INDEPTH: US ELECTION 2004
The Candidates
CBC News Online | Updated Aug. 17, 2004

George W. Bush. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

George W. Bush was already an adult when his father George H.W. Bush became the 41st president of the United States – so he didn't grow up in the White House. He was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., and spent much of his youth in New England.

Bush attended Phillips Academy, a grand old boarding school in Andover, Mass., known for producing some of America's greats. There he played on the basketball team and was a member of the cheerleading squad. He was a popular student, known more for his charisma than his grades. He says his strengths were history, math and Spanish; English was a weak spot. He graduated in 1964, joining an alumni list that already included his father (1942), inventor Samuel Morse, and actors Humphrey Bogart (1920) and Jack Lemmon (1943).

Bush went on to Yale and by the time he graduated with a BA in history in 1968, America was embroiled in the Vietnam War. He, along with many people his age, was facing the potential of being drafted. With help from his father, Bush weathered the war from the relative safety of the Texas Air National Guard.

One year of that five-year stint in the National Guard has been the subject of much debate. Bush says he served with the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group of the Alabama Air National Guard from May 1972 to May 1973. But no one seems to remember seeing him there.

In 1973, he was given an early discharge from the National Guard, which allowed him to pursue an MBA from Harvard University. He was known as a dedicated student who had a penchant to party. In 1976, a year after his graduation, he was arrested for drunken driving, fined $150 and had his driving privileges suspended for a short while. A decade later, he decided to give up alcohol for good.

After earning his MBA, Bush settled in Texas and went into the oil business – but within a few years, his company went under. In 1989, he assembled partners and bought a share of the Texas Rangers baseball team and began honing the skills that would translate into a successful career in politics.

He ran for governor of Texas in 1994 and beat incumbent Ann Richards. He was re-elected in 1998, setting the stage for his run for the presidency in 2000. Bush was sworn into office as the 43rd president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2001, after a close, controversial win over Democrat Al Gore.

Despite having been the president's son, Bush successfully campaigned as a Washington outsider. Raised in wealth and privilege, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, he has acquired the image of a plain-speaking Texan who bootstrapped his way up.

Before he became president, Bush had been seen as weak on the foreign front. Canadian comic Rick Mercer had the president-to-be believing that Canada's prime minister was a man named Jean Poutine.

But less than nine months after taking office, Bush's presidency became all about foreign affairs. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush declared a "war on terror." Before American forces invaded Afghanistan, Bush issued an ultimatum. "Full warning [of the strike] has been given and time is running out. The United States has presented a clear choice to every nation: stand with the civilized world or stand with the terrorists."

A year-and-a-half later, the message was repeated in the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq. It was the second time in just over a decade that the U.S. had invaded Iraq – both operations ultimately led by a commander-in-chief named Bush.

The president's approval ratings were high as the U.S. went after Saddam Hussein on intelligence that former CIA director George Tenet said proved Iraq stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.

On May 1, 2003, Bush stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared that major hostilities in Iraq had ended. Since then, more than 700 American military personnel have died in Iraq. And support for the Iraq war has been steadily slipping.

On the economic front, the Bush administration has come under criticism as well. In 2003, Bush cut taxes again, despite a deficit that's ballooning to record proportions.

Bush is married to Laura Welch Bush, a former teacher. They have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna.

Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney. (AP Photo/Charles P. Saus)

Dick Cheney knows his way around Washington. He has a long history in the backrooms of power as well as on the floor of Congress. He's become known as one of the most hands-on and perhaps the most powerful vice-president ever.

Cheney was born in Lincoln, Neb., on Jan. 30, 1941, and grew up in Casper, Wyo. He earned his bachelor's and master's of arts degrees from the University of Wyoming. His career in public service began in 1969 when he joined the Nixon administration, serving in a number of positions including as an adviser to current Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Cheney served on the transition team when Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in August 1974. In November 1975, he was named assistant to the president and White House chief of staff, a position he held throughout the remainder of the Ford Administration.

After Ford lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, Cheney returned to Wyoming and private life. That didn't last long. In 1978, he went after the state's only seat in the House of Representatives. He won that election – and was re-elected five times after that.

By 1988, he was the House minority whip. In March 1989, the first President Bush named Cheney his secretary of defence, a post he held through the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War.

In 1995, Cheney accepted the job of CEO of Texas-based Halliburton Corporation, a giant multinational company that specializes in energy and infrastructure construction. His years at that company have come under intense scrutiny.

During his five years as CEO, Cheney nearly doubled the size of Halliburton's government contracts to a total of $2.3 billion. The company has also landed $5 billion worth of contracts for rebuilding Iraq. Cheney insists he's had no ties with the company since he agreed to be George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

But some of the company's dealings while he was CEO are being investigated. There are allegations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid millions of dollars in bribes to Nigerian officials during Cheney's tenure as CEO. If the payments were made and Cheney approved them, he could be guilty of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

As Bush's vice-president, Cheney has been his boss's strongest supporter – and a strong proponent of the invasion of Iraq. On March 16, 2003, he told NBC's Meet the Press that Saddam Hussein "has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." There have been no signs yet that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons – or any other weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney has been dogged by heart problems. He had three minor heart attacks before he was 50, quadruple bypass surgery in 1988, and had a minor procedure to repair a stent in one of his arteries in the early months of his vice-presidency.

Unlike many vice-presidents, Cheney has regular weekly working lunches with the president. He's also in charge of the administration's energy policy, which calls for exploring wider use of nuclear and fossil fuels.

Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne Ann Vincent, in 1964. They have grown daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, three granddaughters and one grandson.

The Democrats
John Kerry

John Kerry. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

John Kerry won primaries in nine of 10 states on Super Tuesday, March 2, 2004, locking up the Democratic party nomination for the U.S. presidential election in November.

Despite his Irish-sounding name, Kerry's background is actually Jewish. His paternal grandfather, Fritz Kohn, was a Czech-born Jew who converted to Catholicism, along with his wife, before the couple immigrated to the U.S. They found the name Kerry on a map of Ireland.

Kerry attended Yale, as Bush did, and both were members of the school's secret social club, Skull and Bones. Kerry enlisted in the U.S. navy in 1966, and served as an officer in Vietnam.

He was awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service, but after returning to the United States, he spoke out against his government's Vietnam policy. His military record made his message hard to ignore.

In April 1971, Kerry and hundreds of other Vietnam veterans protested in front of the Capitol Building in Washington against the ongoing conflict. Many of the veterans threw the medals and ribbons they had earned in Vietnam over the fence in an act of defiance and, to some Americans, it was an insult to the sacrifice of other American soldiers. Kerry, too, threw his ribbons away, as well as medals belonging to veterans who didn't attend the protest. But Kerry kept his own medals.

The same month, Kerry testified before the Senate foreign relations committee. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" he asked.

After Vietnam, Kerry became a lawyer and eventually entered politics. He has served as a senator for Massachusetts for nearly 20 years.

Republicans have tried to use Kerry's past against him, to portray him as a soft, antiwar liberal. At least two pictures of Kerry and Jane Fonda (dubbed "Hanoi Jane" for her tour of North Vietnam in 1972) at Vietnam protests have appeared on the internet. One is genuine, showing Fonda and Kerry in the same crowd at a peace rally, metres away from each other. The other, depicting Kerry and Fonda on stage together, is a fake.

Kerry doesn't talk about his antiwar past much, though it threw him into the media spotlight and spurred him to launch a bid for Congress in 1972 (he lost). He does, however, mock Bush for his stint in the National Guard during the Vietnam conflict, especially after questions about his service record there surfaced. He has accused Bush of playing dress-up when he appeared on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of military action in Iraq under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished."

"That wasn't even Mission Legitimately Attempted," Kerry said, adding that, unlike Bush, he knows something about aircraft carriers "for real."

Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz, who inherited the Heinz family ketchup fortune after her first husband, Senator John Heinz, was killed in a plane crash. Teresa Heinz Kerry is unlike the wives of most presidential hopefuls. She speaks her mind and does not sit in her husband's shadow. She campaigns on his behalf, setting her own schedule, maintaining her own staff in Washington and calling on her own private plane when she needs it.

She raised a lot of eyebrows for telling a writer for a right-wing newspaper to "shove it" at an event on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.

Kerry has two daughters from his first marriage and three stepchildren from his marriage to Heinz Kerry.

John Edwards

John Edwards. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch)

John Edwards was in the hunt for the top spot on the Democratic ticket until March 2, 2004 – Super Tuesday, in the series of mini-elections called primaries. He didn't take any of the 10 states up for grabs that night and had only won his home state of North Carolina. But Edwards came second in more primaries and caucuses than any of the other candidates.

Edwards was born on June 10, 1953, in Seneca, S.C., and grew up in Robbins, N.C., where his parents were mill workers.

He graduated from North Carolina State University with an honours degree in textiles. He went on to law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earned a degree in 1977 and met his wife, Elizabeth, a fellow law student. He went into private practice and established a reputation as a successful trial lawyer, winning settlements or verdicts in 60 cases in the 1990s amounting to more than $150 million.

Edwards was elected to the Senate in 1998, beating a Republican incumbent. His folksy-southern style and his polished courtroom skills soon won him attention in Congress. His lawyer's background helped senators find their way through the Clinton impeachment hearings.

By 2000, Edwards had established himself on the political radar screens to the point that he made Al Gore's short-list of potential vice-presidential candidates. But with only two years in the Senate under his belt, he was seen as too inexperienced for such a position.

By 2003, Edwards felt he was ready for the national stage. He announced his bid for the presidency from a closed factory, where his father once worked and where he had swept floors to earn money to go to college. He said his working-class roots gave him all the experience he needed.

Still, some Democrats remained concerned that Edwards' single term in the Senate was not enough for a potential vice-president, a person who would take over if the president died, resigned or was removed from office. Kerry is said to have been convinced through private meetings, Edwards' campaign efforts since the primaries ended – and pressure from senior Democrats who wanted his enthusiasm and youth on the ticket.

During the primaries, Republicans tried to label Edwards as a liberal and a money-chasing trial lawyer. He countered that he represented ordinary people wronged by big businesses and heartless insurance companies. He said his job was to give those ordinary people a "fair shake."

Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth Anania Edwards, had four children. Their first child, Wade, died in a traffic accident in 1996 at the age of 16. Their oldest daughter is studying at Princeton University. Their other two children are three and six years old.

Independent
Ralph Nader/Peter Camejo

Ralph Nader. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Many Democrats still see Ralph Nader as the man who put George Bush into the White House in 2000. They say he siphoned off votes that would have gone to Al Gore.

Nader sees it otherwise. He points to a Democratic exit poll, which showed that Nader's votes came 25 per cent from Republicans and 38 per cent from Democrats. The rest of his votes came from people who don't usually vote, but who only voted because Nader was running. He also points out that it's not the job of third-party candidates to make sure that a candidate from either of the two major parties wins.

Nader was born in Winsted, Conn., on Feb. 27, 1934. In 1958, he received a law degree from Harvard University and went to work as a lawyer.

He gained international attention in 1965 with the publication of his first book, Unsafe at any Speed, a scathing indictment of the auto industry and the lack of safety standards in North American cars.

Nader quickly built a reputation as a dogged consumer advocate. He founded many organizations including the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, and the Clean Water Action Project.

Over the past few years, Nader has been lecturing on the growing "imperialism" of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power. On entering the 2004 election campaign, Nader said he wants to take on the Republicans and Democrats because they've turned Washington into "corporate occupied territory."

In the 1996 and 2000 campaigns, Nader ran under the Green party banner. He decided to run as an independent in 2004 because he said the party refused to commit to endorsing a presidential ticket early enough in the process. Nader argued that would make it difficult to get on the ballot in all 50 states.

Getting on the ballot involves collecting petitions containing a certain number of signatures. That number varies from state to state.

Nader's running mate is Peter Camejo, a financier, businessman, political activist, environmentalist, author and one of the founders of the socially responsible investing movement. Camejo is chair of the Board of Progressive Asset Management of California, an investment firm he founded in 1987.

In 1976, Camejo ran for president as a socialist. He also ran under the Green party banner in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election.

The Green Party
David Cobb/Pat LaMarche

David Cobb. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

In 2000, the Green party had a relatively high profile with Ralph Nader as its candidate. In 2004, the profile will be somewhat subdued.

The party nominated a relatively unknown Texas lawyer, David Cobb, as its presidential candidate. Cobb was the party's lawyer until he went after the nomination. In 1992, he was the Green party candidate for Texas attorney general.

Cobb lectures and facilitates "Rethinking Corporations/ Rethinking Democracy" seminars and workshops across the United States. The seminars focus on how corporations have become unelected governing institutions.

Pat LaMarche hosts a radio program in Maine, where she's known for her "liberal" views. She ran for governor of the state in 1998 under the Green Independent Party banner. She attracted seven per cent of the vote in a campaign with a $20,000 budget.

---

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in new window.

Indepth: 43rd U.S. President
Website: George W. Bush, President of the United States
Website: John Kerry for President
Website: Nader for President
Website: Green Party of the United States

---

^TOP