George W Bush

Naomi Zimmermann

George W Bush

George W Bush served from 2001 until 2009 and has left a lasting impact upon the country.

George W Bush was elected in 2000 when he ran against Al Gore. Although Al Gore won the popular vote, Bush won the election because he got the majority of electoral votes. The court case Bush v Gore was surrounding the disputed votes in Florida. The Florida votes were decisive as whichever candidate won the state would win the election. The first count said that Bush had won the state and thereby election, but due to the pressure of some there was a recount. The Bush administration filed a lawsuit to stop the recount and it went to the Supreme Court, which was headed by Rehnquist. The Rehnquist court ordered for the recount to stop as there hadn’t been set standards for the different counties and they had changed as the counting went on. The Bush v Gore case was one of the most judicial activist cases as it affirmed federal power and contributed to Rehnquist’s legacy as a judicial activist despite his original support for judicial restraint when he entered the court.

On September 11th, 2001, a group Al Qaeda terrorists flew planes into multiple buildings. Headed by Osama Bin Laden, the terrorists damaged the Pentagon in DC and destroyed the World Trade Center buildings in NYC. The attack was the worst foreign attack in America and around 3,000 Americans died, which led to Congress passing the USA PATRIOT Act. The Act allowed for more aggressive anti-terrorist measures to be taken and thereby gave law enforcement more power to do so. This included the increased accessibility of wiretaps (for law enforcement, not civilians) with the aim of tracking terrorists as well as the right for federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to perform background checks without court orders.

Following the attacks Bush announced that the United States would engage in a war on terror in what is known as the Bush Doctrine. This included that there would be no distinction made between the terrorists themselves and the countries that harbored them. He declared Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as the axis of evil. The US invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban government was harboring Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s leader. Although bin Laden was not killed at the time, an attack by the US Navy SEALS in May of 2011 in Pakistan resulted in his ultimate demise. In March of 2003, the US led a coalition of countries into Iraq as they were under the false pretense that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. The invasion lasted a mere three weeks before the Iraqi military and government collapsed and Hussein was executed.

Internal affairs also plagued the nation during Bush’s presidency. The cause of the Recession was not a new concept: banks had lenient lending policies which resulted in people investing money they didn’t have (and things becoming overvalued until they crash down) in a boom-and-bust cycle. This pattern can be seen as the cause of economic failures in the US since the Panic of 1819. The Recession began in 2007, and within 2 years the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped by over 50%. The Average measures the average stock prices of 30 large public companies in the US and is a clear indicator of economic prosperity, so for it to drop so dramatically in such a short span indicated severe economic failure. The real estate prices also dropped by over 30% in markets across the country in the housing bust, a reaction to the housing bubble in a boom-and-bust cycle is a trend in economic recessions.

A graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average between 2002 and 2013. The large dip between 2007 and 2010 is indicative of the Recession.

A graph describing the housing prices from 1997 until 2011. This graph is a clear indication of the centuries old boom-and-bust cycle of economic failures. The increase in housing prices is the Housing Bubble, and the sharp decline indicated the period following when the Housing bubble burst(vertex).

Links:

Class notes

AP US History Crash Course

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/djia.asp