George W. Bush served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He is the eldest son of George H.W. Bush, the 41st U.S. President. Barack Obama is the current 44th President of the United States. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School and was the first African American U.S. President. Both presidents dealt with major events during their terms including the September 11th terrorist attacks for Bush and the economic recession for Obama.

1. Bush and Obama

2. George Walker was born July 6, 1946) served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.Bush is the eldest son of President George H. W. Bush, who served as the 41st President, and Barbara Bush, making him one of only two American presidents to be the son of a preceding president. After graduating from Yale University in 1968, and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush worked in his family's oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and unsuccessfully ran for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. In a close and controversial election, Bush was elected President in 2000 as the Republican candidate, defeating then-Vice President Al Gore.Eight months into Bush's first term as president, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred. In response, Bush announced a global War on Terrorism, ordered an invasion of Afghanistan that same year and an invasion of Iraq in 2003. In addition to national security issues, Bush promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, and social security reform. He signed into law broad tax cuts, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors. His tenure saw national debates on immigration and Social Security. Bush successfully ran for re-election against Democratic Senator John Kerry in 2004, garnering 50.7% of the popular vote to his opponent's 48.3%. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from conservatives.George W. BushIn 2005, the Bush Administration dealt with widespread criticism over its handling of Hurricane Katrina. In December 2007, the United States entered its longest post-World War II recession. This prompted the Bush Administration to take more direct control of the economy, enacting multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system. Though Bush was popular within the U.S. for much of his first term, his popularity declined sharply during his second term

3. Mom & DadFollowing the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, George H. W. Bush decided to join the US Navy, so after graduating from Phillips Academy earlier in 1942, he became a naval aviator at the age of 18. After completing the 10-month course, he was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve at Corpus Christi, Texas on June 9, 1943, just three days before his 19th birthday, which made him the youngest naval aviator to that date.Barbara Bush was a popular First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993. She is one of my favorites, especially when she broke her leg while sledding with her grandkids!

4. In May 1968, George W. Bush was commissioned into the Texas Air National Guard. After two years of active-duty service while training, he was assigned to Houston, flying Convair F-102s out of Ellington Air Force Base. Critics, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Russ Baker, have alleged that Bush was favorably treated due to his father's political standing, citing his selection as a pilot despite his low pilot aptitude test scores and his irregular attendance. In June 2005, the United States Department of Defense released all the records of Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, which remain in its official archives.In late 1972 and early 1973, he drilled with the Alabama Air National Guard, having moved to Montgomery, Alabama to work on the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Winton M. Blount. In October 1973, Bush was discharged from the Texas Air National Guard and transferred to inactive duty in the Air Force Reserve. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force Reserve on November 21, 1974, at the end of his six-year service obligation.

5. September 11th or 9/11The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda members hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners.The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.2,973 victims and the 19 hijackers died as a result of the attacks. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 90 countries.

6. The September 11 attacks (often referred to as September 11th or 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksvillein rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.

7. The death toll of the attacks was 2,995, including the 19 hijackers. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries.

8. Photo of George W. Bush and Laura Bush visiting Shanksville on September 11, 2002. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that "the hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them” Others claim that there is no doubt the passengers breached the cockpit.

9. Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin LadenArabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن‎,was born March 10, 1957) is a member of the prominent Saudi bin Laden family and the founding leader of the terrorist organization a l-Qaeda, best known for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian targets. Bin Laden is on the American Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.Since 2001, Osama bin Laden and his organization have been major targets of the United States' War on Terror. Bin Laden and fellow Al-Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

10. Valiant firefighters raise Old Glory at Ground Zero

12. The Bush DoctrineThe Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of former United States president George W. Bush. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to secure itself from countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups, which was used to justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimesthat represented a potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate; a policy of spreading democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating terrorism; and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way.Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002

13. Barack Hussein Obama II born August 4, 1961 is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review and where he received a doctorate in law. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional lawat the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he ran for United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary election for the United States Senator from Illinois and his prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in November 2004.Obama's presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Obama is also the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.Barack Obama

14. Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 at Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, to Stanley Ann Dunham, an American of predominantly English descent from Wichita, Kansas, and Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang’omaKogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya Colony. Obama is the first President to have been born in Hawaii. Obama's parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where his father was a foreign student on scholarship. The couple married on February 2, 1961, but separated when Barack Sr. went to Harvard University on scholarship, and divorced in 1964.Obama Sr. remarried and returned to Kenya, visiting Barack in Hawaii only once, in 1971. He died in an automobile accident in 1982.After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, who was attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto, a military leader in Soetoro's home country, came to power in 1967, all Indonesian students studying abroad were recalled, and the family moved to the Menteng neighborhood of Jakarta. From ages six to ten, Obama attended local schools in Jakarta, including Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School. During this time period, Obama was known as "Barry Soetoro" which was his childhood nickname and his stepfather's surname. He continued to use "Barry" into college.

15. In 1971, Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, and attended PunahouSchool, a private college preparatory school, from the fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. She finally returned to Hawaii in 1994 and lived there for one year, before dying of ovarian cancer.He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

16. Five living PresidentsThe remaining presidents as of 2006 since the death of Gerald Fordand the new President. The Presidents (left to right) are: George H. W. Bush, PresidentBarack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter.