Bush, George H.W. (Administration)

Biography and Philosophy

Born to an influential family, Bush had an early life marked by privilege. An Ivy League education, a distinguished record as a navy pilot during World War II, and a measure of financial success in the oil fields of Texas all paved the way for a political career that would last for three decades. Uncomfortable with rigid ideological labels, Bush shifted between the conservative and moderate poles of his own party, as his congressional career in the tumultuous 1960s demonstrated. On the social issues so central to the legislative agenda of the period, Bush had a mixed record, bowing to pressure from conservatives to oppose the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but later [Page 100]angering that constituency by voting for President Lyndon Johnson's 1968 Fair Housing Act. In 1980, Bush ran for president in the Republican primary against the brash antigovernment crusader Governor Ronald Reagan. Bush lost the nomination, but Reagan made him his running mate. Although he had run a campaign considerably more moderate than Reagan's, Bush moved to the right in supporting the unapologetically conservative party platform.

George H.W. Bush promised America would be a “kinder and gentler” place for the needy, but his efforts were not wholly effective.

After eight years as vice president, during which he supported supply-side fiscal policy, conservative positions on social issues, and the dismantling of much of the social safety net, Bush ran for the presidency again in 1988, seeking to define his own distinct social philosophy. Recognizing problems that his predecessor had largely ignored, and promoting voluntarism and private charity as the most desirable means to address them, Bush painted his opponent, Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, as a wayward “tax and spend” liberal. A Dukakis victory, Bush warned, would mark a return to the “noble” but misguided social policies of the 1960s, a dangerously soft approach to crime and communism, and the national “malaise” of the Jimmy Carter years. Bush emerged from the campaign with the support of an increasingly vocal base of social conservatives and a key to the White House.

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