George Bush

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The Economy and the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign

By the fall of 2003, the U.S. economy began showing signs of improvement, and Bush's supporters said those new positive reports were a result of Bush's aggressive stance on tax cuts. Stock market indexes were rising, and some consumers and manufacturers expressed more optimism about the future. Still, job growth in the nation remained stagnant, and some critics said the Bush administration needed to do more to reduce unemployment. Meanwhile, the federal deficit continued to surge to the highest levels in history. That fact fueled partisan criticism against Bush that began to well up as several Democrats began actively vying for a chance to run against the president in the 2004 presidential election.

Through the end of 2003, the Bush reelection campaign began to coalesce and to raise record-setting amounts of money—more than $100 million. By April 2004 Bush had collected more than $180 million for his reelection effort.

In late October 2003 Bush announced his opposition to gay marriage, indicating in remarks at the White House that he believed marriage to be between a man and a woman. He followed up on this position in early 2004 by proposing a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. In November 2003 Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which aimed to set limits on certain abortions. Critics of the Bush administration said they believed the act could lead to attempts to ban all abortions. His stances on gay marriage and abortion, said some observers, indicated that Bush was increasingly aligned with Christian conservative supporters. Some political analysts said the Bush administration had decided that Christian conservative voters were going to be key to the Bush campaign in the 2004 presidential race.

In early December 2003 Bush signed a sweeping law to overhaul the Medicare program and introduce prescription drug benefits for senior citizens. Critics said the $400 billion act would benefit insurance and drug companies and might lead to the eventual end of the Medicare system. Many Republicans, however, observed that for the first time the Republican Party could take credit for extending benefits under a popular social service program.

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C

Foreign Affairs

In February 2001 Bush approved limited air strikes against Iraq in the first military action of his presidency. American and British warplanes bombed Iraqi military command sites south of the capital of Baghdād in a joint effort to warn Iraq that the no-fly zones established in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War (1991) were still in effect.

In April Bush encountered his first foreign policy test when a U.S. Navy plane conducting surveillance was forced to land in China after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet. Each side blamed the other for the incident. After 11 days of tense negotiations, the Bush administration was able to secure the release of the American crew.

In June Bush made his first trip to Europe as U.S. president. He met with European leaders and officials of the European Union. Bush encountered some protests in Europe relating to his environmental policies. Earlier in the year Bush announced that he would not support the Kyōto Protocol, a proposed international treaty that called for industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases. Bush renounced the treaty because it did not apply to developing nations, and he believed it would hurt the U.S. economy.

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September 11 Attacks

Bush’s presidency faced its biggest challenge on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked airplanes and used them to attack landmarks in New York City and Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. In a single morning, hijackers seized four commercial jets. Two jets crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing the collapse and destruction of both towers. A third jet crashed into a section of the Pentagon, which houses the U.S. Department of Defense. The final jet crashed in a field southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after passengers tried to overtake the hijackers. About 3,000 people were reported dead or missing after the attacks. See September 11 Attacks.

The Bush administration attributed the attacks to Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian living in Afghanistan who was suspected of terrorist activity. The United States believed that bin Laden and his organization, al-Qaeda, had been involved in other terrorist attacks against the United States, including the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. Bin Laden had been living in Afghanistan with the support of the country’s ruling Taliban movement.

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War on Terrorism

In an address to Congress on September 20, Bush vowed to “direct every resource at our command … to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.” He announced the creation of a new cabinet-level position, the Office of Homeland Security, in order to coordinate efforts across various federal departments and agencies and create domestic policy to protect against and respond to terrorist attacks. Bush appointed Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to head the new office.

Bush worked with Congress to pass an emergency fund package to provide financial assistance and services to those affected by the attacks. His administration also worked to build a coalition with countries around the world to fight terrorism and target bin Laden and his organization. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Pakistan, pledged their support. Following the terrorist attacks and Bush’s response to them, his approval rating soared to 90 percent.

The United States and Britain began launching air attacks on Afghanistan in early October. These attacks sought to cripple the al-Qaeda network and the Taliban government by targeting terrorist training camps and Taliban military installations. In late November hundreds of U.S. marines landed near Kandahār, a city in southern Afghanistan, in the first major infusion of American ground troops into Afghanistan. By early December the Taliban surrendered Kandahār, its last remaining stronghold. The U.S.-led offensive then worked on rounding up al-Qaeda forces. However, bin Laden still remained at large.

As part of the effort to fight terrorism, Bush signed a law in 2002 that created a new executive department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This department’s mission was to protect the United States against terrorist attacks, to reduce the country’s vulnerability to terrorism, and to minimize damage and aid recovery in case of attack. Bush nominated Tom Ridge, who previously had been the director of the Office of Homeland Security, as secretary of the department. The DHS combined dozens of federal agencies into one department, constituting the largest reorganization in the federal government since the Department of Defense was created in 1947.

After the offensive in Afghanistan ended, Bush turned his attention to Iraq. In 1991 a U.S.-led coalition had defeated Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, but Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, remained in power. After that war ended, the United Nations (UN) ordered Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and weapons inspectors were sent to Iraq to monitor its disarmament. In 1998 Iraq announced that it would no longer cooperate with UN weapons inspections.

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Invasion of Iraq

In 2002 Bush identified Iraq as a threat to global security and sought proof that Iraq had destroyed its banned weapons. The administration feared that these weapons could land in the hands of terrorist groups. In October the U.S. Congress passed a resolution authorizing Bush to use force to enforce all relevant UN resolutions regarding Iraq. The following month the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and threatening “serious consequences” if Iraq did not disarm. Iraq agreed to comply with the resolution, and weapons inspections started that same month.

In his January 2003 State of the Union address, Bush made several statements regarding Iraq that would later prove controversial. He asserted that Iraq possessed potentially large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, including mobile laboratories containing ingredients for biological weapons. He asserted that Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons and pointed to its purchase of aluminum tubes used in centrifuges for uranium enrichment and a British government claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa. Later disclosures would show that Department of Energy experts had disputed the claim that the aluminum tubes could be used in centrifuges, and that several agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency, had cast doubt on the British government report.

Despite the resumption of inspections, the Bush administration argued that Iraq was not fully cooperating with inspectors and was continuing to hide banned weapons. Bush, with the support of Britain and several other countries, sought UN authorization of force against Iraq. However, some countries, such as France, Germany, Russia, and China, wanted to give the weapons inspections more time to proceed and opposed military action. After the UN Security Council was unable to reach agreement about whether to authorize force against Iraq, Bush decided to forgo UN approval and pursue military action in a coalition with other willing countries.

In March 2003 U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. By mid-April they had captured the capital city of Baghdād and other major population centers and overthrown the regime of Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration and its allies then began the process of establishing an interim Iraqi government. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

In May Bush announced that major combat had ceased in Iraq. He claimed that “an ally of al-Qaeda” had been defeated. But the weeks and months following the overthrow of the Hussein regime proved to be challenging for his administration, as hundreds of U.S. soldiers were killed in isolated attacks or accidents. The increase in casualties corresponded with some criticism, in the United States and abroad, about the Bush administration's long-range plans for Iraq. Some critics suggested that the costs in lives and money from the continued U.S. presence in Iraq were too high. Through the summer and fall of 2003, both Hussein and bin Laden continued to elude capture.

On December 13 Bush was informed that U.S. forces in Iraq had captured Hussein as he was hiding in a small underground shelter. The next day, Bush addressed the nation and said that Hussein's capture did not mean the end of violence in Iraq. As 2004 unfolded, American soldiers were still under fire in Iraq.

In January 2004 David Kay, the head of a U.S.-led team of weapons inspectors, resigned his position, saying that “we were all wrong, probably” about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Kay urged the creation of an independent panel to study why the claims by U.S. intelligence agencies that Iraq possessed such weapons were inaccurate. The Bush administration defended its actions, however, saying the world was better off with Hussein out of power.

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