Bob Strong, the William Lyne Wilson Professor of Political Economy, presents the first session from the Alumni College's "Bush 41: The Pivotal Presidency." Bush was a serious challenger to Reagan for the presidency in 1980. After he lost the nomination, he accepted the second spot on the ticket and loyally served as Reagan's vice president. When he ran again in 1988, Republicans worried that he was not really a Reagan conservative. It did not help that Newsweek called him a wimp. After winning hard-fought primaries and a controversial general election, Bush confronted large opposition majorities in Congress and deficits that deadlocked domestic legislation. His presidency also faced a dramatically changing world. Chinese students demanded political freedom in Tiananmen Square, Poland held free and fair elections, Hungary opened its international borders, Czechoslovakia made a poet and former political prisoner their new president, the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union collapsed. In 1989, Bush approved the largest American military operation since Vietnam to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega. A year later he sent a vastly larger military force into the Persian Gulf to oppose Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
