climate change conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In most cases the administration claimed that the interventions were an appropriate attempt to ensure scientific objectivity or simply a benign exercise of the authority of political appointees.

Later developments and assessment

2006 elections

The continued lack of progress in the Iraq War, a series of corruption scandals involving prominent Republican politicians, and the administration’s poor response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and surrounding areas in August 2005 helped the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections of November 2006. The new Congress soon began investigations of the NSA spying program undertaken in 2002 and of allegedly improper political influence in the dismissals of several United States attorneys in December 2006. In the latter investigation the testimony of Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush’s attorney general since 2005, was viewed with skepticism by both parties and reinforced the impression that the Justice Department under his leadership was not sufficiently independent of the White House. Gonzales resigned in August 2007 and was replaced in November with Michael Mukasey.

The Plame affair

In March 2007 Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, was convicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with an investigation into the leak of the identity of a covert CIA agent in 2003. The agent, Valerie Plame, was the wife of Joseph C. Wilson, a retired foreign service officer who had traveled to Africa in early 2002 at the request of the CIA to help determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Niger. Wilson reported that there was no evidence of an attempted purchase, and in July 2003 he publicly speculated that the administration had ignored or distorted intelligence reports such as his to justify a military invasion of Iraq. Plame was identified as a CIA agent to journalists, allegedly to punish Wilson and to discredit him by suggesting that his selection for the CIA mission was the result of nepotism. In testimony before a grand jury and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Libby made false statements about the substance of conversations he had had with journalists concerning Wilson’s mission to Niger and about when and how he had learned that Plame worked for the CIA. Libby was not charged with the underlying crime of disclosing the identity of covert intelligence personnel, nor were two other administration officials who had identified Plame to a journalist who subsequently published the information in his column. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence in July 2007. Libby was pardoned by Pres. Donald J. Trump in April 2018.

During his second term Bush appointed two Supreme Court justices: John G. Roberts, Jr. (confirmed as chief justice in 2005), and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (confirmed in 2006). The appointments increased to four the number of solidly conservative justices on the nine-member Supreme Court.

As Bush entered the final year of his presidency in 2008, the country faced enormous challenges. Although al-Qaeda had been subdued, it had not been destroyed. The United States and its allies continued to fight skirmishes with terrorists and their Taliban supporters in Afghanistan, and the insurgency in Iraq continued to claim U.S. casualties. The surpluses in the federal budget in 2000 and 2001 were a distant memory, as the combined effects of military spending, tax cuts, and slow economic growth produced a series of enormous budget deficits starting in 2003. Later in 2008 the economy was threatened by a severe credit crisis, leading Congress to enact a controversial Bush administration plan to rescue the financial industry with up to $700 billion in government funds (see Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008). Despite Bush’s 2000 campaign promise to be “a uniter, not a divider,” the country remained politically polarized to an extent not seen since the Vietnam War. While Bush’s critics faulted him for these problems and many others, his supporters vigorously defended him as a strong leader who had guided the country through one of the most dangerous periods in its history.]

Postpresidential activities

In Dallas, Texas, in 2008, officials of Southern Methodist University (SMU) announced plans for the construction there of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The centre would comprise a presidential library and museum and the George W. Bush Institute, a think tank dedicated to research and “practical solutions” in the areas of education reform, global health, freedom, and economic growth. An executive director and the first fellows of the institute were appointed in 2009.

After Bush left office in January 2009, he and his wife settled in Dallas. During his first year of retirement, he delivered several speeches to mostly private audiences but avoided criticizing his Democratic successor, Pres. Barack Obama. In response to a request from Obama in January 2010, Bush and former president Bill Clinton assumed leadership of private fund-raising efforts in the United States for disaster relief in Haiti, which had been struck by a devastating earthquake earlier that month.

Later in 2010 Bush published the memoir Decision Points, in which he defended the Iraq War, stated that he personally approved the waterboarding of a captured member of al-Qaeda, reasserted his belief that waterboarding does not constitute torture, and acknowledged the federal government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina. In 2014 he issued 41: A Portrait of My Father, a biography of the elder Bush. An amateur artist, he later published Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors (2017), which features his paintings of veterans. Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants appeared in 2021.