The Big Mo ("Big Momentum") is behavioral momentum that operates on a large scale. The concept originally applied to sporting events in the 1960s in the United States, as momentum appeared to have an effect on a team's performance. Successful teams were said to have "The Big Mo" on their side. This has since extended situations in which momentum is a driving factor, such as during political campaigns, social upheavals, economic cycles, and financial bubbles.
148-548: The term was used by George H. W. Bush during his quest for the Republican nomination to run for President in 1980 . After he won the Iowa caucuses , and was facing further contests, Bush Senior said: "Now they will be after me, howling and yowling at my heels. What we will have is momentum. We will look forward to Big Mo being on our side, as they say in athletics." Eventually, Bush lost to Ronald Reagan who went on to become
296-480: A {\displaystyle a} larger we make the spread in momentum smaller, but the spread in position gets larger. This illustrates the uncertainty principle. As we let the Gaussian wave packet evolve in time, we see that its center moves through space at a constant velocity (like a classical particle with no forces acting on it). However, the wave packet will also spread out as time progresses, which means that
444-521: A Human Life Amendment and repudiating his earlier comments on "voodoo economics", Bush still faced opposition from many conservatives in the Republican Party. His major rivals for the Republican nomination were Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, Representative Jack Kemp of New York, and Christian televangelist Pat Robertson . Reagan did not publicly endorse any candidate but privately expressed support for Bush. Though considered
592-755: A 1988 campaign promise by enacting legislation to raise taxes to justify reducing the budget deficit. He championed and signed three pieces of bipartisan legislation in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act , the Immigration Act and the Clean Air Act Amendments . He also appointed David Souter and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Bush lost the 1992 presidential election to Democrat Bill Clinton following an economic recession , his turnaround on his tax promise , and
740-488: A Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. After graduating from Yale, Bush moved his young family to West Texas . Biographer Jon Meacham writes that Bush's relocation to Texas allowed him to move out of the "daily shadow of his Wall Street father and Grandfather Walker, two dominant figures in the financial world," but would still allow Bush to "call on their connections if he needed to raise capital." His first position in Texas
888-889: A Christmas dance in Greenwich in December 1941, and, after a period of courtship, they became engaged in December 1943. While Bush was on leave from the Navy, they married in Rye, New York , on January 6, 1945. The Bushes enjoyed a strong marriage, and Barbara would later be a popular First Lady, seen by many as "a kind of national grandmother". They had six children: George W. (b. 1946), Robin (1949–1953), Jeb (b. 1953), Neil (b. 1955), Marvin (b. 1956), and Doro (b. 1959). Their oldest daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953. Bush enrolled at Yale College , where he took part in an accelerated program that enabled him to graduate in two and
1036-498: A Japanese installation in Chichijima , Bush's aircraft successfully attacked several targets but was downed by enemy fire. Though both of Bush's fellow crew members died, Bush successfully bailed out from the aircraft and was rescued by the submarine USS Finback . Several of the aviators shot down during the attack were captured and executed, and their livers were cannibalized by their captors . Bush's survival after such
1184-473: A campaign, momentum matters. It is, for good or ill, the prism through which the media report things." In 2010, an analysis conducted by Mark Roeder , a former executive at the Swiss-based UBS Bank , suggested that Big Mo "played a pivotal role" in the 2007–2008 financial crisis . Roeder suggested that, recent technological advances, such as computer-driven trading programs, together with
1332-472: A certain way, and resist change, is dependent on the type of reinforcement they receive. The team developed a method for calculating the impact of behavioural momentum, based on the Newtonian formula: Δ V = f / m , in which Δ V is the change in velocity or, in behavioural terms, response rate; Velocity ( V ) refers to the response rate; mass ( m ) refers to the response strength, and force ( f ) refers to
1480-774: A close brush with death shaped him profoundly, leading him to ask, "Why had I been spared and what did God have for me?" He was later awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his role in the mission. Bush returned to San Jacinto in November 1944, participating in operations in the Philippines. In early 1945, he was assigned to a new combat squadron, VT-153, where he trained to participate in an invasion of mainland Japan . Between March and May 1945, he trained in Auburn, Maine , where he and Barbara lived in
1628-457: A common joke for comedians. As the president of the Senate , Bush also stayed in contact with members of Congress and kept the president informed on occurrences on Capitol Hill. On March 30, 1981, while Bush was in Texas, Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by John Hinckley Jr. Bush immediately flew back to Washington D.C.; when his plane landed, his aides advised him to proceed directly to
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#17327764601171776-466: A definite prediction of what the quantum state ψ ( t ) {\displaystyle \psi (t)} will be at any later time. Some wave functions produce probability distributions that are independent of time, such as eigenstates of the Hamiltonian . Many systems that are treated dynamically in classical mechanics are described by such "static" wave functions. For example,
1924-510: A family of unitary operators parameterized by a variable t {\displaystyle t} . Under the evolution generated by A {\displaystyle A} , any observable B {\displaystyle B} that commutes with A {\displaystyle A} will be conserved. Moreover, if B {\displaystyle B} is conserved by evolution under A {\displaystyle A} , then A {\displaystyle A}
2072-595: A half years rather than the usual four. He was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and was elected its president. He also captained the Yale baseball team and played in the first two College World Series as a left-handed first baseman. Like his father, he was a member of the Yale cheerleading squad and was initiated into the Skull and Bones secret society. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1948 with
2220-466: A juggernaut through one of the tenets of finance theory, the efficient-market hypothesis ... Even the high priests of efficient-market theory have acknowledged [its impact]. Well-paid fund managers have spent decades trying to find ways to beat the market. But you have to wonder why they bother devoting so much money and effort to researching the fortunes of individual companies when the momentum approach appears to be easy to exploit and has been around for
2368-563: A law that would require all students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The election is widely considered to have had a high level of negative campaigning, though political scientist John Geer has argued that the share of negative ads was in line with previous presidential elections. Bush defeated Dukakis by a margin of 426 to 111 in the Electoral College , and he took 53.4 percent of the national popular vote. Bush ran well in all
2516-535: A long time... The momentum effect raises a further important issue. If markets are rational, as the efficient-market hypothesis assumed, then they will allocate capital to its most productive uses. But the momentum effect suggests that an irrationality might be at work; investors could be buying shares (and commodities) just because they have risen in price. That would help explain why bubbles are created and why professional investors ended up allocating capital to dotcom companies with no earnings and business plans written on
2664-471: A loss of information, though: knowing the reduced density matrices of the individual systems is not enough to reconstruct the state of the composite system. Just as density matrices specify the state of a subsystem of a larger system, analogously, positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) describe the effect on a subsystem of a measurement performed on a larger system. POVMs are extensively used in quantum information theory. As described above, entanglement
2812-411: A low profile, recognizing the constitutional limits of the office; he avoided decision-making or criticizing Reagan in any way. This approach helped him earn Reagan's trust, easing tensions left over from their earlier rivalry. Bush also generally enjoyed a good relationship with Reagan staffers, including Bush's close friend James Baker, who served as Reagan's initial chief of staff. His understanding of
2960-582: A majority of delegates in late May, Bush reluctantly dropped out of the race. At the 1980 Republican National Convention , Reagan made the last-minute decision to select Bush as his vice presidential nominee after negotiations with Ford regarding a Reagan–Ford ticket collapsed. Though Reagan had resented many of the Bush campaign's attacks during the primary campaign, and several conservative leaders had actively opposed Bush's nomination, Reagan ultimately decided that Bush's popularity with moderate Republicans made him
3108-426: A mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics and survey its application to some useful and oft-studied examples. In the mathematically rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics, the state of a quantum mechanical system is a vector ψ {\displaystyle \psi } belonging to a ( separable ) complex Hilbert space H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} . This vector
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#17327764601173256-417: A measurement of its position and also at the same time for a measurement of its momentum . Another consequence of the mathematical rules of quantum mechanics is the phenomenon of quantum interference , which is often illustrated with the double-slit experiment . In the basic version of this experiment, a coherent light source , such as a laser beam, illuminates a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and
3404-438: A moderate, began courting them through his work. The deregulation task force reviewed hundreds of rules, making specific recommendations on which ones to amend or revise to curb the size of the federal government. The Reagan administration's deregulation push strongly impacted broadcasting, finance, resource extraction, and other economic activities, and the administration eliminated numerous government positions. Bush also oversaw
3552-636: A pilot in the United States Navy Reserve during World War II before graduating from Yale and moving to West Texas , where he established a successful oil company. Following an unsuccessful run for the United States Senate in 1964 , he was elected to represent Texas's 7th congressional district in 1966. President Richard Nixon appointed Bush as the ambassador to the United Nations in 1971 and as chairman of
3700-635: A presidential candidate and as president-elect. Bush's tenure at the CIA ended after Carter narrowly defeated Ford in the 1976 presidential election. Out of public office for the first time since the 1960s, Bush became chairman on the executive committee of the First International Bank in Houston. He also spent a year as a part-time professor of Administrative Science at Rice University's Jones School of Business , continued his membership in
3848-471: A probability amplitude. Applying the Born rule to these amplitudes gives a probability density function for the position that the electron will be found to have when an experiment is performed to measure it. This is the best the theory can do; it cannot say for certain where the electron will be found. The Schrödinger equation relates the collection of probability amplitudes that pertain to one moment of time to
3996-483: A reunified Germany, Bush joined German chancellor Helmut Kohl in pushing for German reunification. Bush believed that a reunified Germany would serve American interests. After extensive negotiations, Gorbachev agreed to allow a reunified Germany to be a part of NATO, and Germany officially reunified in October 1990 after paying billions of marks to Moscow. Gorbachev used force to suppress nationalist movements within
4144-405: A single electron in an unexcited atom is pictured classically as a particle moving in a circular trajectory around the atomic nucleus , whereas in quantum mechanics, it is described by a static wave function surrounding the nucleus. For example, the electron wave function for an unexcited hydrogen atom is a spherically symmetric function known as an s orbital ( Fig. 1 ). Analytic solutions of
4292-551: A single spatial dimension. A free particle is one which is not subject to external influences, so that its Hamiltonian consists only of its kinetic energy: The general solution of the Schrödinger equation is given by which is a superposition of all possible plane waves e i ( k x − ℏ k 2 2 m t ) {\displaystyle e^{i(kx-{\frac {\hbar k^{2}}{2m}}t)}} , which are eigenstates of
4440-630: A single televised vice presidential debate . Public opinion polling consistently showed a Reagan lead in the 1984 campaign, and Mondale was unable to shake up the race. In the end, Reagan won re-election, winning 49 of 50 states and receiving 59% of the popular vote to Mondale's 41%. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. Rejecting the ideological rigidity of his three elderly sick predecessors, Gorbachev insisted on urgently needed economic and political reforms called " glasnost " (openness) and " perestroika " (restructuring). At
4588-498: A small apartment. On September 2, 1945, before any invasion took place, Japan formally surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . Bush was released from active duty that same month but was not formally discharged from the Navy until October 1955, when he had reached the rank of lieutenant. By the end of his period of active service, Bush had flown 58 missions, completed 128 carrier landings, and recorded 1228 hours of flight time. Bush met Barbara Pierce at
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4736-525: A strong supporter of Bush during the 1988 campaign, became chief of staff. Brent Scowcroft was appointed as the National Security Advisor, a role he had also held under Ford. During the first year of his tenure, Bush paused Reagan's détente policy toward the Soviet Union. Bush and his advisers were initially divided on Gorbachev; some administration officials saw him as a democratic reformer, but others suspected him of trying to make
4884-504: A subsidiary which specialized in offshore drilling . Shortly after the subsidiary became independent in 1959, Bush moved the company and his family from Midland to Houston . There, he befriended James Baker , a prominent attorney who later became an important political ally. Bush remained involved with Zapata until the mid-1960s, when he sold his stock in the company for approximately $ 1 million. In 1988, The Nation published an article alleging that Bush worked as an operative of
5032-592: A youthful, "thinking man's candidate" who would emulate the pragmatic conservatism of President Eisenhower. Amid the Soviet–Afghan War , which brought an end to a period of détente, and the Iran hostage crisis , in which 52 Americans were taken hostage, the campaign highlighted Bush's foreign policy experience. At the outset of the race, Bush focused heavily on winning the January 21 Iowa caucuses , making 31 visits to
5180-473: Is and this provides the lower bound on the product of standard deviations: Another consequence of the canonical commutation relation is that the position and momentum operators are Fourier transforms of each other, so that a description of an object according to its momentum is the Fourier transform of its description according to its position. The fact that dependence in momentum is the Fourier transform of
5328-469: Is a fundamental theory that describes the behavior of nature at and below the scale of atoms . It is the foundation of all quantum physics , which includes quantum chemistry , quantum field theory , quantum technology , and quantum information science . Quantum mechanics can describe many systems that classical physics cannot. Classical physics can describe many aspects of nature at an ordinary ( macroscopic and (optical) microscopic ) scale, but
5476-478: Is a key feature of models of measurement processes in which an apparatus becomes entangled with the system being measured. Systems interacting with the environment in which they reside generally become entangled with that environment, a phenomenon known as quantum decoherence . This can explain why, in practice, quantum effects are difficult to observe in systems larger than microscopic. There are many mathematically equivalent formulations of quantum mechanics. One of
5624-424: Is a valid joint state that is not separable. States that are not separable are called entangled . If the state for a composite system is entangled, it is impossible to describe either component system A or system B by a state vector. One can instead define reduced density matrices that describe the statistics that can be obtained by making measurements on either component system alone. This necessarily causes
5772-405: Is conserved under the evolution generated by B {\displaystyle B} . This implies a quantum version of the result proven by Emmy Noether in classical ( Lagrangian ) mechanics: for every differentiable symmetry of a Hamiltonian, there exists a corresponding conservation law . The simplest example of a quantum system with a position degree of freedom is a free particle in
5920-1066: Is considered as a sum over all possible classical and non-classical paths between the initial and final states. This is the quantum-mechanical counterpart of the action principle in classical mechanics. The Hamiltonian H {\displaystyle H} is known as the generator of time evolution, since it defines a unitary time-evolution operator U ( t ) = e − i H t / ℏ {\displaystyle U(t)=e^{-iHt/\hbar }} for each value of t {\displaystyle t} . From this relation between U ( t ) {\displaystyle U(t)} and H {\displaystyle H} , it follows that any observable A {\displaystyle A} that commutes with H {\displaystyle H} will be conserved : its expectation value will not change over time. This statement generalizes, as mathematically, any Hermitian operator A {\displaystyle A} can generate
6068-448: Is given by The operator U ( t ) = e − i H t / ℏ {\displaystyle U(t)=e^{-iHt/\hbar }} is known as the time-evolution operator, and has the crucial property that it is unitary . This time evolution is deterministic in the sense that – given an initial quantum state ψ ( 0 ) {\displaystyle \psi (0)} – it makes
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6216-406: Is its associated eigenvector. More generally, the eigenvalue is degenerate and the probability is given by ⟨ ψ , P λ ψ ⟩ {\displaystyle \langle \psi ,P_{\lambda }\psi \rangle } , where P λ {\displaystyle P_{\lambda }} is the projector onto its associated eigenspace. In
6364-726: Is known as wave–particle duality . In addition to light, electrons , atoms , and molecules are all found to exhibit the same dual behavior when fired towards a double slit. Another non-classical phenomenon predicted by quantum mechanics is quantum tunnelling : a particle that goes up against a potential barrier can cross it, even if its kinetic energy is smaller than the maximum of the potential. In classical mechanics this particle would be trapped. Quantum tunnelling has several important consequences, enabling radioactive decay , nuclear fusion in stars, and applications such as scanning tunnelling microscopy , tunnel diode and tunnel field-effect transistor . When quantum systems interact,
6512-444: Is not possible for the solution to be a single momentum eigenstate, or a single position eigenstate, as these are not normalizable quantum states. Instead, we can consider a Gaussian wave packet : which has Fourier transform, and therefore momentum distribution We see that as we make a {\displaystyle a} smaller the spread in position gets smaller, but the spread in momentum gets larger. Conversely, by making
6660-628: Is not sufficient for describing them at very small submicroscopic (atomic and subatomic ) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation, valid at large (macroscopic/microscopic) scale. Quantum systems have bound states that are quantized to discrete values of energy , momentum , angular momentum , and other quantities, in contrast to classical systems where these quantities can be measured continuously. Measurements of quantum systems show characteristics of both particles and waves ( wave–particle duality ), and there are limits to how accurately
6808-815: Is part of quantum communication protocols, such as quantum key distribution and superdense coding . Contrary to popular misconception, entanglement does not allow sending signals faster than light , as demonstrated by the no-communication theorem . Another possibility opened by entanglement is testing for " hidden variables ", hypothetical properties more fundamental than the quantities addressed in quantum theory itself, knowledge of which would allow more exact predictions than quantum theory provides. A collection of results, most significantly Bell's theorem , have demonstrated that broad classes of such hidden-variable theories are in fact incompatible with quantum physics. According to Bell's theorem, if nature actually operates in accord with any theory of local hidden variables, then
6956-575: Is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. A new breeze is blowing, and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on. There is new ground to be broken, and new action to be taken. Bush's first major appointment was that of James Baker as Secretary of State. Leadership of the Department of Defense went to Dick Cheney , who had previously served as Gerald Ford's chief of staff and would later serve as vice president under his son George W. Bush. Jack Kemp joined
7104-540: Is postulated to be normalized under the Hilbert space inner product, that is, it obeys ⟨ ψ , ψ ⟩ = 1 {\displaystyle \langle \psi ,\psi \rangle =1} , and it is well-defined up to a complex number of modulus 1 (the global phase), that is, ψ {\displaystyle \psi } and e i α ψ {\displaystyle e^{i\alpha }\psi } represent
7252-466: Is replaced by − i ℏ ∂ ∂ x {\displaystyle -i\hbar {\frac {\partial }{\partial x}}} , and in particular in the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation in position space the momentum-squared term is replaced with a Laplacian times − ℏ 2 {\displaystyle -\hbar ^{2}} . When two different quantum systems are considered together,
7400-415: Is the reduced Planck constant . The constant i ℏ {\displaystyle i\hbar } is introduced so that the Hamiltonian is reduced to the classical Hamiltonian in cases where the quantum system can be approximated by a classical system; the ability to make such an approximation in certain limits is called the correspondence principle . The solution of this differential equation
7548-469: Is then If the state for the first system is the vector ψ A {\displaystyle \psi _{A}} and the state for the second system is ψ B {\displaystyle \psi _{B}} , then the state of the composite system is Not all states in the joint Hilbert space H A B {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{AB}} can be written in this form, however, because
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#17327764601177696-505: The Born rule : in the simplest case the eigenvalue λ {\displaystyle \lambda } is non-degenerate and the probability is given by | ⟨ λ → , ψ ⟩ | 2 {\displaystyle |\langle {\vec {\lambda }},\psi \rangle |^{2}} , where λ → {\displaystyle {\vec {\lambda }}}
7844-572: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the 1960s; Bush denied this claim. By the early 1960s, Bush was widely regarded as an appealing political candidate, and some leading Democrats attempted to convince Bush to become a Democrat. He declined to leave the Republican Party, later citing his belief that the national Democratic Party favored "big, centralized government". The Democratic Party had historically dominated Texas, but Republicans scored their first major victory in
7992-467: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which banned racial and gender discrimination in public institutions and many privately owned businesses. Bush argued that the act unconstitutionally expanded the federal government's powers, but he was privately uncomfortable with the racial politics of opposing the act. He lost the election 56 percent to 44 percent, though he did run well ahead of Barry Goldwater,
8140-631: The Council on Foreign Relations , and joined the Trilateral Commission . Meanwhile, he began to lay the groundwork for his candidacy in the 1980 Republican Party presidential primaries . In the 1980 Republican primary campaign, Bush faced Ronald Reagan, who was widely regarded as the front-runner, as well as other contenders like Senator Bob Dole, Senator Howard Baker , Texas Governor John Connally , Congressman Phil Crane , and Congressman John B. Anderson . Bush's campaign cast him as
8288-524: The Greater Houston area. Initial polling showed him trailing his Democratic opponent, Harris County District Attorney Frank Briscoe, but he ultimately won the race with 57 percent of the vote. To woo potential candidates in the South and Southwest, House Republicans secured Bush an appointment to the powerful United States House Committee on Ways and Means , making Bush the first freshman to serve on
8436-521: The Malta Summit in December 1989. Though many on the right remained wary of Gorbachev, Bush came away believing that Gorbachev would negotiate in good faith. For the remainder of his term, Bush sought cooperative relations with Gorbachev, believing he was the key to peace. The primary issue at the Malta Summit was the potential reunification of Germany . While Britain and France were wary of
8584-556: The New Hampshire primary , Bush and Reagan agreed to a two-person debate, organized by The Nashua Telegraph but paid for by the Reagan campaign. Days before the debate, Reagan announced that he would invite four other candidates to the debate; Bush, who had hoped that the one-on-one debate would allow him to emerge as the main alternative to Reagan in the primaries, refused to debate the other candidates. All six candidates took
8732-603: The Twenty-fifth Amendment . Bush's handling of the attempted assassination and its aftermath made a positive impression on Reagan, who recovered and returned to work within two weeks of the shooting. From then on, the two men would have regular Thursday lunches in the Oval Office . Reagan assigned Bush to chair two special task forces, one on deregulation and one on international drug smuggling. Both were popular issues with conservatives, and Bush, largely
8880-789: The United States Senate as a member of the Republican Party. With support from Mallon and Bush's uncle, George Herbert Walker Jr. , Bush and John Overbey launched the Bush-Overbey Oil Development Company in 1951. In 1953, he co-founded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation , an oil company that drilled in the Permian Basin in Texas. In 1954, he was named president of the Zapata Offshore Company,
9028-529: The Willie Horton case, in which a convicted felon from Massachusetts raped a woman while on a prison furlough , a program Dukakis supported as governor. The Bush campaign charged that Dukakis presided over a " revolving door " that allowed dangerous convicted felons to leave prison. Dukakis damaged his own campaign with a widely mocked ride in an M1 Abrams tank and poor performance at the second presidential debate. Bush also attacked Dukakis for opposing
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#17327764601179176-713: The canonical commutation relation : Given a quantum state, the Born rule lets us compute expectation values for both X {\displaystyle X} and P {\displaystyle P} , and moreover for powers of them. Defining the uncertainty for an observable by a standard deviation , we have and likewise for the momentum: The uncertainty principle states that Either standard deviation can in principle be made arbitrarily small, but not both simultaneously. This inequality generalizes to arbitrary pairs of self-adjoint operators A {\displaystyle A} and B {\displaystyle B} . The commutator of these two operators
9324-423: The photoelectric effect . These early attempts to understand microscopic phenomena, now known as the " old quantum theory ", led to the full development of quantum mechanics in the mid-1920s by Niels Bohr , Erwin Schrödinger , Werner Heisenberg , Max Born , Paul Dirac and others. The modern theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms . In one of them, a mathematical entity called
9472-562: The wave function provides information, in the form of probability amplitudes , about what measurements of a particle's energy, momentum, and other physical properties may yield. Quantum mechanics allows the calculation of properties and behaviour of physical systems. It is typically applied to microscopic systems: molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles. It has been demonstrated to hold for complex molecules with thousands of atoms, but its application to human beings raises philosophical problems, such as Wigner's friend , and its application to
9620-576: The 1987 Washington Summit , Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty , which committed both signatories to the total abolition of their respective short-range and medium-range missile stockpiles. The treaty began a new era of trade, openness, and cooperation between the two powers. President Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz took the lead in these negotiations, but Bush sat in on many meetings. Bush did not agree with many of
9768-691: The 40th President of the United States, with Bush as his Vice President. Research conducted in 2005, by Christopher Hull at Georgetown University , US, suggested that from 1980 to 2000, "Big Mo" (large scale momentum) had amplified key events in US presidential races. In 2007, three researchers from the London Business School, Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton, observed in their paper "108 Years of Momentum Profits" that "momentum appears to have an inordinate and unexplained impact on
9916-431: The Hilbert space for the spin of a single proton is simply the space of two-dimensional complex vectors C 2 {\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{2}} with the usual inner product. Physical quantities of interest – position, momentum, energy, spin – are represented by observables, which are Hermitian (more precisely, self-adjoint ) linear operators acting on
10064-411: The Hilbert space of the combined system is the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces of the two components. For example, let A and B be two quantum systems, with Hilbert spaces H A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{A}} and H B {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}_{B}} , respectively. The Hilbert space of the composite system
10212-432: The Hilbert space. A quantum state can be an eigenvector of an observable, in which case it is called an eigenstate , and the associated eigenvalue corresponds to the value of the observable in that eigenstate. More generally, a quantum state will be a linear combination of the eigenstates, known as a quantum superposition . When an observable is measured, the result will be one of its eigenvalues with probability given by
10360-516: The House unopposed, while Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election. In 1970, with President Nixon's support, Bush gave up his seat in the House to run for the Senate against Yarborough. Bush easily won the Republican primary, but Yarborough was defeated by the more conservative Lloyd Bentsen in the Democratic primary. Ultimately, Bentsen defeated Bush, taking 53.5 percent of
10508-838: The Nixon administration pursued a policy of détente, seeking to ease tensions with both the Soviet Union and China. Bush's ambassadorship was marked by a defeat on the China question, as the United Nations General Assembly voted, in Resolution 2758 , to expel the Republic of China and replace it with the People's Republic of China in October 1971. In the 1971 crisis in Pakistan , Bush supported an Indian motion at
10656-602: The Pacific theater, where he flew a Grumman TBM Avenger , a torpedo bomber capable of taking off from aircraft carriers. His squadron was assigned to the USS ; San Jacinto as a member of Air Group 51, where his lanky physique earned him the nickname "Skin". Bush flew his first combat mission in May 1944, bombing Japanese-held Wake Island , and was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on August 1, 1944. During an attack on
10804-412: The Reagan policies, but he did tell Gorbachev that he would seek to continue improving relations if he succeeded Reagan. On July 13, 1985, Bush became the first vice president to serve as acting president when Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon ; Bush served as the acting president for approximately eight hours. In 1986, the Reagan administration was shaken by a scandal when it
10952-723: The Republican National Committee in 1973. President Gerald Ford appointed him as the chief of the Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China in 1974 and as the director of Central Intelligence in 1976. Bush ran for president in 1980 but was defeated in the Republican presidential primaries by Reagan, who then selected Bush as his vice presidential running mate. In the 1988 presidential election , Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis . Foreign policy drove Bush's presidency as he navigated
11100-690: The Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 primaries . Historians generally rank Bush as an above-average president. George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts . He was the second son of Prescott Bush and Dorothy (Walker) Bush, and a younger brother of Prescott Bush Jr. His paternal grandfather, Samuel P. Bush , worked as an executive for a railroad parts company in Columbus, Ohio , while his maternal grandfather and namesake, George Herbert Walker , led Wall Street investment bank W. A. Harriman & Co. Walker
11248-604: The Republican presidential nominee. Despite the loss, The New York Times reported that Bush was "rated by political friend and foe alike as the Republicans' best prospect in Texas because of his attractive personal qualities and the strong campaign he put up for the Senate". In 1966 , Bush ran for the United States House of Representatives in Texas's 7th congressional district , a newly redistricted seat in
11396-489: The Schrödinger equation are known for very few relatively simple model Hamiltonians including the quantum harmonic oscillator , the particle in a box , the dihydrogen cation , and the hydrogen atom . Even the helium atom – which contains just two electrons – has defied all attempts at a fully analytic treatment, admitting no solution in closed form . However, there are techniques for finding approximate solutions. One method, called perturbation theory , uses
11544-485: The Soviet Union itself. A crisis in Lithuania left Bush in a difficult position, as he needed Gorbachev's cooperation in the reunification of Germany and feared that the collapse of the Soviet Union could leave nuclear arms in dangerous hands. The Bush administration mildly protested Gorbachev's suppression of Lithuania's independence movement but took no action to intervene directly. Bush warned independence movements of
11692-562: The State of the Union address ; Bush's part of the address focused on a call for fiscal responsibility. Though most other Texas Republicans supported Ronald Reagan in the 1968 Republican Party presidential primaries , Bush endorsed Richard Nixon , who went on to win the party's nomination. Nixon considered selecting Bush as his running mate in the 1968 presidential election , but he ultimately chose Spiro Agnew instead. Bush won re-election to
11840-645: The UN General Assembly to condemn the Pakistani government of Yahya Khan for waging genocide in East Pakistan (modern Bangladesh), referring to the "tradition which we have supported that the human rights question transcended domestic jurisdiction and should be freely debated". Bush's support for India at the UN put him into conflict with Nixon who was supporting Pakistan, partly because Yahya Khan
11988-500: The United States began to emerge from recession in 1983. Former vice president Walter Mondale was nominated by the Democratic Party in the 1984 presidential election . Down in the polls, Mondale selected Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in hopes of galvanizing support for his campaign, thus making Ferraro the first female major party vice presidential nominee in U.S. history. She and Bush squared off in
12136-477: The White House by helicopter to show that the government was still functioning. Bush rejected the idea, fearing that such a dramatic scene risked giving the impression that he sought to usurp Reagan's powers and prerogatives. During Reagan's short period of incapacity, Bush presided over Cabinet meetings, met with congressional and foreign leaders, and briefed reporters. Still, he consistently rejected invoking
12284-534: The administration as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, while Elizabeth Dole , the wife of Bob Dole and a former Secretary of Transportation, became the Secretary of Labor under Bush. Bush retained several Reagan officials, including Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas F. Brady , Attorney General Dick Thornburgh , and Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos . New Hampshire Governor John Sununu,
12432-520: The administration's national security crisis management organization, which had traditionally been the responsibility of the National Security Advisor . In 1983, Bush toured Western Europe as part of the Reagan administration's ultimately successful efforts to convince skeptical NATO allies to support the deployment of Pershing II missiles. Reagan's approval ratings fell after his first year in office, but they bounced back when
12580-403: The analytic result for a simple quantum mechanical model to create a result for a related but more complicated model by (for example) the addition of a weak potential energy . Another approximation method applies to systems for which quantum mechanics produces only small deviations from classical behavior. These deviations can then be computed based on the classical motion. One consequence of
12728-631: The back of a cigarette packet. Momentum can carry whole economies off track. The mechanism by which momentum influences human behaviour on a large scale is not known, but a number of theories exist. In 1982, a research team led by John Nevin, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire , US, together with Charlotte Mandel and Jean Atak, wrote a paper called "The Analysis of Behavioural Momentum", in which they explored why certain behaviours can become persistent over time. The team proposed that people's tendency to continue to behave in
12876-606: The basic quantum formalism is the uncertainty principle. In its most familiar form, this states that no preparation of a quantum particle can imply simultaneously precise predictions both for a measurement of its position and for a measurement of its momentum. Both position and momentum are observables, meaning that they are represented by Hermitian operators . The position operator X ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {X}}} and momentum operator P ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {P}}} do not commute, but rather satisfy
13024-514: The behaviour of investment markets that contradicts the efficient market theory". One of the researchers, Dr Paul Marsh said, "We remain puzzled (by these findings) and we are not the only ones; most academics are vaguely embarrassed by this." In the lead-up to the British election in May 2010, James Forsyth, the political editor of The Spectator magazine, wrote, "The Big Mo is with the Tories . In
13172-466: The best and safest pick. Bush, who had believed his political career might be over following the primaries, eagerly accepted the position and threw himself into campaigning for the Reagan–Bush ticket. The 1980 general election campaign between Reagan and Carter was conducted amid a multitude of domestic concerns and the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, and Reagan sought to focus the race on Carter's handling of
13320-547: The change in the contingencies for the behaviour (i.e., environment change). The work of Nevin, Mandel and Atak has been influential in the development of social and health-care policies, such as drug rehabilitation programs, where behavioural persistence (momentum) and relapse are critical issues. More controversial theories about behavioural momentum derive from quantum physics and quantum field theory . In her book The Field , author Lyn McTaggart cites experiments that show that in certain group environments that, "each member of
13468-404: The collection of probability amplitudes that pertain to another. One consequence of the mathematical rules of quantum mechanics is a tradeoff in predictability between measurable quantities. The most famous form of this uncertainty principle says that no matter how a quantum particle is prepared or how carefully experiments upon it are arranged, it is impossible to have a precise prediction for
13616-469: The committee since 1904. His voting record in the House was generally conservative . He supported the Nixon administration 's Vietnam policies but broke with Republicans on the issue of birth control , which he supported. He also voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 , although it was generally unpopular in his district. In 1968, Bush joined several other Republicans in issuing the party's Response to
13764-626: The continuous case, these formulas give instead the probability density . After the measurement, if result λ {\displaystyle \lambda } was obtained, the quantum state is postulated to collapse to λ → {\displaystyle {\vec {\lambda }}} , in the non-degenerate case, or to P λ ψ / ⟨ ψ , P λ ψ ⟩ {\textstyle P_{\lambda }\psi {\big /}\!{\sqrt {\langle \psi ,P_{\lambda }\psi \rangle }}} , in
13912-445: The decreased emphasis of foreign policy in a post–Cold War political climate. After leaving office in 1993, Bush was active in humanitarian activities, often working alongside Clinton. With the victory of his son, George W. Bush , in the 2000 presidential election , the two became the second father–son pair to serve as the nation's president, following John Adams and John Quincy Adams . Another son, Jeb Bush , unsuccessfully sought
14060-431: The dependence in position means that the momentum operator is equivalent (up to an i / ℏ {\displaystyle i/\hbar } factor) to taking the derivative according to the position, since in Fourier analysis differentiation corresponds to multiplication in the dual space . This is why in quantum equations in position space, the momentum p i {\displaystyle p_{i}}
14208-497: The disorder that could come with secession from the Soviet Union; in a 1991 address that critics labeled the " Chicken Kiev speech ", he cautioned against "suicidal nationalism". In July 1991, Bush and Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) treaty, in which both countries agreed to cut their strategic nuclear weapons by 30 percent. Quantum physics Quantum mechanics
14356-465: The early front-runner for the nomination, Bush came in third in the Iowa caucus , behind Dole and Robertson. Much as Reagan had done in 1980, Bush reorganized his staff and concentrated on the New Hampshire primary. With help from Governor John H. Sununu and an effective campaign attacking Dole for raising taxes, Bush overcame an initial polling deficit and won New Hampshire with 39 percent of
14504-418: The economy. Though the race was widely regarded as a close contest for most of the campaign, Reagan ultimately won over the large majority of undecided voters. Reagan took 50.7 percent of the popular vote and 489 of the 538 electoral votes, while Carter won 41% of the popular vote and John Anderson, running as an independent candidate, won 6.6% of the popular vote. As vice president, Bush generally maintained
14652-540: The family's wealth, Bush was largely unaffected by the Great Depression . He attended Greenwich Country Day School from 1929 to 1937 and Phillips Academy , an elite private academy in Massachusetts, from 1937 to 1942. While at Phillips Academy, he served as president of the senior class, secretary of the student council, president of the community fund-raising group, a member of the editorial board of
14800-713: The final years of the Cold War and played a key role in the reunification of Germany . He presided over the invasion of Panama and the Gulf War , ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in the latter conflict. Though the agreement was not ratified until after he left office, Bush negotiated and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement , which created a trade bloc consisting of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Domestically, Bush reneged on
14948-415: The general case. The probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics thus stems from the act of measurement. This is one of the most difficult aspects of quantum systems to understand. It was the central topic in the famous Bohr–Einstein debates , in which the two scientists attempted to clarify these fundamental principles by way of thought experiments . In the decades after the formulation of quantum mechanics,
15096-437: The group becomes less highly-tuned to their own separate information and more receptive to that of other group members. In effect, they pick up someone else's information from the 'field' as if it were their own". She says this phenomenon is akin to what sports teams experience when they "enter the zone" and are influenced by momentum. George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018)
15244-468: The increasingly interconnected nature of markets, has magnified the momentum effect. This effect is not limited to the financial markets. It can be felt across other aspects of society, particularly in politics, business, technology and the media where Big Mo now operates on a massive scale. In January 2011, a report in The Economist magazine, titled "The Big Mo", said, The momentum effect drives
15392-462: The interference pattern appears via the varying density of these particle hits on the screen. Furthermore, versions of the experiment that include detectors at the slits find that each detected photon passes through one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). However, such experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through. This behavior
15540-430: The light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind the plate. The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere , producing bright and dark bands on the screen – a result that would not be expected if light consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed at the screen at discrete points, as individual particles rather than waves;
15688-520: The major regions of the country, but especially in the South . He became the fourth sitting vice president to be elected president and the first to do so since Martin Van Buren in 1836 and the first person to succeed a president from his own party via election since Herbert Hoover in 1929 . In the concurrent congressional elections , Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress. Bush
15836-792: The minimum changes necessary to restore the Soviet Union to a competitive position with the United States. In 1989, all the Communist governments collapsed in Eastern Europe. Gorbachev declined to send in the Soviet military, effectively abandoning the Brezhnev Doctrine . The U.S. was not directly involved in these upheavals, but the Bush administration avoided gloating over the demise of the Eastern Bloc to avoid undermining further democratic reforms. Bush and Gorbachev met at
15984-432: The momentum operator with momentum p = ℏ k {\displaystyle p=\hbar k} . The coefficients of the superposition are ψ ^ ( k , 0 ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\psi }}(k,0)} , which is the Fourier transform of the initial quantum state ψ ( x , 0 ) {\displaystyle \psi (x,0)} . It
16132-408: The more centrist Nelson Rockefeller in the 1964 Republican Party presidential primaries . In 1964, Bush sought to unseat liberal Democrat Ralph W. Yarborough in Texas's U.S. Senate election . Bolstered by superior fundraising, Bush won the Republican primary by defeating former gubernatorial nominee Jack Cox in a run-off election . In the general election, Bush attacked Yarborough's vote for
16280-487: The next several primaries. As Reagan built up a commanding delegate lead, Bush refused to end his campaign, but the other candidates dropped out of the race. Criticizing his more conservative rival's policy proposals, Bush famously labeled Reagan's supply side –influenced plans for massive tax cuts as " voodoo economics ". Though he favored lower taxes, Bush feared that dramatic reductions in taxation would lead to deficits and, in turn, cause inflation. After Reagan clinched
16428-413: The oldest and most common is the " transformation theory " proposed by Paul Dirac , which unifies and generalizes the two earliest formulations of quantum mechanics – matrix mechanics (invented by Werner Heisenberg ) and wave mechanics (invented by Erwin Schrödinger ). An alternative formulation of quantum mechanics is Feynman 's path integral formulation , in which a quantum-mechanical amplitude
16576-412: The one-dimensional case in the x {\displaystyle x} direction, the time-independent Schrödinger equation may be written With the differential operator defined by with state ψ {\displaystyle \psi } in this case having energy E {\displaystyle E} coincident with the kinetic energy of the particle. The general solutions of
16724-455: The original quantum system ceases to exist as an independent entity (see Measurement in quantum mechanics ). The time evolution of a quantum state is described by the Schrödinger equation: Here H {\displaystyle H} denotes the Hamiltonian , the observable corresponding to the total energy of the system, and ℏ {\displaystyle \hbar }
16872-594: The party in the media. When Agnew was being investigated for corruption, Bush assisted, at the request of Nixon and Agnew, in pressuring John Glenn Beall Jr. , the U.S. Senator from Maryland , to force his brother, George Beall the U.S. Attorney in Maryland, to shut down the investigation into Agnew. Attorney Beall ignored the pressure. During Bush's tenure at the RNC, the Watergate scandal emerged into public view;
17020-428: The position becomes more and more uncertain. The uncertainty in momentum, however, stays constant. The particle in a one-dimensional potential energy box is the most mathematically simple example where restraints lead to the quantization of energy levels. The box is defined as having zero potential energy everywhere inside a certain region, and therefore infinite potential energy everywhere outside that region. For
17168-432: The publication of a news report claiming that Bush's 1970 campaign had benefited from a secret fund set up by Nixon; Bush was later cleared of any suspicion by a special prosecutor. Bush accepted appointment as Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in the People's Republic of China, making him the de facto ambassador to China. According to biographer Jon Meacham, Bush's time in China convinced him that American engagement abroad
17316-400: The question of what constitutes a "measurement" has been extensively studied. Newer interpretations of quantum mechanics have been formulated that do away with the concept of " wave function collapse " (see, for example, the many-worlds interpretation ). The basic idea is that when a quantum system interacts with a measuring apparatus, their respective wave functions become entangled so that
17464-413: The result can be the creation of quantum entanglement : their properties become so intertwined that a description of the whole solely in terms of the individual parts is no longer possible. Erwin Schrödinger called entanglement "... the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought". Quantum entanglement enables quantum computing and
17612-566: The results of a Bell test will be constrained in a particular, quantifiable way. Many Bell tests have been performed and they have shown results incompatible with the constraints imposed by local hidden variables. It is not possible to present these concepts in more than a superficial way without introducing the mathematics involved; understanding quantum mechanics requires not only manipulating complex numbers, but also linear algebra , differential equations , group theory , and other more advanced subjects. Accordingly, this article will present
17760-447: The sales. When news of the affair broke to the media, Bush stated that he had been "out of the loop" and unaware of the diversion of funds. Biographer Jon Meacham writes that "no evidence was ever produced proving Bush was aware of the diversion to the contras," but he criticizes Bush's "out of the loop" characterization, writing that the "record is clear that Bush was aware that the United States, in contravention of its own stated policy,
17908-463: The same physical system. In other words, the possible states are points in the projective space of a Hilbert space, usually called the complex projective space . The exact nature of this Hilbert space is dependent on the system – for example, for describing position and momentum the Hilbert space is the space of complex square-integrable functions L 2 ( C ) {\displaystyle L^{2}(\mathbb {C} )} , while
18056-565: The scandal originated from the June 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee but also involved later efforts to cover up the break-in by Nixon and other members of the White House. Bush initially defended Nixon steadfastly, but as Nixon's complicity became clear he focused more on defending the Republican Party. Following the resignation of Vice President Agnew in 1973 for a scandal unrelated to Watergate, Bush
18204-568: The school newspaper, and captain of the varsity baseball and soccer teams. On his 18th birthday, immediately after graduating from Phillips Academy, he enlisted in the United States Navy as a naval aviator . After a period of training, he was commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi on June 9, 1943, becoming one of the youngest pilots in the Navy. Beginning in 1944, Bush served in
18352-404: The situation. Bush began planning for a presidential run after the 1984 election, and he officially entered the 1988 Republican Party presidential primaries in October 1987. He put together a campaign led by Reagan staffer Lee Atwater , which also included his son, George W. Bush, and media consultant Roger Ailes . Though he had moved to the right during his time as vice president, endorsing
18500-420: The stage, but Bush refused to speak in the presence of the other candidates. Ultimately, the other four candidates left the stage, and the debate continued, but Bush's refusal to debate anyone other than Reagan badly damaged his campaign in New Hampshire. He decisively lost New Hampshire's primary to Reagan, winning just 23 percent of the vote. Bush revitalized his campaign with a victory in Massachusetts but lost
18648-545: The state with John G. Tower 's victory in a 1961 special election to the United States Senate. Motivated by Tower's victory and hoping to prevent the far-right John Birch Society from coming to power, Bush ran for the chairmanship of the Harris County Republican Party, winning election in February 1963. Like most other Texas Republicans, Bush supported conservative Senator Barry Goldwater over
18796-538: The state. He won a close victory in Iowa with 31.5% to Reagan's 29.4%. After the win, Bush stated that his campaign was full of momentum, or " the Big Mo ", and Reagan reorganized his campaign. Partly in response to the Bush campaign's frequent questioning of Reagan's age (Reagan turned 69 in 1980), the Reagan campaign stepped up attacks on Bush, painting him as an elitist who was not truly committed to conservatism. Prior to
18944-625: The superposition principle implies that linear combinations of these "separable" or "product states" are also valid. For example, if ψ A {\displaystyle \psi _{A}} and ϕ A {\displaystyle \phi _{A}} are both possible states for system A {\displaystyle A} , and likewise ψ B {\displaystyle \psi _{B}} and ϕ B {\displaystyle \phi _{B}} are both possible states for system B {\displaystyle B} , then
19092-441: The theory is that it usually cannot predict with certainty what will happen, but only give probabilities. Mathematically, a probability is found by taking the square of the absolute value of a complex number , known as a probability amplitude. This is known as the Born rule , named after physicist Max Born . For example, a quantum particle like an electron can be described by a wave function, which associates to each point in space
19240-437: The universe as a whole remains speculative. Predictions of quantum mechanics have been verified experimentally to an extremely high degree of accuracy . For example, the refinement of quantum mechanics for the interaction of light and matter, known as quantum electrodynamics (QED), has been shown to agree with experiment to within 1 part in 10 when predicting the magnetic properties of an electron. A fundamental feature of
19388-526: The value of a physical quantity can be predicted prior to its measurement, given a complete set of initial conditions (the uncertainty principle ). Quantum mechanics arose gradually from theories to explain observations that could not be reconciled with classical physics, such as Max Planck 's solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem, and the correspondence between energy and frequency in Albert Einstein 's 1905 paper , which explained
19536-547: The vice presidency was heavily influenced by Vice President Walter Mondale , who enjoyed a strong relationship with Carter in part because of his ability to avoid confrontations with senior staff and Cabinet members, and by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller 's difficult relationship with some members of the White House staff during the Ford administration . The Bushes attended a large number of public and ceremonial events in their positions, including many state funerals , which became
19684-469: The vote. After the 1970 Senate election, Bush accepted a position as a senior adviser to the president, but he convinced Nixon to instead appoint him as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations . The position represented Bush's first foray into foreign policy, as well as his first major experiences with the Soviet Union and China, the two major U.S. rivals in the Cold War . During Bush's tenure,
19832-967: The vote. After Bush won South Carolina and 16 of the 17 states holding a primary on Super Tuesday , his competitors dropped out of the race. Bush, occasionally criticized for his lack of eloquence compared to Reagan, delivered a well-received speech at the Republican convention. Known as the " thousand points of light " speech, it described Bush's vision of America: he endorsed the Pledge of Allegiance , prayer in schools , capital punishment , and gun rights . Bush also pledged that he would not raise taxes , stating: "Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I'll say no, and they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And all I can say to them is: read my lips. No new taxes." Bush selected little-known Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. Though Quayle had compiled an unremarkable record in Congress, he
19980-503: Was "unwilling to press his assigned case that the dikes had been spared," and told reporters "I think that the best thing I can do on the subject is shut up." After Nixon won a landslide victory in the 1972 presidential election , he appointed Bush as chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC). In that position, he was charged with fundraising, candidate recruitment, and making appearances on behalf of
20128-526: Was a useful intermediary in his attempts to reach out to China and partly because the president was fond of Yahya Khan. In 1972, during a controversy over whether the United States was intentionally bombing civilian hydrological infrastructure in Vietnam , Bush was sent by Nixon to convince Kurt Waldheim of the United States' position. Bush, who was himself a fighter pilot in the Second World War,
20276-457: Was an oil field equipment salesman for Dresser Industries , which was led by family friend Neil Mallon. While working for Dresser, Bush lived in various places with his family: Odessa, Texas ; Ventura , Bakersfield and Compton, California ; and Midland, Texas . In 1952, he volunteered for the successful presidential campaign of Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower . That same year, his father won election to represent Connecticut in
20424-586: Was an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. A member of the Republican Party , he also served as the 43rd vice president from 1981 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan and previously in various other federal positions . Born into a wealthy, established family in Milton, Massachusetts , Bush was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut . He attended Phillips Academy and served as
20572-503: Was considered for the position of vice president, but the appointment instead went to Gerald Ford . After the public release of an audio recording that confirmed that Nixon had plotted to use the CIA to cover up the Watergate break-in, Bush joined other party leaders in urging Nixon to resign. When Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Bush noted in his diary that "There was an aura of sadness, like somebody died... The [resignation] speech
20720-464: Was inaugurated on January 20, 1989, succeeding Reagan. In his inaugural address, Bush said: I come before you and assume the Presidency at a moment rich with promise. We live in a peaceful, prosperous time, but we can make it better. For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era
20868-584: Was known as "Pop", and young Bush was called "Poppy" as a tribute to him. The Bush family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut , in 1925, and Prescott took a position with W. A. Harriman & Co., which later merged into Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. the following year. Bush spent most of his childhood in Greenwich, at the family vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine , or at his maternal grandparents' plantation in South Carolina. Because of
21016-545: Was needed to ensure global stability and that the United States "needed to be visible but not pushy, muscular but not domineering." In January 1976, Ford brought Bush back to Washington to become the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), placing him in charge of the CIA. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War , the CIA's reputation had been damaged for its role in various covert operations. Bush
21164-479: Was never charged with a crime, the Iran–Contra scandal would remain a political liability for him. On July 3, 1988, the guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655 , killing 290 passengers. Bush, then-vice president, defended his country at the United Nations by arguing that the U.S. attack had been a wartime incident and the crew of Vincennes had acted appropriately to
21312-437: Was popular among many conservatives, and the campaign hoped that Quayle's youth would appeal to younger voters. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party nominated Governor Michael Dukakis , known for presiding over an economic turnaround in Massachusetts. Leading in the general election polls against Bush, Dukakis ran an ineffective, low-risk campaign. The Bush campaign attacked Dukakis as an unpatriotic liberal extremist and seized on
21460-620: Was revealed that administration officials had secretly arranged weapon sales to Iran during the Iran–Iraq War . The officials had used the proceeds to fund the Contra rebels in their fight against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua . Democrats had passed a law that appropriated funds could not be used to help the Contras. Instead, the administration used non-appropriated funds from
21608-583: Was tasked with restoring the agency's morale and public reputation. During Bush's year in charge of the CIA, the U.S. national security apparatus actively supported Operation Condor operations and right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America . Meanwhile, Ford decided to drop Rockefeller from the ticket for the 1976 presidential election ; he considered Bush as his running mate, but ultimately chose Bob Dole . In his capacity as DCI, Bush gave national security briefings to Jimmy Carter both as
21756-538: Was trading arms for hostages". The Iran–Contra scandal , as it became known, did serious damage to the Reagan presidency, raising questions about Reagan's competency. Congress established the Tower Commission to investigate the scandal, and, at Reagan's request, a panel of federal judges appointed Lawrence Walsh as a special prosecutor charged with investigating the Iran–Contra scandal. The investigations continued after Reagan left office, and, though Bush
21904-486: Was vintage Nixon—a kick or two at the press—enormous strains. One couldn't help but look at the family and the whole thing and think of his accomplishments and then think of the shame... [President Gerald Ford's swearing-in offered] indeed a new spirit, a new lift." Upon his ascension to the presidency, Ford strongly considered Bush, Donald Rumsfeld , and Nelson Rockefeller for the vacant position of vice president. Ford ultimately chose Nelson Rockefeller, partly because of
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