President George W. Bush was born on July 6th, 1946 and spent his early years in Midland, Texas, going on to study at the exclusive Phillip's Academy in Andover, Mass. After his high school graduation in 1964, he enrolled at Yale University, like his father, George H.W. Bush, had done two decades before.

But unlike his father, who was captain of the baseball team and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Bush did not excel as an athlete (he did make the freshman baseball team) or a scholar. Once referred to as "the life of the party," Bush instead made his mark on the university's social scene. He was elected the president of his fraternity and joined the exclusive and secretive Skull & Bones Society.

When Bush received his bachelor's degree in 1968, U.S. involvement in Vietnam was escalating. Faced with the prospects of being drafted, he joined the Texas Air National Guard and became an F-102 pilot.

After his discharge in 1973 Bush enrolled in Harvard Business School. In 1975 he received his MBA and returned to Midland to find his own fortune in the oil fields. Bush had no experience, but he had some seed money from his parents and a network of well-heeled family friends, who became the principal financiers of his oil ventures.

Before going into business, however, Bush took a quick detour into politics. In 1978, he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Bush lost the election, but he won the confidence of relatives and family friends who agreed to support Arbusto, his oil-exploration firm. From 1979 to 1983, dozens of investors poured millions into the company and its successor, Bush Exploration. Unfortunately for the investors Arbusto, however, turned out to be a financial failure. By April 1984, the company was $3.1 million in debt.

In 1984, Bush sold his business to another Texas oil and gas exploration firm, Spectrum 7. As part of the deal, Bush became Spectrum 7's chief executive officer. But once again, business success eluded Bush and those around him. Two years after the merger, in 1986, world oil prices, whose decline had hurt many Texas oil producers, plunged even further. Spectrum 7, deeply in debt, was in need of a bailout. Bush found one.

In 1986 Harken Oil & Gas, an oil exploration company based in Irving, Texas, bought Spectrum 7. For his part Bush earned $600,000 from the initial sale. He also became a director and was paid as much as $120,000 in annual consulting fees and received stock warrants worth $131,250 even though he spent much of 1987 and 1988 working on his father's presidential campaign.

On January 30, 1990, Harken reported that it had just signed an agreement with the government of Bahrain: "Harken Bahrain Oil Co. has concluded a Production Sharing Contract with the Bahrain National Oil Co. The agreement gives Harked the exclusive right to carry out exploration, development, production, transportation and marketing of petroleum throughout most of Bahrain's Arabian Gulf offshore territories" The offshore fields were bordered on one side by a Saudi Arabian deposit with proven reserves of about 7 billion barrels, and a field belonging to Qatar with 2 billion barrels. The Bahraini offshore reserves had the potential to be enormous. (Ultimately, test-drillings found no oil on the offshore Bahraini fields.)

Harken ran into financial problems while Bush served on the company's board. In August 1990, Harken posted a quarterly $23 million loss from its consolidated operations, sending its stock price on a downward spiral. Bush had unloaded two-thirds of his holdings on June 22, 1990, for $848,560. He used the money from the sale to pay for his share of the Texas Rangers.

On April 21, 1989 Bush and a group of investors bought the Texas Rangers for $75 million. Bush paid $500,000 for his stake – 1.8 percent of the team – but played a far larger role in running the enterprise as managing partner. His status as the team's spokesman gave him exposure to the Texas public, visibility that allowed him to launch a campaign. In 1993, Bush entered the race for Texas governor. In his first race for political office in sixteen years, he went up against Governor Ann Richards, a sharp-tongued veteran of Texas Democratic politics. During his campaign he dodged her mudslinging and stuck to his campaign themes: property taxes, frivolous lawsuits, welfare reform, and education. His focused message succeeded and he won the race with 54 percent of the vote.

In 1998, Bush was re-elected with 68.6% of the vote and became the first Texas governor to win consecutive four-year terms. With a strong base in his home state, Bush decided that he would run for President. On June 12, 1999, Bush embarked on his first campaign trip to Iowa, where he announced his candidacy. He immediately became one of the frontrunners among the Republican nominees and ran a campaign emphasizing education reform and a $484 billion tax cut. Bush outdistanced his opponents and won the Republican nomination over John McCain.

Bush's race against Gore would end up being the closest election in history, and one of the most acrimonious. Gore had won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, but Bush won 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266. Florida became a synonym for the controversy over the results, and there was not shortage of things that went wrong in the state, from the poorly printed ballots in some counties (which had been approved by local officials) to the media calling the state for Gore before the polls had closed. The Florida recount controversy was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the first time the high court determined the outcome of a presidential election.

On January 20th 2001, George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States. In his inaugural address he affirmed that he would "work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity."