George W. Bush Trivia
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48 free George W. Bush trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
George W. Bush is the only president with an MBA, the most recent to have served in the military, and the first since 1888 to win the White House while losing the popular vote. He was head cheerleader at Andover, co-owned the Texas Rangers, quit drinking the day after his 40th birthday, and after leaving office took up oil painting because of a Winston Churchill essay. In between came the most turbulent presidency of the early twenty-first century. This George W. Bush trivia quiz runs 48 questions across his whole life: New Haven and Midland, Yale and Harvard Business School, the Texas Air National Guard, Arbusto Energy and the Rangers, the loss to Kent Hance, two terms as Texas governor, the 2000 recount and Bush v. Gore, Dick Cheney, September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D, PEPFAR, Hurricane Katrina, Roberts and Alito, the 2008 crisis and TARP, the shoe-throwing incident, Decision Points, Portraits of Courage and life in Dallas. Easy questions come first; the last third is for people who remember Harriet Miers. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's biography of Bush, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question. Fans of this quiz should also try our US presidents and Barack Obama quizzes.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01George W. Bush was which number president of the United States?
43rd
The 43rd president is the son of the 41st, and the numbers stuck as family shorthand: his 2014 biography of his father is titled 41: A Portrait of My Father.
Q 02Where was Bush when an aide whispered that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center?
In a Florida classroom
In a Florida classroom, he stayed in his seat while the reading lesson went on, and later wrote that he had not wanted to rattle the kids.
Q 03Bush was born in 1946 in which city?
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut, was home only because his father was a student at Yale; when George was two the family left for the oilfields of West Texas.
Q 04Bush's paternal grandfather Prescott Bush held which office?
U.S. senator from Connecticut
U.S. senator from Connecticut was a second career: Prescott Bush spent decades as a Wall Street banker, then won a vacant seat in a 1952 special election in his fifties.
Q 05Bush's sister Robin died at the age of three in 1953 of what?
Leukemia
Leukemia was diagnosed in the spring and she died within months; George, just seven, had not been told how ill his sister was.
Q 06At Phillips Academy in Andover, Bush held which role in his senior year?
Head cheerleader
Head cheerleader at what was then an all-boys school, he was better known on campus for organizing an intramural stickball league.
Q 07Bush graduated from Yale in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in which subject?
History
History was his major and his grades were modest: back at Yale as president in 2001, he told the C students that they too could be president.
Q 08Like his father and grandfather before him, Bush was tapped at Yale for which secret society?
Skull and Bones
Skull and Bones swears its members to secrecy, and Bush played along: his campaign memoir says only that the society is so secret he can't say anything more.
Q 09Bush was the first U.S. president to hold which degree?
An MBA
An MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975 made him the first president with one, a path he took after the University of Texas law school turned him down.
Q 10In 2006 Bush used his first veto to block wider federal funding of which research?
Embryonic stem cells
Embryonic stem cells were the issue: he went five and a half years without a veto, then blocked a bill to fund work on new cell lines.
Q 11Bush was suspended from flying in 1972 for failing to do what?
Take a scheduled physical exam
He did not take a scheduled physical exam, an annual must for military pilots, while working on a Senate campaign in Alabama, and he never flew for the Guard again.
Q 12Bush gave the small oil company he founded in 1977 which Spanish name?
Arbusto Energy
Arbusto Energy took its name from the Spanish for bush; it later became Bush Exploration and merged with Spectrum 7 in 1984.
Q 13Bush was managing general partner of which Major League Baseball team?
Texas Rangers
Q 21Bush lost the 2000 New Hampshire primary to which senator?
John McCain
John McCain, the Arizona maverick, won over the state's independents, but Bush hit back in South Carolina and McCain was out of the race by March.
Q 22Dick Cheney joined Bush's 2000 ticket while holding which job in the campaign?
Head of the VP search committee
Head of the VP search committee was the job he had offered to do, and after he had vetted the field the former defense secretary ended up on the ticket himself.
Q 23By how many votes was Bush finally declared the winner of Florida in 2000, out of about six million cast?
537
The Texas Rangers made his name across the state, and when the team was sold in 1998 his small stake paid out about $15 million.
Q 14Bush lost his first race, for Congress in 1978, after his Democratic opponent painted him as what?
A Northeastern outsider
A Northeastern outsider was the charge: radio ads set Kent Hance's Texas schooling against Bush's Andover, Yale and Harvard, and Hance won with 53 percent.
Q 15Bush defeated which incumbent Democratic governor to win Texas in 1994?
Ann Richards
Ann Richards had mocked his father as born with a silver foot in his mouth, and the popular governor was the favorite until the son upset her in 1994.
Q 16Which famous Bushism was never said by Bush, but came from Will Ferrell playing him on Saturday Night Live?
Strategery
Strategery was invented for a sketch in October 2000, yet Bush's own advisers liked it so much that they named their White House planning team the Strategery Group.
Q 17Which of Bush's siblings was elected governor of Florida on the night of his own 1998 landslide?
Jeb
Jeb won Florida that night, which meant that two years later the state that decided the presidency was governed by the winner's brother.
Q 18As governor, Bush signed a 1999 law that helped Texas become the leading U.S. producer of what?
Wind-generated electricity
Wind-generated electricity took off after the former oilman signed a 1999 law making Texas power retailers buy renewable energy, and the state went on to out-produce every other.
Q 19Bush presided over how many executions during his time as governor?
152
152 went ahead in his six years, then a record for a modern governor, and he commuted just one death sentence, after doubts that Henry Lee Lucas had committed that murder.
Q 20Bush ran for president in 2000 branding himself as what kind of conservative?
Compassionate
Compassionate was the label, and he acted on it fast: in his second week as president he set up a White House office to help churches and charities deliver social services.
537 votes out of nearly six million carried all 25 of Florida's electors, which put him on 271, one more than he needed to become president.
Q 24Which body ended the 2000 Florida recount?
U.S. Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the count by five votes to four on 12 December 2000, and Al Gore conceded the next day while saying he strongly disagreed.
Q 25Before Bush, who was the last candidate to win the presidency despite losing the popular vote, back in 1888?
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison took the Electoral College in 1888 while Grover Cleveland won more votes, and Cleveland got even four years later by beating him to win the White House back.
Q 26Bush's landmark 2002 education law was called what?
No Child Left Behind
No Child Left Behind tied federal school money to standards and testing, and it passed with help from an unlikely ally, the liberal senator Ted Kennedy.
Q 27Three days after 9/11, Bush addressed rescue workers at Ground Zero through what?
A megaphone
A megaphone was handed to him on the rubble, and when a worker shouted that he couldn't hear, Bush shot back, "I can hear you," and soon so would the attackers.
Q 28In his January 2002 State of the Union, Bush labelled which three countries an "axis of evil"?
Iraq, Iran and North Korea
Iraq, Iran and North Korea were accused of seeking weapons of mass destruction and arming to threaten world peace; just over a year later the first of them was invaded.
Q 29Bin Laden escaped U.S. forces in December 2001 after a battle in which mountainous region?
Tora Bora
Tora Bora's caves lie less than twenty miles from Pakistan and bin Laden knew them well; he slipped over the border and was not found for nearly a decade.
Q 30In May 2003 Bush declared major combat in Iraq over beneath a banner reading what?
Mission Accomplished
Mission Accomplished hung above him on the USS Abraham Lincoln just six weeks into the war; the fighting went on for years, and Bush later admitted the banner had sent the wrong message.