President of the Day

When did Bush become intimately involved with major league baseball?

In 1989, Bush became part owner of the Texas Rangers, a major league baseball team. He served as managing general partner of the team for several years. He attended games regularly, but sat with the regular fans, not far removed in boxes like some owners. He sold his shares of the team in 1998 for $15 million, a nice profit from his initial investment of less than $1 million.

What memoir did Bush publish in his post-presidential years?

Bush published a memoir titled Decision Points (2010), which examines key personal and political decisions he had to make in his life.

What made the 2000 presidential election so controversial?

The election was controversial because Bush was awarded the twenty-five electoral votes from Florida by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gore was initially predicted the winner due to exit polling by the media but that was retracted, as poll results showed Bush pulling ahead. The networks then declared Bush the winner, but vote results were still coming from three counties--Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach and these counties were expected to vote for Gore. The gap shrunk to just two thousand votes statewide--enough to force a recount. Gore asked for manual hand recounts in four counties--the three mentioned earlier and Volusia county.

Florida's secretary of state Katherine Harris--a Republican--certified the results on November 14, declaring Bush the winner. Lawsuits erupted over the recounting. Gore wanted the recounting process to continue and the deadline extended; Bush wanted the result declared official.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gore, saying that the recount process deadline should be extended. However, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively decided the election in Bush v. Gore (2000), ruling that the Florida system of counting votes differently in different counties violated the Equal Protection Clause. The result was deemed largely political, as it was decided by a vote of five to four with the five more conservative justices--Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and Justice Clarence Thomas--voting for Bush. The four more liberal judges--Justice John Paul Stevens, and Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter--voted for Gore.

What happened to Saddam Hussein?

U.S. forces captured Hussein on December 13, 2003. The U.S. turned him over to the new Iraqi government, which tried Hussein for various crimes in November 2006. He was found guilty and executed in December 2006.

What awful terrorist strikes occurred that defined the early years of the Bush administration?

On September 11, 2001, nineteen Islamic radicals conducted the worst terrorist strike on American soil. They hijacked four commercial airliner jets and crashed two airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than three thousand people. They crashed another plane into the Pentagon, killing nearly two hundred people. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania due to the heroic efforts of the passengers who lost their lives when they stormed the attackers, diverted the plane from its probable destination of Washington, D.C., and saved an untold number of lives in the process.

The hijackers were all members of the terrorist group al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden. The United States and others responded with a global War on Terror and sought to cripple al-Qaeda. To this day, however, Bin Laden has never been captured and brought to justice.

From The Handy Presidents Answer Book, Second Edition by David L. Hudson, Jr., JD., (c) Visible Ink Press(R) More than 1,600 things you never knew about our nation's leaders