With some international assistance, notably from the United Kingdom, the United States launched a brief air bombing campaign in Iraq followed by a massive ground invasion, arising from Kuwait in the south. The resistance encountered was heavier than expected, especially in the major cities, which nevertheless capitulated and fell under U.S. or British control by the end of April; on May 1 President Bush declared an end to major combat. Armed resistance, however, continued and even increased, primarily as guerrilla attacks on U.S. soldiers and on Iraqis assuming positions of leadership. The American goal of a rebuilt, democratic state in Iraq proved elusive, as U.S. administrators struggled to reinstitute basic infrastructure to the country following the victory. Just as elusive were Iraq’s former leader, Saddam Hussein, who was eventually captured in December, and hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The lack of such evidence and continuing American casualties emboldened critics of the administration, who questioned the prewar intelligence gathered to support the invasion.
Iraq WarExplosions illuminating the skies of Baghdad during the U.S.-led air bombardment of the city, March 2003.Ali Heider/AP Images
As a result, the Iraq War became a major issue in the campaign for the 2004 presidential election between Bush and his Democratic challenger, U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Other campaign issues included joblessness, homeland security, free trade, health care, and the role of the country in the international community, as well as debates over religion, abortion, marriage, and civil rights. Candidate spending, voter turnout, and partisan dissension were high, and Bush defeated Kerry in a contentious and close election, which seemed, like the 2000 election, to hinge on the electoral votes of a single state, this time Ohio.
Bush began his second term emboldened by a larger Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, with promises to prop up the sagging economy, allay domestic security fears, reduce the national debt, lower unemployment, and help usher in an era of democracy in Iraq. In particular, he sought to privatize Social Security and overhaul the tax system.
By mid-decade the economy showed strong signs of revival, based partly on the continuing upsurge of the housing market. Bush’s plan for Social Security reform, however, proved unpopular and never even came to a vote. The president’s personal popularity and that of his party began to wane as it was beset with a series of ethics-related scandals. In 2005 Republican House majority leader Tom Delay was forced to step down after a Texas grand jury indicted him on election-law violations; later he was further linked to influence-peddling indiscretions that led to the conviction and imprisonment of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. In 2006, reports of national security-related government wiretapping and allegations of torture of some suspected terrorists alarmed civil libertarians. The next year Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was forced to resign after a probe into the “political” firing of eight U.S. attorneys; and Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, special assistant to Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to a special counsel regarding his involvement in the politically motivated leak of a CIA agent’s covert identity.
Even more damaging to Bush’s standing with many Americans was what was widely seen as the federal government’s failure to deal promptly and effectively with the fallout from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, especially New Orleans, in late August 2005. Moreover, with casualties mounting in Iraq, more people had come to believe that the Bush administration had misled the country into war. As a result of all these factors, the Democrats were able to win narrow majorities in both houses of Congress following the 2006 midterm election. Determined to stay the course in Iraq and in spite of strong Democratic opposition, Bush authorized a “surge” of an additional 30,000 troops that brought the total of U.S. combatants in the country to some 160,000 by autumn 2007. But even as the surge reduced violence in Iraq, the war and the president remained unpopular.
The election to succeed Bush was between Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican candidate, and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, who had triumphed over the favourite, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, in a long primary battle to win the Democratic nomination. At the height of the contest, the U.S. economy was thrown into turmoil by a financial crisis. From September 19 to October 10, the Dow Jones Average dropped 26 percent. At the same time, there was a severe contraction of liquidity in credit markets worldwide, caused in part by a debacle related to subprime mortgages. While the housing market boomed, individuals lacking the credit ratings necessary for conventional mortgages had been able to obtain subprime mortgages, most of which were adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) at low, so-called teaser, interest rates that ballooned after a few years. The rates for many of those ARMs jumped at the same time that overbuilding undercut the housing market; foreclosures mounted, and investment banks that under recent deregulation had been allowed to overleverage their assets foundered, resulting in the bankruptcy or sale of several major financial institutions. The U.S. economic and political establishment reacted by passing (after an unsuccessful first attempt) the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which sought to prevent further collapse and to bail out the economy. In the process, the U.S. government provided loans to, and in some cases took an ownership stake in, financial institutions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which allocated $700 billion to the recovery effort.
The Barack Obama administration
First term
Election and inauguration
The crisis worked against McCain, whom many voters associated with the unpopular policies of the administration, and worked for the highly charismatic Obama, whose campaign from its outset had been based on the theme of sweeping political change. Obama defeated McCain, becoming the first African American elected to the presidency. He captured nearly 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes—defending those states that had gone Democratic in the 2004 election, taking the lion’s share of battleground states, and winning several states that had been reliably Republican in recent presidential elections.
In the interim between the election and Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, the Bush administration’s handling of the distribution of the first half of the TARP funds came under considerable criticism. There were accusations that it had infused too much money into large banks without placing adequate conditions on them, rather than purchasing “toxic” assets as it had promised. In the lead-up to the inauguration, Obama and his transition team, working with Bush, persuaded the Senate to release the last half of the TARP funds, promising that they would be targeted at relief for home owners and at stimulating the credit markets. Because authorization to block the release of the funds required assent by both houses of Congress, a vote by the House of Representatives was unnecessary. (See Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.)
Tackling the “Great Recession,” the “Party of No,” and the emergence of the Tea Party movement