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Bush finished high school at the Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, where he played baseball and was the head cheerleader in his senior year. He attended Yale University from 1964 to 1968, graduating with a B.A. degree in history. He was a rugby union player and during his first three years at Yale he had a 77 average. (In his last year he was graded on a nonnumeric rating system, but performed at a similar level.)In the fall of 1973, Bush attended the Harvard Business School, where he earned an M.B.A. degree. Thus far he is the only U.S. President to have earned an M.B.A.
In May 1968, Bush was commissioned into the Texas Air National Guard.[39] After two years of active-duty service while training, he was assigned to Houston. He flew Convair F-102s with the 147th Reconnaissance Wing of the Guard. In late 1972 and early 1973, he drilled with the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air National Guard, in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1972, Bush was suspended from flying for failure to take a scheduled physical exam. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974.
Bush met his future wife, Laura Lane Welch, at a backyard barbecue in 1977. She was a school teacher and librarian. Bush proposed to her after a three-month courtship, and they were married on November 5, 1977. They couple settled in Midland, Texas. Bush left his family's Episcopal Church to join his wife's United Methodist Church. On November 25, 1981, Laura Bush gave birth to fraternal twin daughters, Barbara Pierce Bush and Jenna Welch Bush.
Prior to his marriage, Bush had problems with alcohol abuse. On September 4, 1976, he was arrested near his family's summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, for driving under the influence of alcohol. He pleaded guilty, was fined $150 and had his Maine driver's license suspended. Bush credits his wife with having a stabilizing effect on his life. In 1986 he gave up alcohol.
In 1978, Bush ran for the House of Representatives from Texas's 19th congressional district. His opponent, Kent Hance, focused on Bush's New England roots and portrayed him as someone who was out of touch with rural Texans. Bush lost the election by 6,000 votes out of 103,000 cast. He returned to the oil industry and started a series of small, independent oil exploration companies. He created Arbusto Energy, and later changed the name to Bush Exploration. In 1984, his company merged with the larger Spectrum 7, and Bush became chairman. The company was hurt by decreased oil prices, and it was merged into HKN, Inc. Bush served on the board of directors for HKN. There were allegations of possible insider trading involving HKN arose, but the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) investigation concluded that the information Bush had at the time of his stock sale was not sufficient to constitute insider trading.
Bush moved his family to Washington, D.C. in 1988 to work on his father's campaign for the President. He served as a campaign adviser and media liaison. After his father's victory, he returned to Texas, where he purchased a share in the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in April 1989. He served as managing general partner of the team for five years. He regularly attended Rangers games, usually sitting in the open stands with fans. Bush's sale of his shares in the Rangers in 1998 brought him a return of over $15 million on his initial $800,000 investment.
In December 1991, Bush was a campaign advisor on his father's re-election campaign. He was given the task of telling White House chief of staff John H. Sununu that he should resign.
At the same time as his brother Jeb ran for the governorship of Florida, Bush declared his candidacy for the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. His campaign focused on four themes: welfare reform, tort reform, crime reduction, and education improvement. Bush's campaign advisers were persons who would later advise him as President, including Karen Hughes, Joe Allbaugh, and Karl Rove. After easily winning the Republican primary, Bush faced popular Democratic incumbent Governor Ann Richards. In the course of the campaign, Bush pledged to sign a bill allowing Texans to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons. Richards had vetoed the bill as governor. The campaign had some nastiness, including a rumor that Richards was a lesbian. The Atlantic Magazine gave the source of the lesbian rumor as Karl Rove, but Rove denied being involved. Bush won the general election with 53.5% of the popular vote, compared to 45.9% for Richards.
Bush used a budget surplus to push through 1 $2 billion tax-cut for Texans. He extended government funding for organizations providing education about the dangers of alcohol and drug use and reducing domestic violence. He was criticized as Governor for a poor environmental record, although in 1999, he signed a state law obliging electric retailers to buy a portion of energy from renewable sources. This helped Texas eventually become the leading producer of wind powered electricity in the nation. He was also praised for his efforts to raise the salaries of teachers and improve educational test scores.
In 1998, Bush won re-election with a record 69% of the vote. He became the first governor in Texas history to be elected to two consecutive four-year terms. In his second term, Bush promoted faith-based organizations and proclaimed June 10, 2000 to be Jesus Day in Texas, a day on which he asked Texans to "serve those in need".
Following his re-election as Governor, speculation increased about a possible run for the White House and in June of 1999 Bush announced his intention to seek the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. Bush entered a large field of candidates for the Republican Party presidential nomination that included John McCain, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Orrin Hatch, Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, Pat Buchanan, Lamar Alexander, John Kasich, and Robert C. Smith. Bush ran as a compassionate conservative, suggesting he was more centrist than other Republicans. He campaigned on a platform that included bringing integrity and honor back to the White House (in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal), increasing the size of the United States Armed Forces, cutting taxes, improving education, and aiding minorities. By early 2000, the two front-runners were Bush and McCain.
Bush won the Iowa caucuses, but lost the New Hampshire primary to McCain, despite being favored to win. Bush regained momentum with a victory in the South Carolina primary, which was a viewed a a campaign with a great deal of negativity. He won his party's nomination and on July 25, 2000, Bush surprised some observers by asking Dick Cheney, a former White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Representative, and Secretary of Defense, to be his running mate. Cheney had been serving as head of Bush's Vice-Presidential search committee. Bush and Cheney were officially nominated by the Republican Party at the 2000 Republican National Convention.
During the general election campaign, Bush criticized his Democratic opponent, incumbent Vice President Al Gore, on issues of gun control and taxation. The election was the closest since the 1876 campaign, and when the election returns came in on November 7, Bush won 29 states, including Florida. The closeness of the Florida outcome led to a recount and no winner was initially declared. The first recount also went to Bush, but the outcome was challenged in courts for a month before reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 9, in the controversial Bush v. Gore ruling, the Court reversed a Florida Supreme Court decision ordering a third count, and stopped an ordered statewide hand recount based on the argument that the use of different standards among Florida's counties violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The machine recount showed that Bush had won the Florida vote by a margin of 537 votes out of six million cast. Although he received 543,895 fewer individual votes than Gore nationwide, Bush won the election, receiving 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266.
Bush became the second president to have been the son of a former president, the first having been John Quincy Adams. His legitimacy was called into question following the controversial Supreme Court ruling, but that was quickly forgotten when, just eight months into Bush's first term as president, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred, and event that would monumentally change the face of Bush's legacy.