PRESIDENTS
INTRODUCTION
Since George Washington's election in 1789, 44 men have served as President
of the United States. They have led in times of peace and war,
hardship and plenty, and served in tenures as short as one month and as
long as 12 years. Learn more about America's Presidents.
GEORGE WASHINGTON (1ST U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1789-1797)
George Washington was born on Feb. 22, 1732 (Feb. 11, 1731/2, old
style) in Westmoreland County, VA. While in his teens, he trained
as a surveyor, and at the age of 20 he was appointed adjutant in
the Va. militia. For the next three years, he fought in the wars
against the French and Indians, serving as Gen. Edward Braddock's
aide in the disastrous campaign against Ft. Duquesne. In 1759, he
resigned from the militia, married Martha Dandridge Custis, a
widow with children, and settled down as a gentleman farmer at
Mount Vernon, Va.
As a militiaman, Washington had been exposed to the arrogance of
the British officers, and his experience as a planter with
British commercial restrictions increased his anti-British
sentiment. He opposed the Stamp Act of 1765 and after 1770 became
increasingly prominent in organizing resistance. A delegate to
the Continental Congress, Washington was selected as commander in
chief of the Continental Army and took command at Cambridge,
Mass., on July 3, 1775.
Inadequately supported and sometimes covertly sabotaged by the
Congress, in charge of troops who were inexperienced, badly
equipped, and impatient of discipline, Washington conducted the
war on the policy of avoiding major engagements with the British
and wearing them down by harassing tactics. His able generalship,
along with the French alliance and the growing weariness within
Britain, brought the war to a conclusion with the surrender of
Cornwallis at Yorktown, VA, on Oct. 19, 1781.
The chaotic years under the Articles of Confederation led
Washington to return to public life in the hope of promoting the
formation of a strong central government. He presided over the
Constitutional Convention and yielded to the universal demand
that he serve as first president. He was inaugurated on April 30,
1789, in New York, the first national capital. In office, he
sought to unite the nation and establish the authority of the new
government at home and abroad. Greatly distressed by the
emergence of the Hamilton-Jefferson rivalry, Washington worked to
maintain neutrality but actually sympathized more with Hamilton.
Following his unanimous reelection in 1792, his second term was
dominated by the Federalists. His Farewell Address on Sept. 17,
1796 (published but never delivered) rebuked party spirit and
warned against "permanent alliances" with foreign powers.
He died at Mount Vernon on Dec. 14, 1799.
JOHN ADAMS (2ND U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1797-1801)
John Adams born on Oct. 30 (Oct. 19, old style), 1735, at
Braintree (now Quincy), Mass. A Harvard graduate, he considered
teaching and the ministry but finally turned to law and was
admitted to the bar in 1758. Six years later, he married Abigail
Smith. He opposed the Stamp Act, served as lawyer for patriots
indicted by the British, and by the time of the Continental
Congresses, was in the vanguard of the movement for independence.
In 1778, he went to France as commissioner. Subsequently he
helped negotiate the peace treaty with Britain, and in 1785
became envoy to London. Resigning in 1788, he was elected vice
president under Washington and was reelected in 1792.
Though a Federalist, Adams did not get along with Hamilton, who
sought to prevent his election to the presidency in 1796 and
thereafter intrigued against his administration. In 1798, Adams's
independent policy averted a war with France but completed the
break with Hamilton and the right-wing Federalists; at the same
time, the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Acts, directed
against foreigners and against critics of the government,
exasperated the Jeffersonian opposition. The split between Adams
and Hamilton resulted in Jefferson's becoming the next president.
Adams retired to his home in Quincy. He and Jefferson died on the
same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of
the Declaration of Independence.
THOMAS JEFFERSON (3RD U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1801-1809)
Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13 (April 2, old style), 1743,
at Shadwell in Goochland (now Albemarle) County, Va. A William
and Mary graduate, he studied law, but from the start showed an
interest in science and philosophy. His literary skills and
political clarity brought him to the forefront of the
revolutionary movement in Virginia. As delegate to the
Continental Congress, he drafted the Declaration of Independence.
In 1776, he entered the Virginia House of Delegates and initiated
a comprehensive reform program for the abolition of feudal
survivals in land tenure and the separation of church and
state.
In 1779, he became governor, but constitutional limitations on
his power, combined with his own lack of executive energy, caused
an unsatisfactory administration, culminating in Jefferson's
virtual abdication when the British invaded Virginia in 1781. He
retired to his beautiful home at Monticello, Va., to his family.
His wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, whom he married in 1772, died in
1782.
Jefferson's Notes on Virginia (1784-85) illustrate his
many-faceted interests, his limitless intellectual curiosity, his
deep faith in agrarian democracy. Sent to Congress in 1783, he
helped lay down the decimal system and drafted basic reports on
the organization of the western lands. In 1785 he was appointed
minister to France, where the Anglo-Saxon liberalism he had drawn
from John Locke, the British philosopher, was stimulated by
contact with the thought that would soon ferment in the French
Revolution. In 1789, Washington appointed him secretary of state.
While favoring the Constitution and a strengthened central
government, Jefferson came to believe that Hamilton contemplated
the establishment of a monarchy. Growing differences resulted in
Jefferson's resignation on Dec. 31, 1793.
Elected vice president in 1796, Jefferson continued to serve as
spiritual leader of the opposition to Federalism, particularly to
the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts. He was elected president
in 1801 by the House of Representatives as a result of Hamilton's
decision to throw the Federalist votes to him rather than to
Aaron Burr, who had tied him in electoral votes. He was the first
president to be inaugurated in Washington, which he had helped to
design.
The purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803, though in
violation of Jefferson's earlier constitutional scruples, was the
most notable act of his administration. Reelected in 1804, with
the Federalist Charles C. Pinckney opposing him, Jefferson tried
desperately to keep the United States out of the Napoleonic Wars
in Europe, employing to this end the unpopular embargo
policy.
After his retirement to Monticello in 1809, he developed his
interest in education, founding the University of Virginia and
watching its development with never-flagging interest. He died at
Monticello on July 4, 1826. Jefferson had an enormous variety of
interests and skills, ranging from education and science to
architecture and music.
JAMES MADISON (4TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1809-1817)
James Madison was born in Port Conway, Va., on March 16, 1751
(March 5, 1750/1, old style). A Princeton graduate, he joined the
struggle for independence on his return to Virginia in 1771. In
the 1770s and 1780s he was active in state politics, where he
championed the Jefferson reform program, and in the Continental
Congress. Madison was influential in the Constitutional
Convention as leader of the group favoring a strong central
government and as recorder of the debates; and he subsequently
wrote, in collaboration with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the
Federalist papers to aid the campaign for the adoption of the
Constitution.
Serving in the new Congress, Madison soon emerged as the leader
in the House of the men who opposed Hamilton's financial program
and his pro-British leanings in foreign policy. Retiring from
Congress in 1797, he continued to be active in Virginia and
drafted the Virginia Resolution protesting the Alien and Sedition
Acts. His intimacy with Jefferson made him the natural choice for
secretary of state in 1801.
In 1809, Madison succeeded Jefferson as president, defeating
Charles C. Pinckney. His wife, Dolley Payne Todd, whom he married
in 1794, brought a new social sparkle to the executive mansion.
In the meantime, increasing tension with Britain culminated in
the War of 1812 - a war for which the United States was
unprepared and for which Madison lacked the executive talent to
clear out incompetence and mobilize the nation's energies.
Madison was reelected in 1812, running against the Federalist De
Witt Clinton. In 1814, the British actually captured Washington
and forced Madison to flee to Virginia.
Madison's domestic program capitulated to the Hamiltonian
policies that he had resisted 20 years before and he now signed
bills to establish a United States Bank and a higher tariff.
After his presidency, he remained in retirement in Virginia until
his death on June 28, 1836.
JAMES MONROE (5TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1817-1825)
James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County,
Va. A William and Mary graduate, he served in the army during the
first years of the Revolution and was wounded at Trenton. He then
entered Virginia politics and later national politics under the
sponsorship of Jefferson. In 1786, he married Elizabeth (Eliza)
Kortright.
Fearing centralization, Monroe opposed the adoption of the
Constitution and, as senator from Virginia, was highly critical
of the Hamiltonian program. In 1794, he was appointed minister to
France, where his ardent sympathies with the Revolution exceeded
the wishes of the State Department. His troubled diplomatic
career ended with his recall in 1796. From 1799 to 1802, he was
governor of Virginia. In 1803, Jefferson sent him to France to
help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase and for the next few years
he was active in various negotiations on the Continent.
In 1808, Monroe flirted with the radical wing of the Republican
Party, which opposed Madison's candidacy; but the presidential
boom came to naught and, after a brief term as governor of
Virginia in 1811, Monroe accepted Madison's offer to become
secretary of state. During the War of 1812, he vainly sought a
field command and instead served as secretary of war from
September 1814 to March 1815.
Elected president in 1816 over the Federalist Rufus King, and
reelected without opposition in 1820, Monroe, the last of the
Virginia dynasty, pursued the course of systematic
tranquilization that won for his administrations the name "the
era of good feeling." He continued Madison's surrender to the
Hamiltonian domestic program, signed the Missouri Compromise,
acquired Florida, and with the able assistance of his secretary
of state, John Quincy Adams, promulgated the Monroe Doctrine in
1823, declaring against foreign colonization or intervention in
the Americas. He died in New York City on July 4, 1831, the third
president to die on the anniversary of Independence.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS (6TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1825-1829)
John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, at Braintree (now
Quincy), Mass., the son of John Adams, the second president. He
spent his early years in Europe with his father, graduated from
Harvard, and entered law practice. His anti-Paine newspaper
articles won him political attention. In 1794, he became minister
to the Netherlands, the first of several diplomatic posts that
occupied him until his return to Boston in 1801. In 1797, he
married Louisa Catherine Johnson.
In 1803, Adams was elected to the Senate, nominally as a
Federalist, but his repeated displays of independence on such
issues as the Louisiana Purchase and the embargo caused his party
to demand his resignation and ostracize him socially. In 1809,
Madison rewarded him for his support of Jefferson by appointing
him minister to St. Petersburg. He helped negotiate the Treaty of
Ghent in 1814, and in 1815 became minister to London. In 1817
Monroe appointed him secretary of state where he served with
great distinction, gaining Florida from Spain without hostilities
and playing an equal part with Monroe in formulating the Monroe
Doctrine.
When no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral
votes in 1824, Adams, with the support of Henry Clay, was elected
by the House in 1825 over Andrew Jackson, who had the original
plurality. Adams had ambitious plans of government activity to
foster internal improvements and promote the arts and sciences,
but congressional obstructionism, combined with his own
unwillingness or inability to play the role of a politician,
resulted in little being accomplished. After being defeated for
reelection by Jackson in 1828, he successfully ran for the House
of Representatives in 1830. There, though nominally a Whig, he
pursued as ever an independent course. He led the fight to force
Congress to receive antislavery petitions and fathered the
Smithsonian Institution.
Adams had a stroke while on the floor of the House, and died two
days later on Feb. 23, 1848. His long and detailed Diary gives a
unique picture of the personalities and politics of the
times.
ANDREW JACKSON (7TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1829-1837)
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in what is now
generally agreed to be Waxhaw, S.C. After a turbulent boyhood as
an orphan and a British prisoner, he moved west to Tennessee,
where he soon qualified for law practice but found time for such
frontier pleasures as horse racing, cockfighting, and dueling.
His marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards in 1791 was complicated
by subsequent legal uncertainties about the status of her
divorce. During the 1790s, Jackson served in the Tennessee
Constitutional Convention, the United States House of
Representatives and Senate, and on the Tennessee Supreme
Court.
After some years as a country gentleman, living at the Hermitage
near Nashville, Jackson in 1812 was given command of Tennessee
troops sent against the Creeks. He defeated the Indians at
Horseshoe Bend in 1814; subsequently he became a major general
and won the Battle of New Orleans over veteran British troops,
though after the treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. In
1818, Jackson invaded Florida, captured Pensacola, and hanged two
Englishmen named Arbuthnot and Ambrister, creating an
international incident. A presidential boom began for him in
1821, and to foster it, he returned to the Senate (1823-25).
Though he won a plurality of electoral votes in 1824, he lost in
the House when Clay threw his strength to Adams. Four years
later, he easily defeated Adams. Jackson, the first president to
come from humble origins, built his reputation as a populist and
a defender of the common man over the political elite.
As president, Jackson greatly expanded the power and prestige of
the presidential office and carried through an unprecedented
program of domestic reform, vetoing the bill to extend the United
States Bank, moving toward a hard-money currency policy, and
checking the program of federal internal improvements. He also
vindicated federal authority against South Carolina with its
doctrine of nullification and against France on the question of
debts. The support given his policies by the workingmen of the
East as well as by the farmers of the East, West, and South
resulted in his triumphant reelection in 1832 over Clay.
After watching the inauguration of his handpicked successor,
Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired to the Hermitage, where he
maintained a lively interest in national affairs until his death
on June 8, 1845.
MARTIN VAN BUREN (8TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1837-1841)
Martin Van Buren was born on Dec. 5, 1782, at Kinderhook, N.Y.
After graduating from the village school, he became a law clerk,
entered practice in 1803, and soon became active in state
politics as state senator and attorney general. In 1820, he was
elected to the United States Senate. He threw the support of his
efficient political organization, known as the Albany Regency, to
William H. Crawford in 1824 and to Jackson in 1828. After leading
the opposition to Adams's administration in the Senate, he served
briefly as governor of New York (1828-1829) and resigned to
become Jackson's secretary of state. He was soon on close
personal terms with Jackson and played an important part in the
Jacksonian program.
In 1832, Van Buren became vice president; in 1836, president. The
Panic of 1837 overshadowed his term. He attributed it to the
overexpansion of the credit and favored the establishment of an
independent treasury as repository for the federal funds. In
1840, he established a 10-hour day on public works. Defeated by
Harrison in 1840, he was the leading contender for the Democratic
nomination in 1844 until he publicly opposed immediate annexation
of Texas, and was subsequently beaten by the Southern delegations
at the Baltimore convention. This incident increased his growing
misgivings about the slave power.
After working behind the scenes among the anti-slavery Democrats,
Van Buren joined in the movement that led to the Free-Soil Party
and became its candidate for president in 1848. He subsequently
returned to the Democratic Party while continuing to object to
its pro-Southern policy. He died in Kinderhook on July 24, 1862.
His Autobiography throws valuable sidelights on the political
history of the times.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON (9TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1841)
William Henry Harrison was born in Charles City County, Va., on
Feb. 9, 1773. Joining the army in 1791, he was active in Indian
fighting in the Northwest, became secretary of the Northwest
Territory in 1798 and governor of Indiana in 1800. He married
Anna Symmes in 1795. Growing discontent over white encroachments
on Indian lands led to the formation of an Indian alliance under
Tecumseh to resist further aggressions. In 1811, Harrison won a
nominal victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe and in 1813 a more
decisive one at the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh was
killed.
After resigning from the army in 1814, Harrison had an obscure
career in politics and diplomacy, ending up 20 years later as a
county recorder in Ohio. Nominated for president in 1835 as a
military hero whom the conservative politicians hoped to be able
to control, he ran surprisingly well against Van Buren in 1836.
Four years later, he defeated Van Buren but caught pneumonia and
died in Washington on April 4, 1841, a month after his
inauguration. Harrison was the first president to die in
office.
JOHN TYLER (10TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1841-1845)
John Tyler was born in Charles City County, Va., on March 29,
1790. A William and Mary graduate, he entered law practice and
politics, serving in the House of Representatives (1817-21), as
governor of Virginia (1825-27), and as senator (1827-36). A
strict constructionist, he supported Crawford in 1824 and Jackson
in 1828, but broke with Jackson over his United States Bank
policy and became a member of the Southern state-rights group
that cooperated with the Whigs. In 1836, he resigned from the
Senate rather than follow instructions from the Virginia
legislature to vote for a resolution expunging censure of Jackson
from the Senate record.
Elected vice president on the Whig ticket in 1840, Tyler
succeeded to the presidency on Harrison's death. His
strict-constructionist views soon caused a split with the Henry
Clay wing of the Whig party and a stalemate on domestic
questions. Tyler's more considerable achievements were his
support of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Britain and his
success in bringing about the annexation of Texas.
After his presidency he lived in retirement in Virginia until the
outbreak of the Civil War, when he emerged briefly as chairman of
a peace convention and then as delegate to the provisional
Congress of the Confederacy. He died on Jan. 18, 1862. He married
Letitia Christian in 1813 and, two years after her death in 1842,
Julia Gardiner.
JAMES KNOX POLK (11TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1845-1849)
James Knox Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, N.C., on Nov. 2,
1795. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he moved
west to Tennessee, was admitted to the bar, and soon became
prominent in state politics. In 1825, he was elected to the House
of Representatives, where he opposed Adams and, after 1829,
became Jackson's floor leader in the fight against the Bank. In
1835, he became Speaker of the House. Four years later, he was
elected governor of Tennessee, but was beaten in tries for
reelection in 1841 and 1843.
The supporters of Van Buren for the Democratic nomination in 1844
counted on Polk as his running mate, but when Van Buren's stand
on Texas alienated Southern support, the convention swung to Polk
on the ninth ballot. He was elected over Henry Clay, the Whig
candidate. Rapidly disillusioning those who thought that he would
not run his own administration, Polk proceeded steadily and
precisely to achieve four major objectives - the acquisition of
California, the settlement of the Oregon question, the reduction
of the tariff, and the establishment of the independent treasury.
He also enlarged the Monroe Doctrine to exclude all non-American
intervention in American affairs, whether forcible or not, and he
forced Mexico into a war that he waged to a successful
conclusion.
His wife, Sarah Childress, whom he married in 1824, was a woman
of charm and ability. Polk died in Nashville, Tenn., on June 15,
1849.
ZACHARY TAYLOR (12TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1849-1850)
Zachary Taylor was born at Montebello, Orange County, Va., on
Nov. 24, 1784. Embarking on a military career in 1808, Taylor
fought in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Seminole
War, meanwhile holding garrison jobs on the frontier or desk jobs
in Washington. A brigadier general as a result of his victory
over the Seminoles at Lake Okeechobee (1837), Taylor held a
succession of Southwestern commands and in 1846 established a
base on the Rio Grande, where his forces engaged in hostilities
that precipitated the war with Mexico. He captured Monterrey in
Sept. 1846 and, disregarding Polk's orders to stay on the
defensive, defeated Santa Anna at Buena Vista in Feb. 1847,
ending the war in the northern provinces.
Though Taylor had never cast a vote for president, his party
affiliations were Whiggish and his availability was increased by
his difficulties with Polk. He was elected president over the
Democrat Lewis Cass. During the revival of the slavery
controversy, which was to result in the Compromise of 1850,
Taylor began to take an increasingly firm stand against appeasing
the South; but he died in Washington on July 9, 1850, during the
fight over the Compromise. He married Margaret Mackall Smith in
1810. His bluff and simple soldierly qualities won him the name
Old Rough and Ready.
MILLARD FILLMORE (13TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1850-1853)
Millard Fillmore was born at Locke, Cayuga County, N.Y., on Jan.
7, 1800. A lawyer, he entered politics with the Anti-Masonic
Party under the sponsorship of Thurlow Weed, editor and party
boss, and subsequently followed Weed into the Whig Party. He
served in the House of Representatives (1833-35 and 1837-43) and
played a leading role in writing the tariff of 1842. Defeated for
governor of New York in 1844, he became state comptroller in
1848, was put on the Whig ticket with Taylor as a concession to
the Clay wing of the party, and became president upon Taylor's
death in 1850.
As president, Fillmore broke with Weed and William H. Seward and
associated himself with the pro-Southern Whigs, supporting the
Compromise of 1850. Defeated for the Whig nomination in 1852, he
ran for president in 1856 as candidate of the American, or
Know-Nothing, Party, which sought to unite the country against
foreigners in the alleged hope of diverting it from the explosive
slavery issue. Fillmore opposed Lincoln during the Civil War. He
died in Buffalo on March 8, 1874.
He was married in 1826 to Abigail Powers, who died in 1853, and
in 1858 to Caroline Carmichael McIntosh.
FRANKLIN PIERCE (14TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1853-1857)
Franklin Pierce was born at Hillsboro, N.H., on Nov. 23, 1804. A
Bowdoin graduate, lawyer, and Jacksonian Democrat, he won rapid
political advancement in the party, in part because of the
prestige of his father, Gov. Benjamin Pierce. By 1831 he was
Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives; from 1833
to 1837, he served in the federal House and from 1837 to 1842 in
the Senate. His wife, Jane Means Appleton, whom he married in
1834, disliked Washington and the somewhat dissipated life led by
Pierce; in 1842 Pierce resigned from the Senate and began a
successful law practice in Concord, N.H. During the Mexican War,
he was a brigadier general.
Thereafter Pierce continued to oppose antislavery tendencies
within the Democratic Party. As a result, he was the Southern
choice to break the deadlock at the Democratic convention of 1852
and was nominated on the 49th ballot. In the election, Pierce
overwhelmed Gen. Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate.
As president, Pierce followed a course of appeasing the South at
home and of playing with schemes of territorial expansion abroad.
The failure of his foreign and domestic policies prevented his
renomination. He died in Concord on Oct. 8, 1869, in relative
obscurity.
JAMES BUCHANAN (15TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1857-1861)
James Buchanan was born near Mercersburg, Pa., on April 23, 1791.
A Dickinson graduate and a lawyer, he entered Pennsylvania
politics as a Federalist. With the disappearance of the
Federalist Party, he became a Jacksonian Democrat. He served with
ability in the House (1821-31), as minister to St. Petersburg
(1832-33), and in the Senate (1834-45), and in 1845 became Polk's
secretary of state. In 1853, Pierce appointed Buchanan minister
to Britain, where he participated with other American diplomats
in Europe in drafting the expansionist Ostend Manifesto.
He was elected president in 1856, defeating John C. Fremont, the
Republican candidate, and former President Millard Fillmore of
the American Party. The growing crisis over slavery presented
Buchanan with problems he lacked the will to tackle. His
appeasement of the South alienated the Stephen Douglas wing of
the Democratic Party without reducing Southern militancy on
slavery issues. While denying the right of secession, Buchanan
also denied that the federal government could do anything about
it. He supported the administration during the Civil War and died
in Lancaster, Pa., on June 1, 1868.
The only president to remain a bachelor throughout his term,
Buchanan used his charming niece, Harriet Lane, as White House
hostess.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN (16TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1861-1865)
Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin (now Larue) County, Ky., on
Feb. 12, 1809. His family moved to Indiana and then to Illinois,
and Lincoln gained what education he could along the way. While
reading law, he worked in a store, managed a mill, surveyed, and
split rails. In 1834, he went to the Illinois legislature as a
Whig and became the party's floor leader. For the next 20 years
he practiced law in Springfield, except for a single term
(1847-49) in Congress, where he denounced the Mexican War. In
1855, he was a candidate for senator and the next year he joined
the new Republican Party.
A leading but unsuccessful candidate for the vice-presidential
nomination with Fremont, Lincoln gained national attention in
1858 when, as Republican candidate for senator from Illinois, he
engaged in a series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the
Democratic candidate. He lost the election, but continued to
prepare the way for the 1860 Republican convention and was
rewarded with the presidential nomination on the third ballot. He
won the election over three opponents.
From the start, Lincoln made clear that, unlike Buchanan, he
believed the national government had the power to crush the
rebellion. Not an abolitionist, he held the slavery issue
subordinate to that of preserving the Union, but soon perceived
that the war could not be brought to a successful conclusion
without freeing the slaves. His administration was hampered by
the incompetence of many Union generals, the inexperience of the
troops, and the harassing political tactics both of the
Republican Radicals, who favored a hard policy toward the South,
and the Democratic Copperheads, who desired a negotiated peace.
The Gettysburg Address of Nov. 19, 1863, marks the high point in
the record of American eloquence. Lincoln's long search for a
winning combination finally brought generals Ulysses S. Grant and
William T. Sherman to the top; and their series of victories in
1864 dispelled the mutterings from both Radicals and Peace
Democrats that at one time seemed to threaten Lincoln's
reelection. He was reelected in 1864, defeating Gen. George B.
McClellan, the Democratic candidate. His inaugural address urged
leniency toward the South: "With malice toward none, with charity
for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to
bind up the nation's wounds . . ." This policy aroused growing
opposition on the part of the Republican Radicals, but before the
matter could be put to the test, Lincoln was shot by the actor
John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, Washington, on April 14,
1865. He died the next morning.
Lincoln's marriage to Mary Todd in 1842 was often unhappy and
turbulent, in part because of his wife's pronounced
instability.
ANDREW JOHNSON (17TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1865-1869)
Andrew Johnson was born at Raleigh, N.C., on Dec. 29, 1808.
Self-educated, he became a tailor in Greeneville, Tenn., but soon
went into politics, where he rose steadily. He served in the
House of Representatives (1843-54), as governor of Tennessee
(1853-57), and as a senator (1857-62). Politically he was a
Jacksonian Democrat and his specialty was the fight for a more
equitable land policy. Alone among the Southern Senators, he
stood by the Union during the Civil War. In 1862, he became war
governor of Tennessee and carried out a thankless and difficult
job with great courage. Johnson became Lincoln's running mate in
1864 as a result of an attempt to give the ticket a nonpartisan
and nonsectional character. Succeeding to the presidency on
Lincoln's death, Johnson sought to carry out Lincoln's policy,
but without his political skill. The result was a hopeless
conflict with the Radical Republicans who dominated Congress,
passed measures over Johnson's vetoes, and attempted to limit the
power of the executive concerning appointments and removals. The
conflict culminated with Johnson's impeachment for attempting to
remove his disloyal secretary of war in defiance of the Tenure of
Office Act, which required senatorial concurrence for such
dismissals. The opposition failed by one vote to get the two
thirds necessary for conviction.
After his presidency, Johnson maintained an interest in politics
and in 1875 was again elected to the Senate. He died near Carter
Station, Tenn., on July 31, 1875. He married Eliza McCardle in
1827.
ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT (18TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1869-1877)
Ulysses Simpson Grant was born (as Hiram Ulysses Grant) at Point
Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822. He graduated from West Point
in 1843 and served without particular distinction in the Mexican
War. In 1848 he married Julia Dent. He resigned from the army in
1854, after warnings from his commanding officer about his
drinking habits, and for the next six years held a wide variety
of jobs in the Middle West. With the outbreak of the Civil War,
he sought a command and soon, to his surprise, was made a
brigadier general. His continuing successes in the western
theaters, culminating in the capture of Vicksburg, Miss., in
1863, brought him national fame and soon the command of all the
Union armies. Grant's dogged, implacable policy of concentrating
on dividing and destroying the Confederate armies brought the war
to an end in 1865. The next year, he was made full general.
In 1868, as Republican candidate for president, Grant was elected
over the Democrat, Horatio Seymour. From the start, Grant showed
his unfitness for the office. His cabinet was weak, his domestic
policy was confused, and many of his intimate associates were
corrupt. The notable achievement in foreign affairs was the
settlement of controversies with Great Britain in the Treaty of
London (1871), negotiated by his able secretary of state,
Hamilton Fish.
Running for reelection in 1872, he defeated Horace Greeley, the
Democratic and Liberal Republican candidate. The Panic of 1873
graft scandals close to the presidency created difficulties for
his second term.
After retiring from office, Grant toured Europe for two years and
returned in time to accede to a third-term boom, but was beaten
in the convention of 1880. Illness and bad business judgment
darkened his last years, but he worked steadily at the Personal
Memoirs, which were to be successful when published after his
death at Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, N.Y., on July 23,
1885.
RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES (19TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1877-1881)
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on Oct. 4,
1822. A graduate of Kenyon College and the Harvard Law School, he
practiced law in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont) and then in
Cincinnati. In 1852 he married Lucy Webb. A Whig, he joined the
Republican party in 1855. During the Civil War he rose to major
general. He served in the House of Representatives from 1865 to
1867 and then confirmed a reputation for honesty and efficiency
in two terms as governor of Ohio (1868-72). His election to a
third term in 1875 made him the logical candidate for those
Republicans who wished to stop James G. Blaine in 1876, and he
was nominated.
The result of the election was in doubt for some time and hinged
upon disputed returns from South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida,
and Oregon. Samuel J. Tilden, the Democrat, had the larger
popular vote but was adjudged by the strictly partisan decisions
of the Electoral Commission to have one fewer electoral vote, 185
to 184. The national acceptance of this result was due in part to
the general understanding that Hayes would pursue a conciliatory
policy toward the South. He withdrew the troops from the South,
took a conservative position on financial and labor issues, and
urged civil service reform.
Hayes served only one term by his own wish and spent the rest of
his life in various humanitarian endeavors. He died in Fremont on
Jan. 17, 1893.
JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD (20TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1881)
James Abram Garfield, the last president to be born in a log
cabin, was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on Nov. 19, 1831. A
Williams graduate, he taught school for a time and entered
Republican politics in Ohio. In 1858, he married Lucretia
Rudolph. During the Civil War, he had a promising career, rising
to major general of volunteers; but he resigned in 1863, having
been elected to the House of Representatives, where he served
until 1880. His oratorical and parliamentary abilities soon made
him the leading Republican in the House, though his record was
marred by his unorthodox acceptance of a fee in the DeGolyer
paving contract case and by suspicions of his complicity in the
Credit Mobilier scandal.
In 1880, Garfield was elected to the Senate, but instead became
the presidential candidate on the 36th ballot as a result of a
deadlock in the Republican convention. In the election, he
defeated Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the Democratic candidate.
Garfield's administration was barely under way when he was shot
by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, in
Washington on July 2, 1881. He died in Elberton, N.J., on Sept.
19.
CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR (21ST U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1881-1885)
Chester Alan Arthur was born at Fairfield, Vt., on Oct. 5, 1829.
A graduate of Union College, he became a successful New York
lawyer. In 1859, he married Ellen Herndon. During the Civil War,
he held administrative jobs in the Republican state
administration and in 1871 was appointed collector of the Port of
New York by Grant. This post gave him control over considerable
patronage. Though not personally corrupt, Arthur managed his
power in the interests of the New York machine so openly that
President Hayes in 1877 called for an investigation and the next
year Arthur was suspended.
In 1880 Arthur was nominated for vice president in the hope of
conciliating the followers of Grant and the powerful New York
machine. As president upon Garfield's death, Arthur, stepping out
of his familiar role as spoilsman, backed civil service reform,
reorganized the cabinet, and prosecuted political associates
accused of post office graft. Losing machine support and failing
to gain the reformers, he was not nominated for a full term in
1884. He died in New York City on Nov. 18, 1886.
STEPHEN GROVER CLEVELAND (22ND AND 24TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN
1885-1889; 1893-1897)
(Stephen) Grover Cleveland was born at Caldwell, N.J., on March
18, 1837. He was admitted to the bar in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1859
and lived there as a lawyer, with occasional incursions into
Democratic politics, for more than 20 years. He did not
participate in the Civil War. As mayor of Buffalo in 1881, he
carried through a reform program so ably that the Democrats ran
him successfully for governor in 1882. In 1884 he won the
Democratic nomination for president. The campaign contrasted
Cleveland's spotless public career with the uncertain record of
James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate, and Cleveland received
enough Mugwump (independent Republican) support to win.
As president, Cleveland pushed civil service reform, opposed the
pension grab and attacked the high tariff rates. While in the
White House, he married Frances Folsom in 1886. Renominated in
1888, Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison, polling more
popular but fewer electoral votes. In 1892, he was elected over
Harrison. When the Panic of 1893 burst upon the country,
Cleveland's attempts to solve it by sound-money measures
alienated the free-silver wing of the party, while his tariff
policy alienated the protectionists. In 1894, he sent troops to
break the Pullman strike. In foreign affairs, his firmness caused
Great Britain to back down in the Venezuela border dispute.
In his last years Cleveland was an active and much-respected
public figure. He died in Princeton, N.J., on June 24, 1908.
BENJAMIN HARRISON (23RD U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1889-1893)
Benjamin Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio, on Aug. 20, 1833,
the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president. A
graduate of Miami University in Ohio, he took up the law in
Indiana and became active in Republican politics. In 1853, he
married Caroline Lavinia Scott. During the Civil War, he rose to
brigadier general. A sound-money Republican, he was elected
senator from Indiana in 1880. In 1888, he received the Republican
nomination for president on the eighth ballot. Though behind on
the popular vote, he won over Grover Cleveland in the electoral
college by 233 to 168.
As president, Harrison failed to please either the bosses or the
reform element in the party. In foreign affairs he backed
Secretary of State Blaine, whose policy foreshadowed later
American imperialism. Harrison was renominated in 1892 but lost
to Cleveland. His wife died in the White House in 1892 and
Harrison married her niece, Mary Scott (Lord) Dimmick, in 1896.
After his presidency, he resumed law practice. He died in
Indianapolis on March 13, 1901.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY (25TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1897-1901)
William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio, on Jan. 29, 1843. He
taught school, then served in the Civil War, rising from the
ranks to become a major. Subsequently he opened a law office in
Canton, Ohio, and in 1871 married Ida Saxton. Elected to Congress
in 1876, he served there until 1891, except for 1883-85. His
faithful advocacy of business interests culminated in the passage
of the highly protective McKinley Tariff of 1890. With the
support of Mark Hanna, a shrewd Cleveland businessman interested
in safeguarding tariff protection, McKinley became governor of
Ohio in 1892 and Republican presidential candidate in 1896. The
business community, alarmed by the progressivism of William
Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate, spent considerable
money to assure McKinley's victory.
The chief event of McKinley's administration was the war with
Spain, which resulted in the United States' acquisition of the
Philippines and other islands. With imperialism an issue,
McKinley defeated Bryan again in 1900. On Sept. 6, 1901, he was
shot at Buffalo, N.Y., by Leon F. Czolgosz, an anarchist, and he
died there eight days later.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT (26TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1901-1909)
Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on Oct. 27, 1858. A
Harvard graduate, he was early interested in ranching, in
politics, and in writing picaresque historical narratives. He was
a Republican member of the New York Assembly in 1882-84, an
unsuccessful candidate for mayor of New York in 1886, a U.S.
civil service commissioner under Benjamin Harrison, police
commissioner of New York City in 1895, and assistant secretary of
the Navy under McKinley in 1897. He resigned in 1898 to help
organize a volunteer regiment, the Rough Riders, and take a more
direct part in the war with Spain. He was elected governor of New
York in 1898 and vice president in 1900, in spite of lack of
enthusiasm on the part of the bosses.
Assuming the presidency of the assassinated McKinley in 1901,
Roosevelt embarked on a wide-ranging program of government reform
and conservation of natural resources. He ordered antitrust suits
against several large corporations, threatened to intervene in
the anthracite coal strike of 1902, which prompted the operators
to accept arbitration, and, in general, championed the rights of
the "little man" and fought the "malefactors of great wealth." He
was also responsible for such progressive legislation as the
Elkins Act of 1903, which outlawed freight rebates by railroads;
the bill establishing the Department of Commerce and Labor; the
Hepburn Act, which gave the I.C.C. greater control over the
railroads; the Meat Inspection Act; and the Pure Food and Drug
Act.
In foreign affairs, Roosevelt pursued a strong policy, permitting
the instigation of a revolt in Panama to dispose of Colombian
objections to the Panama Canal and helping to maintain the
balance of power in the East by bringing the Russo-Japanese War
to an end, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first
American to achieve a Nobel prize in any category. In 1904, he
decisively defeated Alton B. Parker, his conservative Democratic
opponent.
Roosevelt's increasing coldness toward his successor, William
Howard Taft, led him to overlook his earlier disclaimer of
third-term ambitions and to reenter politics. Defeated by the
machine in the Republican convention of 1912, he organized the
Progressive Party (Bull Moose) and polled more votes than Taft,
though the split brought about the election of Woodrow Wilson.
From 1915 on, Roosevelt strongly favored intervention in the
European war. He became deeply embittered at Wilson's refusal to
allow him to raise a volunteer division. He died in Oyster Bay,
N.Y., on Jan. 6, 1919. He was married twice: in 1880 to Alice
Hathaway Lee, who died in 1884, and in 1886 to Edith Kermit
Carow.
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT (27TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1909-1913)
William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati on Sept. 15, 1857. A
Yale graduate, he entered Ohio Republican politics in the 1880s.
In 1886 he married Helen Herron. From 1887 to 1890, he served on
the Ohio Superior Court; 1890-92, as solicitor general of the
United States; 1892-1900, on the federal circuit court. In 1900
McKinley appointed him president of the Philippine Commission and
in 1901 governor general. Taft had great success in pacifying the
Filipinos, solving the problem of the church lands, improving
economic conditions, and establishing limited self-government.
His period as secretary of war (1904-08) further demonstrated his
capacity as administrator and conciliator, and he was Roosevelt's
hand-picked successor in 1908. In the election, he polled 321
electoral votes to 162 for William Jennings Bryan, who was
running for the presidency for the third time.
Though he carried on many of Roosevelt's policies, Taft got into
increasing trouble with the progressive wing of the party and
displayed mounting irritability and indecision. After his defeat
in 1912, he became professor of constitutional law at Yale. In
1921 he was appointed chief justice of the United States Supreme
Court. He died in Washington, DC, on March 8, 1930.
THOMAS WOODROW WILSON (28TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1913-1921)
(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Va., on Dec. 28,
1856. A Princeton graduate, he turned from law practice to
post-graduate work in political science at Johns Hopkins
University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1886. He taught at Bryn Mawr,
Wesleyan, and Princeton, and in 1902 was made president of
Princeton. After an unsuccessful attempt to democratize the
social life of the university, he welcomed an invitation in 1910
to be the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, and
was elected. His success in fighting the machine and putting
through a reform program attracted national attention.
In 1912, at the Democratic convention in Baltimore, Wilson won
the nomination on the 46th ballot and went on to defeat Roosevelt
and Taft in the election. Wilson proceeded under the standard of
the New Freedom to enact a program of domestic reform, including
the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the
establishment of the Federal Trade Commission, and other measures
designed to restore competition in the face of the great
monopolies. In foreign affairs, while privately sympathetic with
the Allies, he strove to maintain neutrality in the European war
and warned both sides against encroachments on American
interests.
Reelected in 1916 as a peace candidate, he tried to mediate
between the warring nations; but when the Germans resumed
unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, Wilson brought the United
States into what he now believed was a war to make the world safe
for democracy. He supplied the classic formulations of Allied war
aims and the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, was negotiated on the
basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points. In 1919 he strove at
Versailles to lay the foundations for enduring peace. He accepted
the imperfections of the Versailles Treaty in the expectation
that they could be remedied by action within the League of
Nations. He probably could have secured ratification of the
treaty by the Senate if he had adopted a more conciliatory
attitude toward the mild reservationists; but his insistence on
all or nothing eventually caused the diehard isolationists and
diehard Wilsonites to unite in rejecting a compromise.
In Sept. 1919 Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke that limited his
activity. After leaving the presidency he lived on in retirement
in Washington, dying on Feb. 3, 1924. He was married twice - in
1885 to Ellen Louise Axson, who died in 1914, and in 1915 to
Edith Bolling Galt.
WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING (29TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1921-1923)
Warren Gamaliel Harding was born in Morrow County, Ohio, on Nov.
2, 1865. After attending Ohio Central College, Harding became
interested in journalism and in 1884 bought the Marion (Ohio)
Star. In 1891 he married a wealthy widow, Florence Kling De
Wolfe. As his paper prospered, he entered Republican politics,
serving as state senator (1899-1903) and as lieutenant governor
(1904-06). In 1910, he was defeated for governor, but in 1914 was
elected to the Senate. His reputation as an orator made him the
keynoter at the 1916 Republican convention.
When the 1920 convention was deadlocked between Leonard Wood and
Frank O. Lowden, Harding became the dark-horse nominee on his
solemn affirmation that there was no reason in his past that he
should not be. Straddling the League question, Harding was easily
elected over James M. Cox, his Democratic opponent. His cabinet
contained some able men, but also some manifestly unfit for
public office. Harding's own intimates were mediocre when they
were not corrupt. The impending disclosure of the Teapot Dome
scandal in the Interior Department and illegal practices in the
Justice Department and Veterans' Bureau, as well as political
setbacks, profoundly worried him. On his return from Alaska in
1923, he died unexpectedly in San Francisco on Aug. 2.
JOHN CALVIN COOLIDGE (30TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1923-1929)
(John) Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth, Vt., on July 4,
1872. An Amherst graduate, he went into law practice at
Northampton, Mass., in 1897. He married Grace Anna Goodhue in
1905. He entered Republican state politics, becoming successively
mayor of Northampton, state senator, lieutenant governor and, in
1919, governor. His use of the state militia to end the Boston
police strike in 1919 won him a somewhat undeserved reputation
for decisive action and brought him the Republican
vice-presidential nomination in 1920. After Harding's death
Coolidge handled the Washington scandals with care and finally
managed to save the Republican Party from public blame for the
widespread corruption.
In 1924, Coolidge was elected without difficulty, defeating the
Democrat, John W. Davis, and Robert M. La Follette running on the
Progressive ticket. His second term, like his first, was
characterized by a general satisfaction with the existing
economic order. He stated that he did not choose to run in
1928.
After his presidency, Coolidge lived quietly in Northampton,
writing an unilluminating autobiography and a syndicated column.
He died there on Jan. 5, 1933.
HERBERT CLARK HOOVER (31ST U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1929-1933)
Herbert Clark Hoover was born at West Branch, Iowa, on Aug. 10,
1874, the first president to be born west of the Mississippi. A
Stanford graduate, he worked from 1895 to 1913 as a mining
engineer and consultant throughout the world. In 1899, he married
Lou Henry. During World War I, he served with distinction as
chairman of the American Relief Committee in London, as chairman
of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, and as U.S. Food
Administrator. His political affiliations were still too
indeterminate for him to be mentioned as a possibility for either
the Republican or Democratic nomination in 1920, but after the
election he served Harding and Coolidge as secretary of
commerce.
In the election of 1928, Hoover overwhelmed Gov. Alfred E. Smith
of New York, the Democratic candidate and the first Roman
Catholic to run for the presidency. He soon faced the worst
depression in the nation's history, but his attacks upon it were
hampered by his devotion to the theory that the forces that
brought the crisis would soon bring the revival and then by his
belief that there were too many areas in which the federal
government had no power to act. In a succession of vetoes, he
struck down measures proposing a national employment system or
national relief, he reduced income tax rates, and only at the end
of his term did he yield to popular pressure and set up agencies
such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make emergency
loans to assist business.
After his 1932 defeat, Hoover returned to private business. In
1946, President Truman charged him with various world food
missions; and from 1947 to 1949 and 1953 to 1955, he was head of
the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the
Government. He died in New York City on Oct. 20, 1964.
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT (32ND U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1933-1945)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, N.Y., on Jan.
30, 1882. A Harvard graduate, he attended Columbia Law School and
was admitted to the New York bar. In 1910, he was elected to the
New York State Senate as a Democrat. Reelected in 1912, he was
appointed assistant secretary of the navy by Woodrow Wilson the
next year. In 1920, his radiant personality and his war service
resulted in his nomination for vice president as James M. Cox's
running mate. After his defeat, he returned to law practice in
New York. In Aug. 1921, Roosevelt was stricken with infantile
paralysis while on vacation at Campobello, New Brunswick. After a
long and gallant fight, he recovered partial use of his legs. In
1924 and 1928, he led the fight at the Democratic national
conventions for the nomination of Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New
York, and in 1928 Roosevelt was himself induced to run for
governor of New York. He was elected, and was reelected in
1930.
In 1932, Roosevelt received the Democratic nomination for
president and immediately launched a campaign that brought new
spirit to a weary and discouraged nation. He defeated Hoover by a
wide margin. His first term was characterized by an unfolding of
the New Deal program, with greater benefits for labor, the
farmers, and the unemployed, and the progressive estrangement of
most of the business community.
At an early stage, Roosevelt became aware of the menace to world
peace posed by totalitarian fascism, and from 1937 on he tried to
focus public attention on the trend of events in Europe and Asia.
As a result, he was widely denounced as a warmonger. He was
reelected in 1936 over Gov. Alfred M. Landon of Kansas by the
overwhelming electoral margin of 523 to 8, and the gathering
international crisis prompted him to run for an unprecedented
third term in 1940. He defeated Wendell L. Willkie.
Roosevelt's program to bring maximum aid to Britain and, after
June 1941, to Russia was opposed, until the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor restored national unity. During the war, Roosevelt
shelved the New Deal in the interests of conciliating the
business community, both in order to get full production during
the war and to prepare the way for a united acceptance of the
peace settlements after the war. A series of conferences with
Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin laid down the bases for the
postwar world. In 1944 he was elected to a fourth term, running
against Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York.
On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at
Warm Springs, Ga., shortly after his return from the Yalta
Conference. His wife, (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he married
in 1905, was a woman of great ability who made significant
contributions to her husband's policies.
HARRY S. TRUMAN (33RD U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1945-1953)
Harry S. Truman was born on a farm near Lamar, Mo., on May 8,
1884. During World War I, he served in France as a captain with
the 129th Field Artillery. He married Bess Wallace in 1919. After
engaging briefly and unsuccessfully in the haberdashery business
in Kansas City, Mo., Truman entered local politics. Under the
sponsorship of Thomas Pendergast, Democratic boss of Missouri, he
held a number of local offices, preserving his personal honesty
in the midst of a notoriously corrupt political machine. In 1934,
he was elected to the Senate and was reelected in 1940. During
his first term he was a loyal but quiet supporter of the New
Deal, but in his second term, an appointment as head of a Senate
committee to investigate war production brought out his special
qualities of honesty, common sense, and hard work, and he won
widespread respect.
Elected vice president in 1944, Truman became president upon
Roosevelt's sudden death in April 1945 and was immediately faced
with the problems of winding down the war against the Axis and
preparing the nation for postwar adjustment. Germany surrendered
on May 8, and in July Truman attended the Potsdam Conference to
discuss the settlement plans for postwar Europe. To end the war
with Japan, he authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945. Japan
surrendered on Aug. 14. Although the action undoubtedly saved
many American lives by bringing the war to an end, the morality
of the decision is still debated.
The years 1947-48 were distinguished by civil-rights proposals,
the Truman Doctrine to contain the spread of Communism, and the
Marshall Plan to aid in the economic reconstruction of
war-ravaged nations. Truman's general record, highlighted by a
vigorous Fair Deal campaign, brought about his unexpected
election in 1948 over the heavily favored Thomas E. Dewey.
Truman's second term was primarily concerned with the cold war
with the Soviet Union, the implementing of the North Atlantic
Pact, the United Nations police action in Korea, and the vast
rearmament program with its accompanying problems of economic
stabilization.
On March 29, 1952, Truman announced that he would not run again
for the presidency. After leaving the White House, he returned to
his home in Independence, Mo., to write his memoirs. He further
busied himself with the Harry S. Truman Library there. He died in
Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 26, 1972.
DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER (34TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1953-1961)
Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Tex., on Oct. 14,
1890. His ancestors lived in Germany and emigrated to America,
settling in Pennsylvania, early in the 18th century. His father,
David, had a general store in Hope, Kans., which failed. After a
brief time in Texas, the family moved to Abilene, Kan.
After graduating from Abilene High School in 1909, Eisenhower did
odd jobs for almost two years. He won an appointment to the Naval
Academy at Annapolis, but was too old for admittance. Then he
received an appointment in 1910 to West Point, from which he
graduated as a second lieutenant in 1915.
He did not see service in World War I, having been stationed at
Fort Sam Houston, Tex. There he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he
married in Denver on July 1, 1916, and by whom he had two sons:
Doud Dwight (died in infancy) and John Sheldon Doud.
Eisenhower served in the Philippines from 1935 to 1939 with Gen.
Douglas MacArthur. Afterward, Gen. George C. Marshall, the army
chief of staff, brought him into the War Department's General
Staff and in 1942 placed him in command of the invasion of North
Africa. In 1944, he was made Supreme Allied Commander for the
invasion of Europe.
After the war, Eisenhower served as army chief of staff from Nov.
1945 until Feb. 1948, when he was appointed president of Columbia
University.
In Dec. 1950, President Truman recalled Eisenhower to active duty
to command the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in
Europe. He held his post until the end of May 1952.
At the Republican convention of 1952 in Chicago, Eisenhower won
the presidential nomination on the first ballot in a close race
with Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio. In the election, he defeated
Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois.
Through two terms, Eisenhower hewed to moderate domestic
policies. He sought peace through Free World strength in an era
of new nationalisms, nuclear missiles, and space exploration. He
fostered alliances pledging the United States to resist "Red"
aggression in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The Eisenhower
Doctrine of 1957 extended commitments to the Middle East.
At home, the popular president lacked Republican congressional
majorities after 1954, but he was reelected in 1956 by 457
electoral votes to 73 for Stevenson.
While retaining most Fair Deal programs, he stressed "fiscal
responsibility" in domestic affairs. A moderate in civil rights,
he sent troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce court-ordered
school integration.
With his wartime rank restored by Congress, Eisenhower returned
to private life and the role of elder statesman, with his vigor
hardly impaired by a heart attack, an ileitis operation, and a
mild stroke suffered while in office. He died in Washington, DC,
on March 28, 1969.
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY (35TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1961-1963)
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29,
1917. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was ambassador to Great
Britain from 1937 to 1940.
Kennedy was graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined
the navy the next year. He became skipper of a PT boat that was
sunk in the Pacific by a Japanese destroyer. Although given up
for lost, he swam to a safe island, towing an injured enlisted
man.
After recovering from a war-aggravated spinal injury, Kennedy
entered politics in 1946 and was elected to Congress. In 1952, he
ran against Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts, and
won.
Kennedy was married on Sept. 12, 1953, to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier,
by whom he had three children: Caroline, John Fitzgerald, Jr.
(died in a 1999 plane crash), and Patrick Bouvier (died in
infancy).
In 1957 Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for a book he had written
earlier, Profiles in Courage.
After strenuous primary battles, Kennedy won the Democratic
presidential nomination on the first ballot at the 1960 Los
Angeles convention. With a plurality of only 118,574 votes, he
carried the election over Vice President Richard M. Nixon and
became the first Roman Catholic president.
Kennedy brought to the White House the dynamic idea of a "New
Frontier" approach in dealing with problems at home, abroad, and
in the dimensions of space. Out of his leadership in his first
few months in office came the 10-year Alliance for Progress to
aid Latin America, the Peace Corps, and accelerated programs that
brought the first Americans into orbit in the race in space.
Failure of the U.S.-supported Cuban invasion in April 1961 led to
the entrenchment of the Communist-backed Castro regime, only 90
mi from United States soil. When it became known that Soviet
offensive missiles were being installed in Cuba in 1962, Kennedy
ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island and moved troops into
position to eliminate this threat to U.S. security. The world
seemed on the brink of a nuclear war until Soviet premier
Khrushchev ordered the removal of the missiles.
A sudden "thaw," or the appearance of one, in the cold war came
with the agreement with the Soviet Union on a limited test-ban
treaty signed in Moscow on Aug. 6, 1963.
In his domestic policies, Kennedy's proposals for medical care
for the aged and aid to education were defeated, but on minimum
wage, trade legislation, and other measures he won important
victories.
Widespread racial disorders and demonstrations led to Kennedy's
proposing sweeping civil rights legislation. As his third year in
office drew to a close, he also recommended an $11-billion tax
cut to bolster the economy. Both measures were pending in
Congress when Kennedy, looking forward to a second term,
journeyed to Texas for a series of speeches.
While riding in an automobile procession in Dallas on Nov. 22,
1963, he was shot to death by an assassin firing from an upper
floor of a building. The alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was
killed two days later in the Dallas city jail by Jack Ruby, owner
of a strip-tease club.
At 46 years of age, Kennedy became the fourth president to be
assassinated and the eighth to die in office.
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON (36TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1963-1969)
Lyndon Baines Johnson was born in Stonewall, Tex., on Aug. 27,
1908. On both sides of his family he had a political heritage
mingled with a Baptist background of preachers and teachers. Both
his father and his paternal grandfather served in the Texas House
of Representatives.
After his graduation from Southwest Texas State Teachers College,
Johnson taught school for two years. He went to Washington in
1932 as secretary to Rep. Richard M. Kleberg. During this time,
he married Claudia Alta Taylor, known as "Lady Bird." They had
two children: Lynda Bird and Luci Baines.
In 1935, Johnson became Texas administrator for the National
Youth Administration. Two years later, he was elected to Congress
as an all-out supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and served
until 1949. He was the first member of Congress to enlist in the
armed forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served in the
navy in the Pacific and won a Silver Star.
Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948 after he had captured
the Democratic nomination by only 87 votes. He was 40 years old.
He became the Senate Democratic leader in 1953. A heart attack in
1955 threatened to end his political career, but he recovered
fully and resumed his duties.
At the height of his power as Senate leader, Johnson sought the
Democratic nomination for president in 1960. When he lost to John
F. Kennedy, he surprised even some of his closest associates by
accepting second place on the ticket.
Johnson was riding in another car in the motorcade when Kennedy
was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He took the oath of
office in the presidential jet on the Dallas airfield.
With Johnson's insistent backing, Congress finally adopted a
far-reaching civil-rights bill, a voting-rights bill, a Medicare
program for the aged, and measures to improve education and
conservation. Congress also began what Johnson described as "an
all-out war" on poverty.
Amassing a record-breaking majority of nearly 16 million votes,
Johnson was elected president in his own right in 1964, defeating
Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
The double tragedy of a war in Southeast Asia and urban riots at
home marked Johnson's last two years in office. Faced with
disunity in the nation and challenges within his own party,
Johnson surprised the country on March 31, 1968, with the
announcement that he would not be a candidate for reelection. He
died of a heart attack suffered at his LBJ Ranch on Jan. 22,
1973.
RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON (37TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1969-1974)
Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, Calif., on Jan. 9,
1913, to Midwestern-bred parents, Francis A. and Hannah Milhous
Nixon, who raised their five sons as Quakers.
Nixon was a high school debater and was undergraduate president
at Whittier College in California, where he was graduated in
1934. As a scholarship student at Duke University Law School in
North Carolina, he graduated third in his class in 1937.
After five years as a lawyer, Nixon joined the navy in August
1942. He was an air transport officer in the South Pacific and a
legal officer stateside before his discharge in 1946 as a
lieutenant commander.
Running for Congress in California as a Republican in 1946, Nixon
defeated Rep. Jerry Voorhis. As a member of the House Un-American
Activities Committee, he made a name as an investigator of Alger
Hiss, a former high State Department official, who was later
jailed for perjury. In 1950, Nixon defeated Rep. Helen Gahagan
Douglas, a Democrat, for the Senate. He was criticized for
portraying her as a Communist dupe.
Nixon's anti-Communism ideals, his Western roots, and his youth
figured into his selection in 1952 to run for vice president on
the ticket headed by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Demands for Nixon's
withdrawal followed disclosure that California businessmen had
paid some of his Senate office expenses. His televised rebuttal,
known as "the Checkers speech" (named for a cocker spaniel given
to the Nixons), brought him support from the public and from
Eisenhower. The ticket won easily in 1952 and again in 1956.
Eisenhower gave Nixon substantive assignments, including missions
to 56 countries. In Moscow in 1959, Nixon won acclaim for his
defense of U.S. interests in an impromptu "kitchen debate" with
Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev.
Nixon lost the 1960 race for the presidency to John F.
Kennedy.
In 1962, Nixon failed in a bid for California's governorship and
seemed to be finished as a national candidate. He became a Wall
Street lawyer, but kept his old party ties and developed new ones
through constant travels to speak for Republicans.
Nixon won the 1968 Republican presidential nomination after a
shrewd primary campaign, then made Gov. Spiro T. Agnew of
Maryland his surprise choice for vice president. In the election,
they edged out the Democratic ticket headed by Vice President
Hubert H. Humphrey by 510,314 votes out of 73,212,065 cast.
Committed to winding down the U.S. role in the Vietnamese War,
Nixon pursued "Vietnamization" - training and equipping South
Vietnamese to do their own fighting. American ground combat
forces in Vietnam fell steadily from 540,000 when Nixon took
office to none in 1973 when the military draft was ended. But
there was heavy continuing use of U.S. air power.
Nixon improved relations with Moscow and reopened the long-closed
door to mainland China with a good-will trip there in Feb. 1972.
In May of that same year, he visited Moscow and signed agreements
on arms limitation and trade expansion and approved plans for a
joint U.S.-Soviet space mission in 1975.
Inflation was a campaign issue for Nixon, but he failed to master
it as president. On Aug. 15, 1971, with unemployment edging up,
Nixon abruptly announced a new economic policy: a 90-day
wage-price freeze, stimulative tax cuts, a temporary 10% tariff,
and spending cuts. A second phase, imposing guidelines on wage,
price, and rent boosts, was announced Oct. 7.
The economy responded in time for the 1972 campaign, in which
Nixon played up his foreign-policy achievements. Played down was
the burglary on June 17, 1972, of Democratic national
headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington.
The Nixon-Agnew reelection campaign cost a record $60 million and
swamped the Democratic ticket headed by Sen. George McGovern of
South Dakota with a plurality of 17,999,528 out of 77,718,554
votes. Only Massachusetts, with 14 electoral votes, and the
District of Columbia, with 3, went for McGovern.
In Jan. 1973, hints of a cover-up emerged at the trial of six men
found guilty of the Watergate burglary. With a Senate
investigation under way, Nixon announced on April 30 the
resignations of his top aides, H. R. Haldeman and John D.
Ehrlichman, and the dismissal of White House counsel John Dean
III. Dean was the star witness at televised Senate hearings that
exposed both a White House cover-up of Watergate and massive
illegalities in Republican fund-raising in 1972.
The hearings also disclosed that Nixon had routinely
tape-recorded his office meetings and telephone
conversations.
On Oct. 10, 1973, Agnew resigned as vice president, then pleaded
no-contest to a negotiated federal charge of evading income taxes
on alleged bribes. Two days later, Nixon nominated the House
minority leader, Rep. Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, as the new vice
president. Congress confirmed Ford on Dec. 6, 1973.
In June 1974, Nixon visited Israel and four Arab nations. Then he
met in Moscow with Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and reached
preliminary nuclear arms limitation agreements.
But, in the month after his return, Watergate ended the Nixon
regime. On July 24 the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to surrender
subpoenaed tapes. On July 30, the Judiciary Committee referred
three impeachment articles to the full membership. On Aug. 5,
Nixon bowed to the Supreme Court and released tapes showing he
halted an FBI probe of the Watergate burglary six days after it
occurred. It was in effect an admission of obstruction of
justice, and impeachment appeared inevitable.
Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, the first president ever to do
so. A month later, President Ford issued an unconditional pardon
for any offenses Nixon might have committed as president, thus
forestalling possible prosecution.
In 1940, Nixon married Thelma Catherine (Pat) Ryan. They had two
daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie, who married Dwight David
Eisenhower II, grandson of the former president.
He died on April 22, 1994, in New York City of a massive
stroke.
GERALD RUDOLPH FORD (38TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1974-1977)
Gerald Rudolph Ford was born Leslie King Jr. in Omaha, Neb., on
July 14, 1913, the only child of Leslie and Dorothy Gardner King.
His parents were divorced in 1915. His mother moved to Grand
Rapids, Mich., and married Gerald R. Ford. The boy was renamed
for his stepfather.
Ford captained his high school football team in Grand Rapids, and
a football scholarship took him to the University of Michigan,
where he starred as varsity center before his graduation in 1935.
A job as assistant football coach at Yale gave him an opportunity
to attend Yale Law School, from which he graduated in the top
third of his class in 1941.
He returned to Grand Rapids to practice law, but entered the Navy
in April 1942. He saw wartime service in the Pacific on the light
aircraft carrier Monterey and was a lieutenant commander when he
returned to Grand Rapids early in 1946 to resume law practice and
dabble in politics.
Ford was elected to Congress in 1948 for the first of his 13
terms in the House. He was soon assigned to the influential
Appropriations Committee and rose to become the ranking
Republican on the subcommittee on Defense Department
appropriations.
As a legislator, Ford described himself as "a moderate on
domestic issues, a conservative in fiscal affairs, and a
dyed-in-the-wool internationalist." He carried the ball for
Pentagon appropriations, was a hawk on the war in Vietnam, and
kept a low profile on civil-rights issues.
Ford was also dependable and hard-working and popular with his
colleagues. In 1963, he was elected chairman of the House
Republican Conference. He served in 1963-1964 as a member of the
Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of John
F. Kennedy. A revolt by dissatisfied younger Republicans in 1965
made him minority leader.
On Oct. 12, 1973, Nixon nominated Ford to fill the vice
presidency left vacant by Agnew's resignation under fire. It was
the first use of the procedures for filling vacancies in the vice
presidency laid down in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution,
which Ford had helped enact. Once in office, he said he did not
believe Nixon had been involved in the Watergate scandals, but he
criticized Nixon's stubborn court battle against releasing tape
recordings of Watergate-related conversations for use as
evidence. The scandals led to Nixon's unprecedented resignation
on Aug. 9, 1974, and Ford was sworn in immediately as the 38th
president, the first to enter the White House without winning a
national election.
Ford assured the nation when he took office that "our long
national nightmare is over" and pledged "openness and candor" in
all his actions. He won a warm response from the Democratic 93rd
Congress when he said he wanted "a good marriage" rather than a
honeymoon with his former colleagues. In Dec. 1974 congressional
majorities backed his choice of former New York governor Nelson
A. Rockefeller as his vice president.
The cordiality was chilled by Ford's announcement on Sept. 8,
1974, that he had granted an unconditional pardon to Nixon for
any crimes he might have committed as president. Although no
formal charges were pending, Ford said he feared "ugly passions"
would be aroused if Nixon were brought to trial. The pardon was
widely criticized.
To fight inflation, the new president first proposed fiscal
restraints and spending curbs and a 5% tax surcharge that got
nowhere in the Senate and House. Congress again rebuffed Ford in
the spring of 1975 when he appealed for emergency military aid to
help the governments of South Vietnam and Cambodia resist massive
Communist offensives.
Politically, Ford's fortunes improved steadily in the first half
of 1975. Badly divided Democrats in Congress were unable to
muster votes to override his vetoes of spending bills that
exceeded his budget. He faced some right-wing opposition in his
own party, but moved to preempt it with an early announcement -
on July 8, 1975 - of his intention to be a candidate in 1976.
During the election campaign, Ford was regarded as a caretaker
president lacking in strength and vision. He was defeated in
November by Jimmy Carter.
In 1948, Ford married Elizabeth Anne (Betty) Bloomer. They had
four children, Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs, and
Susan Elizabeth.
JAMES EARL CARTER, JR. (39TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1977-1981)
James Earl Carter, Jr., was born in the tiny village of Plains,
Ga., Oct. 1, 1924, and grew up on the family farm at nearby
Archery. Both parents were fifth-generation Georgians. His
father, James Earl Carter, was known as a segregationist, but
treated his black and white workers equally. Carter's mother,
Lillian Gordy, was a matriarchal presence in home and community
and opposed the then-prevailing code of racial inequality. The
future president was baptized in 1935 in the conservative
Southern Baptist Church and spoke often of being a "born again"
Christian, although committed to the separation of church and
state.
Carter married Rosalynn Smith, a neighbor, in 1946. Their first
child, John William, was born a year later in Portsmouth, Va.
Their other children are James Earl III, born in Honolulu in
1950; Donnel Jeffrey, born in New London, Conn., in 1952; and Amy
Lynn, born in Plains in 1967.
In 1946 Carter was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at
Annapolis and served in the nuclear-submarine program under Adm.
Hyman G. Rickover. In 1954, after his father's death, he resigned
from the Navy to take over the family's flourishing warehouse and
cotton gin, with several thousand acres for growing seed
peanuts.
Carter was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1962. In 1966 he lost
the race for governor, but was elected in 1970. His term brought
a state government reorganization, sharply reduced agencies,
increased economy and efficiency, and new social programs, all
with no general tax increase. In 1972 the peanut
farmer-politician set his sights on the presidency and in 1974
built a base for himself as he criss-crossed the country as
chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee, appealing for
revival and reform. In 1975 he won the support of most of the old
Southern civil-rights coalition after endorsement by Rep. Andrew
Young, black Democrat from Atlanta, who had been the closest aide
to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Having won 19 out of 31
primaries with a broad appeal to conservatives and liberals,
black and white, poor and well-to-do, he defeated Gerald R. Ford
in Nov. 1976.
In his one term, Carter fought hard for his programs against
resistance from an independent-minded Democratic Congress that
frustrated many pet projects although it overrode only two
vetoes. Public dissatisfaction with the "stagflation" economy,
staff problems, friction with Congress, long gasoline lines, and
the months-long Iranian crisis, including the abortive sally in
April 1980 to free the hostages also proved problematic for the
administration. Yet, assessments of his record have noted many
positive elements. There was, for one thing, peace throughout his
term, with no American combat deaths and with a brake on the
advocates of force. Regarded as perhaps his greatest personal
achievements were the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt
and the resulting treaty - the first between Israel and an Arab
neighbor. The treaty with China and the Panama Canal treaties
were also major achievements. Carter worked for nuclear-arms
control. His concern for international human rights was credited
with saving lives and reducing torture, and he supported the
British policy that ended internecine warfare in Rhodesia, now
Zimbabwe. Domestically, his environmental record was a major
accomplishment. His judicial appointments won acclaim, with 265
choices for the federal bench that included minority members and
women.
In 1980 Carter was renominated on the first ballot after
vanquishing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in the
primaries. In the election campaign, he attacked his rivals,
Ronald Reagan and John B. Anderson, independent, with the warning
that a Reagan Republican victory would heighten the risk of war
and impede civil rights and economic opportunity. In November
Carter lost to Reagan, who won 489 electoral college votes and
51% of the popular tally, to 49 electoral votes and 41% for
Carter. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
RONALD WILSON REAGAN (40TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1981-1989)
Ronald Wilson Reagan rode to the presidency in 1980 on a tide of
resurgent right-wing sentiment among an electorate longing for a
distant, simpler era. He left office in Jan. 1989 with two-thirds
of the American people approving his performance during his two
terms. It was the highest rating for any retiring president since
World War II.
Reagan, an actor turned politician, a New Dealer turned
conservative, came to films and politics from a thoroughly
Middle-American background - middle class, Middle West, and small
town. He was born in Tampico, Ill., Feb. 6, 1911, the second son
of John Edward Reagan and Nelle Wilson Reagan; the family later
moved to Dixon, Ill. His father was a shop clerk and merchant
with Democratic sympathies. It was an impoverished family; young
Ronald sold homemade popcorn at high school games and worked as a
lifeguard to earn money for his college tuition. When his father
got a New Deal WPA job, the future president became an ardent
Roosevelt Democrat.
Reagan earned a BA degree in 1932 from Eureka (Ill.) College,
where a photographic memory aided in his studies and in debating
and college theatricals. During the Depression, he made $100 a
week as a sports announcer for radio station WHO in Des Moines,
Iowa. His career as a film and TV actor stretched from 1937 to
1966, and his salary climbed to $3,500 a week. As a World War II
captain in army film studios, Reagan recoiled from what he saw as
the laziness of civil service workers, and moved to the Right. As
president of the Screen Actors Guild, he resisted what he
considered a Communist plot to subvert the film industry. With
advancing age, Reagan left leading-man roles and became a
television spokesman for the General Electric Company.
With oratorical skill as his trademark, Reagan became an active
Republican. In 1966, at the behest of a small group of
conservative businessmen, he ran for governor of California with
a pledge to cut spending; he was elected by almost a million
votes over the political veteran, Democratic governor Edmund G.
Brown. Reelected to a second term, he served as governor until
1975.
In the 1980 election battle against Jimmy Carter, Reagan
broadened his appeal by espousing moderate policies, gaining much
of his support from disaffected Democrats and blue-collar
workers. The incoming administration immediately set out to "turn
the government around" with a new economic program. Over
strenuous congressional opposition, Reagan pushed through his
"supply side" economic program to stimulate production and
control inflation through tax cuts and sharp reductions in
government spending. However, in 1982, as the economy declined
into the worst recession in 40 years, the president's popularity
slipped and support for supply-side economics faded.
Barely three months into his first term, Reagan was the target of
an assassin's bullet; his courageous comeback won public
admiration. The president also won high acclaim for his
nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman on the
Supreme Court. His later nominations met increasing opposition
and did much to tilt the Court's orientation to the Right.
Internationally, Reagan confronted numerous problems in his first
term. In an effort to establish order on the Caribbean island of
Grenada and eliminate the Cuban military presence there, Reagan
ordered an invasion of the tiny nation on Oct. 25, 1983. The
troops met strong resistance from Cuban military personnel on the
island but soon occupied it. Another military effort, in Lebanon,
ended in failure, however. U.S. Marines engaged as part of a
multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut were forced to
withdraw in 1984 after a disastrous terrorist attack left 241
marines dead.
With the economy improving and inflation under control, the
popular president won reelection in a landslide in 1984.
Domestically, a tax reform bill that Reagan backed became law.
But the constantly growing budget deficit remained an irritant,
with the president and Congress persistently at odds over
priorities in spending for defense and domestic programs.
Congress was also increasingly reluctant to increase spending for
the Nicaraguan "Contras." But even severe critics praised
Reagan's restrained but decisive handling of the crisis following
the hijacking of an American plane in Beirut by Muslim
extremists. The attack on Libya in April 1986 galvanized the
nation, although it drew scathing disapproval from the NATO
alliance.
Reagan's popularity with the public dipped sharply in 1986 when
the Iran-Contra scandal broke, shortly after the Democrats gained
control of the Senate. The weeks-long congressional hearings in
the summer of 1987 heard an array of administration officials,
present and former, reveal a web of deceit and undercover
maneuvering in the White House. Yet the president's personal
reputation remained untouched; on Aug. 12, 1987, he told the
nation that he had not known of questionable activities but
agreed that he was ultimately accountable.
Reagan's place in history will rest, perhaps, on the short- and
intermediate-range missile treaty consummated on a cordial visit
to the Soviet Union that he had once reviled as an "evil empire."
Its provisions, including a ground-breaking agreement on
verification inspection, were formulated in four days of summit
talks in Moscow in May 1988 with the Soviet leader, Mikhail S.
Gorbachev. Reagan could point to numerous domestic achievements
as well: sharp cuts in income tax rates, creating economic growth
without inflation, and reducing the unemployment rate, among
others. He failed, however, to win the "Reagan Revolution" on
such issues as abortion and school prayer.
Reagan married his wife, Nancy, four years after his divorce from
the screen actress Jane Wyman. The children from his first
marriage are Maureen, his daughter by Wyman, and Michael, an
adopted son. He had two children by Nancy: Patricia and Ron.
Reagan suffered from Alzheimer's disease, which he developed
around 1994, and died in Los Angeles on June 5, 2004.
GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH (41ST U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1989-1993)
George Herbert Walker Bush was born June 12, 1924, in Milton,
Mass., to Prescott and Dorothy Bush. The family later moved to
Connecticut. The youth studied at the elite Phillips Academy in
Andover, Mass.
The future president joined the Navy after war broke out and at
18 became the Navy's youngest commissioned pilot, serving from
1942 to 1945, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He
fought the Japanese on 58 missions and was shot down once.
After the war, Bush earned an economics degree and a Phi Beta
Kappa key in two and a half years at Yale University.
In 1945 Bush married Barbara Pierce of Rye, N.Y., daughter of a
magazine publisher. With his bride, Bush moved to Texas instead
of entering his father's investment banking business. There he
founded his oil company and by 1980 reported an estimated wealth
of $1.4 million.
Throughout his whole career, Bush had the backing of an
established family, headed by his father, Prescott Bush, who was
elected to the Senate from Connecticut in 1952. The family helped
the young patrician become established in his early business
ventures, a rich uncle raising most of the capital required for
founding the oil company.
In the 1960s, Bush won two contests for a Texas Republican seat
in the House of Representatives, but lost two bids for a Senate
seat. After Bush's second race for the Senate, President Nixon
appointed him U.S. delegate to the United Nations and he later
became Republican National Committee chairman. He headed the U.S.
liaison office in Beijing before becoming Director of Central
Intelligence. In 1980 Bush became Reagan's running mate despite
earlier criticism of Reagan "voodoo economics" and by the 1984
election had won acclaim for his devotion to Reagan's
conservative agenda.
The vice president entered the 1988 presidential campaign and
easily defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis. Bush's choice of Sen.
Dan Quayle of Indiana as a running mate provoked criticism and
ridicule that continued even after the administration was in
office. Nonetheless Bush strongly defended his choice. George
Herbert Walker Bush became president on Jan. 20, 1989, with his
theme harmony and conciliation after the often-turbulent Reagan
years.
Bush's early Cabinet choices reflected a pragmatic desire for an
efficient, nonideological government. And with his usual cautious
instinct, in 1990 he nominated to the Supreme Court the scholarly
David H. Souter, with broadly conservative views.
In his first year, Bush was confronted with the Lebanese hostage
crisis, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and the ongoing war
against drug trafficking. His public approval soared following
the invasion of Panama in late 1989. But a staggering budget
deficit and the savings and loan crisis caused the president's
popularity to dip sharply in his second year. This plunge
followed Bush's recantation of his campaign "no new taxes" pledge
as he sat down with congressional leaders to tame the budget
deficit and deal with a faltering economy.
In 1991, the president emerged as the leader of an international
coalition of Western democracies, Japan, and even some Arab
states that came together to free Kuwait following an invasion of
the country by Iraq in Aug. 1990. The coalition forces defeated
Iraq in only a little more than a month after Operation Desert
Storm was launched on Jan. 16-17, 1991, and a nation grateful at
feeling the end of the "Vietnam syndrome" gave the president an
89% approval rating. However, the high rating fell as the year
went on, as doubts persisted about the war's outcome - Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein remained in power and persistently
avoided complying with the terms of the peace treaty - and as
concerns began to grow about the faltering U.S. economy and other
domestic problems.
A major Bush accomplishment in 1991 was the Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty (START), signed in July with Soviet president
Mikhail S. Gorbachev at their fourth summit conference, marking
the end of the long weapons buildup.
In the 1992 presidential election, Bush was defeated by Gov. Bill
Clinton of Arkansas.
The Bushes have four sons, George, Jeb, Neil, and Marvin, and a
daughter, Dorothy. Another daughter, Robin, died at age three
from leukemia. Son George served as governor of Texas from 1995
to 2000, when he was elected the 43rd U.S. president. Jeb Bush
was elected governor of Florida in 1998.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON (42ND U.S. PRESIDENT IN 1993-2001)
William Jefferson Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III
in Hope, Ark., on Aug. 19, 1946. He was named for his father, who
was killed in an automobile accident before Clinton's birth.
Virginia Kelley, his mother, eventually married Roger Clinton, a
car dealer, whose surname the future president later adopted.
In high school in Hot Springs, Ark., Clinton considered becoming
a doctor, but politics beckoned after a meeting with President
John F. Kennedy in Washington, DC, on a Boys' Nation trip. He
earned a BS in international affairs in 1968 at Georgetown
University, having spent his junior year working for Arkansas
senator J. William Fulbright. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford
between 1968 and 1970. He then attended Yale Law School, where he
met his future wife, Hillary Rodham, a Wellesley graduate. The
couple has one child, Chelsea.
Clinton taught at the University of Arkansas (1974-1976), was
elected state attorney general (1976), and in 1979 became the
nation's youngest governor. But he was defeated for reelection in
1980 by voters irate at a rise in the state's automobile license
fees. In 1982 he was elected again. This time he reined in
liberal tendencies to accommodate the conservative bent of the
voters.
Clinton became the 42nd U.S. president following a turbulent
political campaign. He overcame vigorous personal attacks on his
character and on his actions during the Vietnam War, which he
actively opposed. The "character issue" stemmed from allegations
of infidelity, which Clinton refuted in a television interview in
which he and Hillary avowed their relationship was solid.
Throughout his term in office, Clinton was dogged by allegations
relating to the Whitewater real estate deal in which he and
Hillary were involved prior to the 1992 election. Though the
Clintons were never accused of any wrongdoing, partners in the
venture were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in a trial in
1996.
The problems faced by the new president were as daunting as they
were varied. In Jan. 1993 he became embroiled with the military
leadership over his campaign pledge to allow homosexuals to serve
openly in the armed services. He ultimately agreed to a
compromise, dubbed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Clinton's
first year also saw him wrangling with Congress over the federal
budget and economic policy.
In his second year, Clinton was faced with acrimonious battles
over health care, welfare reform, and crime prevention. A health
care reform package crafted by his wife failed to gain sufficient
support. Clinton had to reduce his objective from massive
overhaul to incremental reform.
Clinton won major victories with the passage of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect Jan. 1,
1994, and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which
led to the establishment in 1995 of the World Trade Organization
(WTO). Congress also approved a deficit reduction bill, rules
allowing abortion counseling in federally funded clinics, a
waiting period for handgun purchases (the Brady Bill), and a
national service program.
Foreign affairs became a proving ground for Clinton, since he has
been elected primarily on a domestic economic agenda. He improved
his international image when the Israel-Jordan peace agreement
was signed at the White House in the summer of 1994 by Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein. In the
fall of that year, the administration succeeded in restoring
Haiti's ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power.
Clinton scored again by bolstering Russian president Boris
Yeltsin's popularity with promises of economic aid.
The problems in Eastern Europe were Clinton's next big challenge.
Though he wanted desperately to end the brutal ethnic cleansing
in Bosnia, he did not want to commit American ground troops to do
so. A peace accord involving American peacekeeping troops was
ultimately signed in Dayton, Ohio, in Nov. 1995.
The 1994 elections resulted in a Republican-controlled Congress,
and 1995 was largely a tug-of-war between the White House and
Capitol Hill over budget-balancing and other key points of the
GOP's "Contract with America," crafted by Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich.
In 1996, aided by a booming economy, Clinton won reelection to a
second term, becoming the first Democratic president since
Franklin D. Roosevelt to do so. The country's general prosperity
also made it possible in 1997 for Clinton and the Republicans to
reach an agreement to balance the federal budget in three
decades.
However, the character issues that had followed Clinton for years
soon began to emerge once again. A series of investigations was
begun to determine whether Clinton and Vice President Gore had
participated in questionable fund-raising practices in their 1996
campaign.
As his tenure wore on, Clinton came under increasing pressure
from Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who in 1994 took over
the investigation of the Clintons' involvement in the Whitewater
land deal. Over time, Starr's brief was expanded to include other
matters, such as the suicide of White House lawyer Vincent
Foster, the handling of firings in the White House travel office,
and allegations of sexual misconduct by Clinton.
In Jan. 1998, Clinton was called to testify in a long-pending
sexual harassment suit brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones,
a former Arkansas state employee. The hearing also addressed
another scandalous relationship, and in his testimony, Clinton
denied that he had had a sexual relationship with a young White
House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and that he had attempted to cover
it up. Although a federal judge in Arkansas threw out the Jones
sexual harassment suit in April 1998, by this time the Lewinsky
affair had become the focus of Kenneth Starr's investigation as
well as a national obsession.
Finally, on Aug. 17, 1998, after relentless media attention,
leaks, and news of Lewinsky's upcoming testimony, Clinton made
history by becoming the first U.S. president to testify in front
of a grand jury in an investigation of his own possibly criminal
conduct. In an address to the nation that evening, he admitted to
having had an "inappropriate relationship" with Lewinsky, but
reaffirmed that he had not asked anyone to lie about or cover up
the affair.
In spite of the scandalous outcome of events, Clinton's overall
popularity among Americans remained high. The country seemed
willing to ignore his weaknesses in character, much as they had
in the 1992 elections, as long as the economy was good, his
policies were popular, and the United States remained strong
abroad.
On Sept. 9, Starr - a conservative Republican whose investigation
was seen by Clinton supporters as a politically inspired vendetta
- delivered his report to the House of Representatives. While the
report outlined 11 possible grounds for impeachment, none stemmed
from the initial subjects of the investigation, including the
Whitewater real estate deal. The real focus of the accusations
seemed to be Clinton's moral conduct, and the "Starr Report"
graphically detailed his sexual affair.
Despite the American population's general disapproval of a trial,
reflected in poll after poll, Congress moved forward with
impeachment proceedings and on Dec. 19, Clinton became the second
president in American history to be impeached. Two of the four
articles of impeachment - Article I, grand jury perjury, and
Article III, obstruction of justice - passed, the votes drawn
along party lines. After a Senate trial in Jan.-Feb. 1999,
Clinton was acquitted on both counts.
While the impeachment trial overshadowed all other activity in
Washington for a good portion of 1998, Clinton was forced to
respond to continued problems with Iraq at the end of the year.
In December, Saddam Hussein blocked a weapons inspection by the
United Nations. The UN responded with airstrikes that would
continue on a nearly daily basis for the next three months, and
then off and on through the spring and summer, as Iraq taunted
the U.S. and its allies further by shooting at jets patrolling
the no-fly zones set up after the Persian Gulf war.
In the spring of 1999, reports grew of continued ethnic cleansing
in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Clinton and his British
counterpart, Tony Blair, led the push for NATO intervention,
which resulted in a 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia
beginning in March. Although Clinton received some sharp
criticism for holding back on the deployment of NATO ground
troops, he was vindicated when Serbian president Slobodan
Milosevic signed a peace treaty on June 9.
In his final year of office, the president maintained a
relatively low profile but took several major trips overseas, to
South Asia, Europe, and Africa. He also prepared for the 2000
elections, lending his support not only to presidential hopeful
Al Gore, but also to his wife, Hillary Clinton, who successfully
ran for U.S. senator from New York.
On Jan. 19, 2001, the day before he left office, Clinton agreed
to a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license and his
paying of a $25,000 fine to the Arkansas Bar Association. In
exchange, Kenneth Starr's successor, Robert Ray, agreed to close
the Whitewater probe, ending the threat of criminal liability for
Mr. Clinton after he left office.
GEORGE WALKER BUSH (43RD U.S. PRESIDENT
IN 2001-2009)
George
Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., the
first child of future president George H. W. Bush. In 1948, the
family moved to Odessa, Tex., where the senior Bush went to work
in the oil business. George W. grew up mainly in Midland, Tex.,
and Houston, and later attended two of his father's alma maters,
Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Yale.
After graduating from Yale with a history degree in 1968, Bush
joined the Texas Air National Guard, where he served as a
part-time fighter pilot until 1973. After receiving an MBA from
Harvard Business School in 1975, he returned to Texas, where he
established his own oil and gas business. In 1977 he met and
married his wife, Laura Welch, a librarian. The couple has twin
daughters, Jenna and Barbara, born in 1981.
Coming from a prominent political family - his grandfather
Prescott Bush had been a senator from Connecticut and his father
a U.S. congressman and political appointee - George W. had been
immersed in politics since childhood. In 1977 he entered the fray
himself, unsuccessfully running for U.S. Congress from the West
Texas district that included his hometown of Midland.
Following his defeat, Bush returned to the oil business. In 1985,
however, oil prices fell sharply, and Bush's company verged on
collapse until it was acquired by a Dallas firm. Bush then headed
to Washington to become a paid adviser to his father's successful
1988 presidential campaign. After the election, Bush returned to
Texas and assembled a group of investors to buy the Texas
Rangers.
Bush again entered politics in 1993, running for the Texas
governorship. Although he had a tough opponent in the immensely
popular incumbent Ann Richards, he created a clear agenda focused
on issues such as education and juvenile justice and won with 53%
of the vote. He was reelected in 1998, not long before he
announced plans to run for president.
During the 2000 campaign, Bush adhered closely to the traditional
conservative line, favoring small government, tax cuts, a strong
military, and opposing gun control and abortion. His choice of
running mate, Dick Cheney, secretary of defense during his
father's administration, provided his campaign with seasoned
Washington political experience.
With the country in a state of general prosperity, the 2000
election between George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore was
perceived to be one of the least dynamic on issues. As it turned
out, the race was one of the closest in the country's history. By
early evening on election night, it was apparent that whoever won
Florida would win the election. Bush's razor-thin margin of about
1,200 votes prompted an automatic recount. The case ultimately
ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush officially became the
president-elect on Dec. 13, after the Supreme Court reversed a
decision by the Florida Supreme Court to allow manual recounts of
ballots in some Florida counties, contending that such a partial
recount violated the Constitution's equal protection and due
process guarantees. With Florida in his column, Bush won the
presidency with 271 electoral votes, just one more than he
needed, although he lost the popular vote by half a million. The
divided 5-4 Supreme Court decision generated enormous
controversy, with critics asserting that the Supreme Court, and
not the electorate, had effectively determined the outcome of the
presidential election.
The top item on Bush's domestic agenda - a $1.35 trillion tax cut
over 11 years - was swiftly enacted in June 2001. In his first
year in office, President Bush also championed an antimissile
defense system, meant to intercept long-range missiles lobbed at
U.S. shores. Opponents of the plan argued that it was
technologically unfeasible and astronomically expensive. Bush's
early foreign policy was defined by the rejection of a number of
international treaties that the White House felt were detrimental
to American interests, including the Kyoto treaty on global
warming, the biological weapons convention banning germ warfare,
and a treaty to establish an international war-crimes court. Bush
also withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the
basis for three decades of nuclear stability with the Soviet
Union, but at the same time succeeded in persuading Russia to
agree to a landmark treaty that would cut U.S. and Russian
nuclear weapons stockpiles by two-thirds over the next
decade.
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
on Sept. 11, 2001, irrevocably altered the direction of the Bush
presidency; his primary focus became the war on international
terrorism. Bush shored up enormous support from the international
community to fight terrorism worldwide. On Oct. 7, the U.S. and
Britain began air strikes against Afghanistan, after the Taliban
government repeatedly refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the
mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban collapsed on Dec.
9, but despite this outstanding military success, bin Laden
remained at large.
National security efforts included creating the Department of
Homeland Security, a domestic security cabinet agency that
consolidated 20 federal agencies in a massive government
reorganization. More controversial was the passage of the USA
PATRIOT Act, antiterrorism legislation that presented law
enforcement officials with sweeping new powers to conduct
searches without warrants, and to detain and deport individuals
in secret.
President Bush's broad characterizations of the terrorist threat
led him to expand the scope of his foreign policy from al-Qaeda
and other terrorist organizations to other regimes hostile to the
United States, regardless of their connection to the Sept. 11
attacks. Following the war in Afghanistan, Bush designated Iraq
as the primary new threat to American security. He famously
labeled Iraq, along with North Korea and Iran, as part of an
"axis of evil." Over the course of 2002, President Bush announced
that the U.S. foreign strategy of containment and deterrence was
an outdated cold war policy. In an age of terrorism, he
maintained, the United States could no longer wait by defensively
until a potential threat to its security grew into an actual one
- a preemptive strike was called for. In Sept. 2002, Bush
addressed the UN, challenging the organization to swiftly enforce
its own resolutions against Iraq, or else the U.S. would have no
choice but to act on its own. Many world leaders expressed alarm
at this shift in U.S. policy, which stressed unilateralism rather
than international consensus. The alleged existence of weapons of
mass destruction, Iraq's links to terrorism, and Saddam Hussein's
despotism and human rights abuses were cited as the casus belli
for "regime change." The UN Security Council unanimously approved
a resolution imposing tough new arms inspections on Iraq, but
after three months of inspections that resulted in only modest
Iraqi cooperation, U.S. patience ran out: on March 19, President
Bush declared war on Iraq and U.S. troops, along with their
British allies, began bombing Baghdad. By April 9, Baghdad had
fallen, and by May 1, combat was officially declared over.
The official phase of the war was swift, but the post-war
reconstruction period proved far more difficult. The country was
enveloped in violence and chaos and its infrastructure was in
ruins, As American casualties grew and costs mounted (the
Pentagon estimated $1 billion per week), the U.S.'s hasty
go-it-alone policy began to haunt them: only about 10,000 foreign
troops came to the aid of American and British soldiers in Iraq.
While the Bush administration successfully turned over
sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004, by the
fall of 2004, pockets of Iraq were essentially under the control
of insurgents. Progress in rebuilding Iraq's shattered
infrastructure was also dismal: by fall 2004, just 6% ($1
billion) of the funds approved by Congress in 2003 had in fact
been used on reconstruction projects. President Bush assured the
country that despite these difficulties, the United States would
stay the course until Iraq emerged as a free and democratic
country.
More than a year-and-a-half of searching for Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction - one of the prime reasons the Bush and Blair
administrations cited for launching the war - yielded no hard
evidence, and the administration and its intelligence agencies
came under fire. There were also mounting allegations that the
existence of these weapons and their imminent threat to American
security was exaggerated or distorted as a pretext to justify the
war. The Senate Intelligence Committee's unanimous, bipartisan
"Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq," harshly criticized the
CIA: "most of the major key judgments" on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction were "either overstated, or were not supported by,
the underlying intelligence report." The report disputed the
CIA's assertions that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program
and that it had chemical and biological weapons, and also
concluded that there was no "established formal relationship"
between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. With the justifications for
the war evaporating, the Bush administration began emphasizing
that the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein had been grounds
enough for waging war, and that the United States was more secure
as a result of it.
Critics of the administration's policy in Iraq described it as a
distraction from the war on terror, preventing the United States
from effectively battling the war on its genuine fronts. Osama
bin Laden was still at large, and despite the U.S. intervention
in Afghanistan, the country remained rife with warlords, Taliban,
and al-Qaeda operatives. Since the start of the U.S. war in Iraq,
the two remaining countries in the "axis of evil," North Korea
and Iran, had grown into alarming nuclear threats. The Bush
administration's diplomatic efforts made little headway against
Iran and North Korea's defiance and evasion.
Early in his presidency, Bush disengaged the U.S. from the
Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Following the war in Iraq, which had
been fought in part to introduce democracy to the Middle East,
Bush presented a "road map" for peace to Israel and the
Palestinians in May 2003. But within months, the escalating
violence on both sides made it clear that the road map was going
nowhere.
On the domestic front, President Bush promoted an "ownership
society" that would give Americans more control over health care,
education, and retirement. In Jan. 2002, he passed the No Child
Left Behind Act, a federal program dedicated to improving schools
across the country. Several states have sued the government over
its commitment to funding the law. In June 2003 he signed into
law the largest expansion of Medicare since its creation. The law
provided prescription drug coverage under Medicare for the first
time.
In early 2003, President Bush unveiled a sweeping economic
stimulus plan that characteristically centered around tax cuts.
The plan, in its original form, would have cut taxes by $670
billion over ten years; Congress approved a $350 billion version.
Although all workers were to benefit from the tax plan, it
strongly favored two groups: two-parent households with several
children and the wealthy - nearly half the proposed tax benefits
were reserved for the richest 10% of American taxpayers. Critics
of the plan, including fiscally conservative Republicans, argued
that it was unsound to offer tax cuts while the country was
involved in an expensive war and in the midst of a jobless
recovery. The federal budget deficit, according to the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, reached a record $412
billion in 2004. The White House countered that the Bush tax cuts
had in fact kept the recession remarkably shallow and brief.
The 2004 presidential campaign between the president and
Democratic senator John Kerry was one of the most closely
followed and heated races in recent history. Terrorism, the war
in Iraq, tax cuts, health care, the economy, and the deficit were
the major issues. Kerry accused the president of mismanaging the
war on Iraq and the fight against terrorism and promised to roll
back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The
president accused his opponent of being a "flip-flopper" on
issues and of not having the leadership to fight the war on
terror. On Nov. 3, President Bush won reelection with 286
electoral votes and 51% of the popular vote. Moral values and
fighting terrorism were cited as the two main issues that won the
president his second term.
In the first year of his second term, Bush's priority was the
restructuring of Social Security, but despite months of
campaigning, the president failed to convince the electorate that
the program was in need of a major overhaul. Legislative
accomplishments included the passage of the Central American Free
Trade Agreement (CAFTA), an energy bill, which did not, however,
address Americans' growing concern over high fuel prices.
Iraq's continued insurgency, lack of political stability, and the
acknowledgment that only a small number of Iraqi forces were
capable of replacing American troops stationed in the country led
to increased domestic discontent. In the face of growing American
casualties and the absence of a clear strategy for winning the
protracted war beyond "staying the course," the president's
approval ratings plummeted in 2005. In early September, the
delayed and inept handling of Hurricane Katrina's emergency
relief efforts led to widespread criticism of the Bush
administration, even among its Republican base. Trust in the
president's ability to lead the country during a crisis had been
a central factor in his reelection, but two-thirds of Americans
considered his response to Katrina inadequate. In 2005 and 2006,
Bush appointed two solid conservatives to the Supreme Court:
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
In 2005 it was disclosed that President Bush had secretly
authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap domestic calls
without obtaining legally required warrants. Controversy
concerning the expansion of presidential powers also arose when
it was revealed that Bush has used "signing statements" to
indicate that he would not comply with more than 800 provisions
of 100-plus signed laws. The most publicized of these signing
statements was Bush's exception to a provision banning "cruel,
inhumane, and degrading treatment" of prisoners in American
custody. In June 2006, the Supreme Court issued the most
significant ruling on the limitations of presidential powers in
decades, stating in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the Bush
administration's failure to obtain Congressional approval for
special military tribunals to try terrorist detainees rendered
the tribunals unconstitutional, and that they also violated both
the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva
Conventions.
As security in Iraq deteriorated in 2006 and reconstruction
efforts foundered, the increasingly unpopular war became the
president's greatest liability. November 2006 mid-term elections
led to a seismic shift in the political landscape, with Democrats
gaining control over the House of Representatives and the Senate
for the first time in twelve years. A day after the election,
President Bush, acknowledging that his party had taken a
"thumping," announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, whose intransigent Iraq policies had made him the bete
noir of Democrats and many Republicans. In December, the
bipartisan report by the Iraq Study Group, led by former
secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman
Lee Hamilton, concluded that "the situation in Iraq is grave and
deteriorating" and "U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission
that has no foreseeable end." The report's 79 recommendations
included reaching out diplomatically to Iran and Syria and having
the U.S. military intensify its efforts to train Iraqi troops.
The report heightened the debate over the U.S. role in Iraq, but
President Bush kept his distance from it, indicating that he
would wait until Jan. 2007 before announcing a new Iraq
strategy.
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA (44TH U.S. PRESIDENT IN
2009-PRESENT)
His story
is the American story - values from the heartland, a middle-class
upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the
means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed
should be lived in service to others.
With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President
Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with
help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his
grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to
middle management at a bank.
After working his way through college with the help of
scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago,
where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild
communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.
He went on to attend law school, where he became the first
African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon
graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter
registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of
Chicago, and remain active in his community.
President Obama's years of public service are based around his
unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a
politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the
first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working
families, and expanded health care for children and their
parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle
to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most
dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by
putting federal spending online.
He was elected the 44th President of the United States on
November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his
wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia,
10, and Sasha, 7.
For further information, visit the U.S. Presidents webpage of the White House.