Although not widely known until much later, Al Gore received 202 more votes than George W. Bush on election day in Florida. George W. Bush is president because he overcame his election day deficit with overseas absentee ballots that arrived and were counted after election day. In the final official tally, Bush received 537 more votes than Gore.These numbers are taken from the official results r...

Cognitive frameworks and belief systems are the primary lenses through which presidents view the world. Two important questions are whether these beliefs ever change significantly, and if so, what causes these changes? This article develops empirical data on the strategic and operational beliefs of President George W. Bush (GWB) as a means of examining the theoretical basis for how and why core...

According to terror management theory, heightened concerns about mortality should intensify the appeal of charismatic leaders. To assess this idea, we investigated how thoughts about death and the 9/11 terrorist attacks influence Americans' attitudes toward current U.S. President George W. Bush. Study 1 found that reminding people of their own mortality (mortality salience) increased support fo...

Among the controversies arising from the 2000 Presidential election was the accusation that media networks called, or projected, a winner faster in those states won by Albert Gore than in those states won by George W. Bush. We investigate this accusation by estimating a Tobit model of the length of time between states’ poll closing times and the times at which CNN projected a winner. Our result...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In the spring of 2001, President George W. Bush asked the U.S. Congress to delegate to him a 6-year chunk of Congress constitutional authority over international trade through a process called Fast Track. Bush seeks Fast Track trade authority (which his Administration is attempting to rename "Trade Promotion Authority") to expand the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (...

In an early effort to establish his credentials as a “compassionate conservative” during the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush pledged that if he were elected, he would create a commission to conduct a comprehensive review of the care of people with mental illness — the first such examination to be undertaken in almost 25 years. In April 2002, in fulfillment of his campaign pledge, Bus...

Hubris syndrome is associated with power, more likely to manifest itself the longer the person exercises power and the greater the power they exercise. A syndrome not to be applied to anyone with existing mental illness or brain damage. Usually symptoms abate when the person no longer exercises power. It is less likely to develop in people who retain a personal modesty, remain open to criticism...