Bush attended the exclusive Phillips Academy for High School, a boy's boarding school located a few miles away from Kennebunkport, were he spent his summer vacations. In that school he captained the school's soccer and basketball teams, played baseball, and was president of his senior class. After his graduation in 1942 he would have gone to Yale University but World War ll changed his plans.

When he became eighteen he was enrolled in the Navy as a seamen second class. Within one year he completed his flight training and became the youngest pilot in the U.S. Navy at that time. During the war, Bush went to fifty-eight missions, in one of those he was shot down over the Bonin Islands by Japanese aircraft. Fortunately, he parachuted from his plane and drifted for three hours in the ocean and tried to avoid the enemy until he was picked up by an American submarine. His crew members died during the attack. By the end of Bush's naval career, he had received the Distinguished Flying Cross, three air medals, and the job of being a Lieutenant. Prior to going off to war, Bush met seventeen year old Barbara Pierce at a Christmas Dance. They got married in 1945. He was the first boy Barbara had ever kissed. Bush and Barbara had six kids (George W, John, Neil, Marvin, Dorothy, and Robin). Robin died of leukemia in 1953 before her fourth birthday.

After the war, Bush went to Yale University and joined most of his friends from Phillips Academy. His major was economics, he played first base on Yale's baseball team, and became a member of the elite Skull and Bones Society. After his graduation, Bush started to work with his father in Texas in the oil business. Within a year, he started a job painting oil rigs and selling oil equipment. In 1950, Bush began to explore natural gas and oil as a " Texas wildcatter ". A few years later, Bush became a wealthy man and formed a company named Zapata Offshore. That company sold drilling equipment which was used to find gas and oil on the ocean floor.

With his family settled in Houston, Bush began to move into Texas politics. Because Bush came from a Republican family his work would be cut out for him, because at that time Texas was still solidly Democratic. He was a chairperson for his county in 1962, after he lost the bid for the Senate in 1964. In 1966 and '68 he won two terms in the House of Representatives. Bush ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost to the Texan Democrat, Lloyd Bentsen.

When Bush was finally in office President Richard Nixon rewarded Bush by appointing him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the year 1971. One year later Bush became the chairman of the Republican National Committee. He was able to separate himself and the Republican Party's national organization from Watergate by reminding the newspaper reporters that the crimes were already done either by the people that were working in the White House or by presidential campaign aides. In 1974, President Gerald Ford made Bush the first U.S. envoy to communist China, there he worked for a year before becoming the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. After the election of Jimmy Carter, Bush did not have an elected office. He used that time to prepare to run for precidency in 1980.

Because Bush was the most experience candidate in the pack, he promised a moderate Republican administration that would be dedicated to business efficiency and a foreign policy that had no hidden ideological agenda. His experience as an administrator and his good looks were what made him rise above the rest of the pack and what pushed him to victory in the Iowa caucuses.

His principal opponent was Ronald Reagan, especially in the New Hampshire primary. Even though Bush fought back hard, and he ridiculed Reagan's call for cutting taxes and increased defense spending as "voodoo economics", reagan could not be stopped. After a few months, mostly because of his strength between conservatives in the South and West, Reagan eliminated Bush from the race. The governor of California won twenty-nine primaries to Bush's six.

Hoping to present a balanced ticket, Reagan made Bush his vice presidential candidate at the Republican convention. Bush agreed he would work without trying to get Reagan to modify his "voodoo economics" or to tone down his New Right rhetoric. After Bush politically surrendered to Reaganomics, most of his critics saw him as an opportunist who had little fundamental commitment to principles or ideology. The Reagan/Bush team defeated President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale very easily.

When Bush became a vice president, he strained to prove his loyalty to Reagan and his New Right programs. Bush took advantage of his position and used it to continue his interest in foreign affairs; that was how he visited seventy nations as the president's representative. In 1985, Bush was the first member of the Reagan administration to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet party boss. Vice President Bush chaired the Task Force on Regulatory Relief, which brought new safety regulations for workers; it also delayed the installation of air bags in cars, and slowed down the removal of lead from gasoline and asbestos from the workplace. He also presided over a drug interdiction task force. When Reagan had surgery in 1985, Bush was president for twenty-four hours under the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the first time in the history of the presidency. Mostly, Bush kept a low public profile, not wanting to forget President Reagan or to irritate First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Bush was also used to do some of Reagan's dirty work. For example, Bush was the person who told Donald Regan, the President's Chief of Staff, that he had to resign because of the way he handled the Iran-Contra affair.