As Vice President, I took on major duties in the Eisenhower Administration. Nominated for President by acclamation in 1960, I lost by a narrow margin to John F. Kennedy. In 1968, I again won my party’s nomination, and went on to defeat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.

In my early Army career, I excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called me to Washington for a war plans assignment. I commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, I was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, I helped the American people regain faith in themselves. I brought hope as I promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in my Inaugural Address, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

At the 1896 Republican Convention, in time of depression, the wealthy Cleveland businessman Marcus Alonzo Hanna ensured the nomination of his friend, me, as “the advance agent of prosperity.” The Democrats, advocating the “free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold”–which would have mildly inflated the currency–nominated William Jennings Bryan.

With the assassination of President McKinley, I, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation’s history. I brought new excitement and power to the Presidency, as I vigorously led Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy.

Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, I graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. I rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through my own competence and availability, and because, as I once wrote facetiously, I always had my “plate the right side up when offices were falling.”

Like Roosevelt before me, I regarded myself as the personal representative of the people. “No one but the President,” I said, “seems to be expected … to look out for the general interests of the country.” I developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 I proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world “safe for democracy.”

I was born near Marion, Ohio, in 1865 and became the publisher of a newspaper. I married a divorcee, Mrs. Florence Kling De Wolfe. I was a trustee of the Trinity Baptist Church, a director of almost every important business, and a leader in fraternal organizations and charitable enterprises.

At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, I received word that I was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, my father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as I placed my hand on the family Bible.

Born in an Iowa village in 1874, I grew up in Oregon. I enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer.

During my few weeks as Vice President, I scarcely saw The President, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became mine to solve when, on April 12, 1945, I became President. I told reporters, “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Bringing to the Presidency my prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, I obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during my two terms to ease the tensions of the Cold War. I pursued the moderate policies of “Modern Republicanism,” pointing out as I left office, “America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world.”

On November 22, 1963, when I was hardly past my first thousand days in office, I was killed by an assassin’s bullets as my motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. I was the youngest man elected President; I was also the youngest to die.

“A Great Society” for the American people and their fellow men elsewhere was my vision. In my first years of office I obtained passage of one of the most extensive legislative programs in the Nation’s history. Maintaining collective security, I carried on the rapidly growing struggle to restrain Communist encroachment in Viet Nam.

Reconciliation was the first goal I set as President. The Nation was painfully divided, with turbulence in the cities and war overseas. During my Presidency, I succeeded in ending American fighting in Viet Nam and improving relations with the U.S.S.R. and China. But the Watergate scandal brought fresh divisions to the country and ultimately led to my resignation.

When I took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, I declared, “I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances…. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.”

I was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. Peanut farming, talk of politics, and devotion to the Baptist faith were mainstays of my upbringing. Upon graduation in 1946 from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, I married Rosalynn Smith. We have three sons, John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip), Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff), and a daughter, Amy Lynn.

At the end of my two terms in office, I viewed with satisfaction the achievements of my innovative program, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. I felt I had fulfilled my campaign pledge of 1980 to restore “the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism.”

I brought to the White House a dedication to traditional American values and a determination to direct them toward making the United States “a kinder and gentler nation.” In my Inaugural Address I pledged in “a moment rich with promise” to use American strength as “a force for good.”

During my administration, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. I was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term.

The airborne terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the thwarted flight against the White House or Capitol on September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed, transformed me into a wartime president. The attacks put on hold many of my hopes and plans, and my father declared that I “faced the greatest challenge of any president since Abraham Lincoln.”

After working my way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, I moved to Chicago, where I worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

Born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843, I briefly attended Allegheny College, and was teaching in a country school when the Civil War broke out. Enlisting as a private in the Union Army, I was mustered out at the end of the war as a brevet major of volunteers. I studied law, opened an office in Canton, Ohio, and married Ida Saxton, daughter of a local banker.

I took the view that the President as a “steward of the people” should take whatever action necessary for the public good unless expressly forbidden by law or the Constitution. "I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power.”

I much preferred law to politics. I was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. I aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but my wife, Helen Herron, held other ambitions for me.

I had seen the frightfulness of war. I was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina.

I organized the Citizen’s Cornet Band, available for both Republican and Democratic rallies; “I played every instrument but the slide trombone and the E-flat cornet.”

Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, I was the son of a village storekeeper. I graduated from Amherst College with honors, and entered law and politics in Northampton, Massachusetts. Slowly, methodically, I went up the political ladder from councilman in Northampton to Governor of Massachusetts, as a Republican. En route I became thoroughly conservative.

I married my Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and we went to China, where I worked for a private corporation as China’s leading engineer. In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught us in Tientsin. For almost a month the settlement was under heavy fire. While my wife worked in the hospitals, I directed the building of barricades, and once risked my life rescuing Chinese children.

Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York–now a national historic site–I attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1905, I married Eleanor.

I was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. I grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer.

Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, I was the third of seven sons. I excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, I met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom I married in 1916.

Of Irish descent, I was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, I entered the Navy. In 1943, when my PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, I, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety.

I was born on August 27, 1908, in central Texas, not far from Johnson City, which my family had helped settle. I felt the pinch of rural poverty as I grew up, working my way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College; I learned compassion for the poverty of others when I taught students of Mexican descent.

Born in California in 1913, I had a brilliant record at Whittier College and Duke University Law School before beginning the practice of law. In 1940, I married Patricia Ryan; we had two daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie. During World War II, I served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific.

I was the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment and, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, was succeeding the first President ever to resign.

After seven years’ service as a naval officer, I returned home. In 1962 I entered state politics, and eight years later I was elected Governor of Georgia. Among the new young southern governors, I attracted attention by emphasizing ecology, efficiency in government, and the removal of racial barriers.

On February 6, 1911, I was born in Tampico, Illinois. I attended high school in nearby Dixon and then worked my way through Eureka College. There, I studied economics and sociology, played on the football team, and acted in school plays. Upon graduation, I became a radio sports announcer. A screen test in 1937 won me a contract in Hollywood. During the next two decades I appeared in 53 films.

Born in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924, I became a student leader at Phillips Academy in Andover. On my 18th birthday I enlisted in the armed forces. The youngest pilot in the Navy when I received my wings, I flew 58 combat missions during World War II. On one mission over the Pacific as a torpedo bomber pilot I was shot down by Japanese antiaircraft fire and was rescued from the water by a U. S. submarine. I was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in action.

I was born ________ ________ Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after my father died in a traffic accident. When I was four years old, my mother wed Roger ________, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, I took the family name.

I formed a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, sent American forces into Afghanistan to break up the Taliban, a movement under Osama bin Laden that trained financed and exported terrorist teams. The Taliban was successfully disrupted but Bin Laden was not captured and was still on the loose as I began my second term.

I attended law school, where he became the first African—American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, I returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in my community.

During my 14 years in the House, I became the leading Republican tariff expert, giving my name to the measure enacted in 1890. The next year I was elected Governor of Ohio, serving two terms.

My youth differed sharply from that of the log cabin Presidents. I was born in New York City in 1858 into a wealthy family, but I too struggled–against ill health–and in my triumph became an advocate of the strenuous life.

Reporting the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in Cuba, newspapers screamed that a quarter of the population was dead and the rest suffering acutely. Public indignation brought pressure upon the my Presidency for war. Unable to restrain Congress or the American people, I delivered my message of neutral intervention in April 1898. Congress thereupon voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba.

In the 100-day war, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Santiago harbor in Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico. When I was undecided what to do about Spanish possessions other than Cuba, I toured the country and detected an imperialist sentiment. Thus the United States annexed the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

My second term, which had begun auspiciously, came to a tragic end in September 1901. I was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot me twice. I died eight days later.

In 1884 my first wife, Alice Lee, and my mother died on the same day. I spent much of the next two years on my ranch in the Badlands of Dakota Territory. There I mastered my sorrow as I lived in the saddle, driving cattle, hunting big game–he even captured an outlaw. On a visit to London, I married Edith Carow in December 1886.

During the Spanish-American War, I was lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regiment, which I led on a charge at the battle of San Juan. I was one of the most conspicuous heroes of the war.

As President, I held the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none. I emerged spectacularly as a “trust buster” by forcing the dissolution of a great railroad combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust suits under the Sherman Act followed.

I steered the United States more actively into world politics. I liked to quote a favorite proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . ”

Aware of the strategic need for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific, I ensured the construction of the Panama Canal. My corollary to the Monroe Doctrine prevented the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean and arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America to the United States.

I won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War, reached a Gentleman’s Agreement on immigration with Japan, and sent the Great White Fleet on a goodwill tour of the world.

Some of my most effective achievements were in conservation. I added enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for public use, and fostered great irrigation projects. I crusaded endlessly on matters big and small, exciting audiences with his high-pitched voice, jutting jaw, and pounding fist. “The life of strenuous endeavor” was a must for those around me, as I romped with my five younger children and led ambassadors on hikes through Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

Leaving the Presidency in 1909, I went on an African safari, then jumped back into politics. In 1912 I ran for President on a Progressive ticket. To reporters I once remarked that I felt as fit as a bull moose, the name of my new party.

My route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent me to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, I improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.

In 1912, when the Republicans renominated me, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

President Roosevelt made me Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that I should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated me the next year.

After the Presidency, I served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made me Chief Justice of the United States, a position I held until just before my death in 1930. To me, the appointment was my greatest honor and later I wrote, “I don’t remember that I ever was President.”

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, I earned my doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 I married Ellen Louise Axson.

I was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states’ rights. In the three-way election I received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote.

I maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices.

I went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims–the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish “A general association of nations…affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”

After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, I went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. I later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations. But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

Against the warnings of my doctors, I made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the Versailles Treaty. Exhausted, I suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by my second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, I lived until 1924.

An Ohio admirer, Harry Daugherty, began to promote me for the 1920 Republican nomination because, he later explained, “He looked like a President.” Thus a group of Senators, taking control of the 1920 Republican Convention when the principal candidates deadlocked, turned to me. I won the Presidential election by an unprecedented landslide of 60 percent of the popular vote.

By 1923 the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity, and newspapers hailed me as a wise statesman carrying out my campaign promise–“Less government in business and more business in government.”

I journeyed westward in the summer of 1923, taking with me my upright Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration,” I asked Hoover, “would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?” Hoover urged publishing it, but I feared the political repercussions. I did not live to find out how the public would react to the scandals of my administration. In August of 1923, I died in San Francisco of a heart attack.

Both my dry Yankee wit and his frugality with words became legendary. My wife, Grace Goodhue, recounted that a young woman sitting next to me at a dinner party confided to me she had bet she could get at least three words of conversation from me. Without looking at her I quietly retorted, “You lose.”

In 1928, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, I issued the most famous of my laconic statements, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.”

After the United States entered the World War I, President Wilson appointed me head of the Food Administration. I succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed.

After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, I became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. I said then: “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” My election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.

Over the years, I wrote many articles and books, one of which I was working on when I died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964.

Following the example of my fifth cousin, whom I greatly admired, I entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. I served in the New York Senate in 1910, as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and I was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when I was 39, disaster hit and I was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, I fought to regain the use of my legs, particularly through swimming.

In 1928 I became Governor of New York.

By March of my first year as President there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In my first “hundred days,” I proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against my New Deal program. I responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, I directed organization of the Nation’s manpower and resources for global war.

As the Second World War drew to a close, my health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, I died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

I went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, I married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

As President, I made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. I, after consultations with my advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 I witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

I presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. It became known as the Fair Deal.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, I asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears my name–the __________ Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for my Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe.

When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, I created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, I was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, I conferred promptly with my military advisers. There was, I wrote, “complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it.”

Deciding not to run again, I retired to Independence, Mo; at age 88, I died December 26, 1972, after a stubborn fight for life.

After the war, I became President of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to my headquarters near Paris persuaded me to run for President in 1952.

Suddenly, in September 1955, I suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks I left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors reported my recovery. In November I was elected for his second term.

As desegregation of schools began, I sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court; I also ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces. “There must be no second class citizens in this country,” I wrote.

Before I left office in January 1961, for my farm in Gettysburg, I urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. Both themes remained timely and urgent when I died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.

I became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. I married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, I wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In 1956 I almost gained the Democratic nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched my television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, I became the first Roman Catholic President.

My Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: “Ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.”

Shortly after my inauguration, I permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland. The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro was a failure.

When Russians sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba and was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, I imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail.

In 1937 I campaigned successfully for the House of Representatives on a New Deal platform, effectively aided by my wife, the former Claudia “Lady Bird” Taylor, whom I had married in 1934.

On November 22, 1963 I was sworn in as President.

In 1964, I won the Presidency with 61 percent of the vote and had the widest popular margin in American history–more than 15,000,000 votes.

The Great Society program became my agenda for Congress: aid to education, attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, removal of obstacles to the right to vote.

Under me, the country made spectacular explorations of space in a program I had championed since its start. When three astronauts successfully orbited the moon, I congratulated them: “You’ve taken … all of us, all over the world, into a new era. . . . ”

A crisis arose from Viet Nam. Despite my efforts to end Communist aggression and achieve a settlement, fighting continued. Controversy over the war had become acute when I limited the bombing of North Viet Nam in order to initiate negotiations.

I startled the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election so that I might devote my full efforts, unimpeded by politics, to the quest for peace in Viet Nam.

My accomplishments while in office included revenue sharing, the end of the draft, new anticrime laws, and a broad environmental program. One of the most dramatic events of my first term occurred in 1969, when American astronauts made the first moon landing.

During visits to Beijing and Moscow, I reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. My summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons.

In January 1973, I announced an accord with North Viet Nam to end American involvement in Indochina.

My Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria.

As a result of scandals in Maryland, my Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned in 1973. I nominated, and Congress approved, House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford as Vice President.

Faced with what seemed almost certain impeachment, I announced on August 8, 1974, that I would resign the next day to begin “that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1913, I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I starred on the University of Michigan football team, then went to Yale, where I served as assistant coach while earning my law degree.

A few weeks before my election to Congress in 1948, I married Elizabeth Bloomer. We have four children: Michael, John, Steven, and Susan.

As President, I tried to calm earlier controversies by granting the former President a full pardon. My nominee for Vice President, former Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, was the second person to fill that office by appointment.

At the Democratic Convention, I was nominated on the first ballot. I chose Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as my running mate. I won by 297 electoral votes to 241 for my opponent.

I sought to improve the environment. My expansion of the national park system included protection of 103 million acres of Alaskan lands. To increase human and social services, I created the Department of Education, bolstered the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to Government jobs.

In the Middle East, through the Camp David agreement, I helped bring amity between Egypt and Israel. I succeeded in obtaining ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Building upon the work of predecessors, I established full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and completed negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union.

The seizure as hostages of the U. S. embassy staff in Iran dominated the news during the last 14 months of my administration. The consequences of Iran’s holding Americans captive, together with continuing inflation at home, contributed to my defeat after 1 term in office.

From my first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, we had two children, Maureen and Michael. Maureen passed away in 2001. In 1952 I married Nancy Davis and we had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott.

I won the Republican Presidential nomination and chose as his running mate former Texas Congressman and United Nations Ambassador George Bush.

Only 69 days after my inauguration I was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. My grace and wit during the dangerous incident caused my popularity to soar.

A renewal of national self-confidence helped me win a second term with an unprecedented number of electoral votes. My victory turned away Democratic challengers Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

In foreign policy, I sought to achieve “peace through strength.” During my two terms I increased defense spending 35 percent, but sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, I negotiated a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

I declared war against international terrorism, sending American bombers against Libya after evidence came out that Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub.

By ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, I maintained the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the _________ Doctrine, I gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa.

I married Barbara Pierce. We had six children– George, Robin (who died as a child), John (known as Jeb), Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy.

At Yale University I excelled both in sports and in my studies; I was captain of the baseball team and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. After graduation I embarked on a career in the oil industry of West Texas.

Before my Presidency, I was appointed to a series of high-level positions: Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Chief of the U. S. Liaison Office in the People’s Republic of China, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

I won the Republican nomination for President and, with Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as my running mate, I defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the general election.

I faced a dramatically changing world, as the Cold War ended after 40 bitter years, the Communist empire broke up, and the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union ceased to exist; and reformist President Mikhail Gorbachev, whom I had supported, resigned.

I sent American troops into Panama to overthrow the corrupt regime of General Manuel Noriega, who was threatening the security of the canal and the Americans living there. Noriega was brought to the United States for trial as a drug trafficker.

My greatest test came when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, then threatened to move into Saudi Arabia. Vowing to free Kuwait, I rallied the United Nations, the U. S. people, and Congress and sent 425,000 American troops. They were joined by 118,000 troops from allied nations. After weeks of air and missile bombardment, the 100-hour land battle dubbed Desert Storm routed Iraq’s million-man army.

Despite unprecedented popularity from my military and diplomatic triumphs, I was unable to withstand discontent at home from a faltering economy, rising violence in inner cities, and continued high deficit spending. I lost my bid for reelection to Democrat William Clinton.

I excelled as a student and as a saxophone player and once considered becoming a professional musician. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, I met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led me to enter a life of public service.

I graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. I received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics.

I was defeated in my campaign for Congress in 1974. The next year I married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, our only child, was born.

I was elected state Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, I regained the office four years later, and served until I defeated the incumbent President and third party candidate Ross Perot.

My running mate was Tennessee’s Senator Albert Gore Jr.

As a result of issues surrounding personal indiscretions with a young woman White House intern, I was the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. I was tried in the Senate and found not guilty of the charges brought against me.

I pledged during my State of the Union Address that the United States would help the Iraqi people establish a fully democratic government because the victory of freedom in Iraq would strengthen a new ally in the war on terror, bring hope to a troubled region, and lift a threat from the lives of future generations.

I was born in New Haven, Connecticut while my father was attending Yale University after service in World War II. I also graduated from Yale and received a business degree from Harvard. I returned home, met and married Laura Welch, a teacher and librarian. We had twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, now out of college and pursuing careers.

When I, at the age of 54, became the president of the United States, it was only the second time in American history that a president’s son went on to the White House.

During the early part of my campaign for the White House, I enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls over my opponent, But the gap closed as the election approached and though he finally won the popular vote by 543,895 votes, victory or loss of the presidency hinged on Florida’s electoral votes. That struggle through recounts and lawsuits worked its way to the Supreme Court. In the end I won the electoral count 271 to 266.

I was challenged in my re-election bid by Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry. The election was a good contest, but my contention that the invasion of Iraq had made the world more secure against terrorism won the national political debate. I was re-elected with 51 percent to 48 percent.

I and my wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

16th Amendment - Permits Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the various states or basing it on the United States Census.

17th Amendment - Establishes the direct election of United States Senators by popular vote.

18th Amendment - Prohibited the manufacturing or sale of alcohol within the United States.

19th Amendment - Prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on sex.

20th Amendment - Changes the date on which the terms of the president and vice president and of members of Congress end and begin (to January 20 and January 3 respectively).

21st Amendment - Repeals the 18th Amendment and makes it a federal offense to transport or import intoxicating liquors into U.S. states and territories where such transport or importation is prohibited by the laws of those states and territories.

22nd Amendment - Limits the number of times that a person can be elected president: a person cannot be elected president more than twice, and a person who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected cannot be elected more than once.

23rd Amendment - Grants the District of Columbia electors (the number of electors being equal to the least populous state) in the Electoral College.

24th Amendment - Prohibits the revocation of voting rights due to the non-payment of a poll tax or any other tax.

25th Amendment - Addresses succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities.

26th Amendment - Prohibits the denial of the right of US citizens, eighteen years of age or older, to vote on account of age.

27th Amendment - Delays laws affecting Congressional salary from taking effect until after the next election of representatives.