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George W Bush has come a long way

Washington (AFP) - George W Bush, who will become the 43rd president of the United States, has purged a deep family humiliation by seizing back the White House, snatched from his father by Bill Clinton in 1992.

His victory, after Democratic rival Al Gore conceded the election Wednesday night, cements a transformation, from reckless baby boomer to born-again Christian and middle-aged pillar of establishment.

Bush's history and campaign rhetoric positioned him as the man to lead members of his generation away from the frivolity of their youth and out of the long shadow cast by the World War II heroism of their parents.

Although a relative novice in the power game, Bush, the Governor of Texas, comes from rich political stock and inherited a slick party machine left idling when George Bush Sr was bundled out of office.

'W', as he is affectionately known by supporters, comes across as easy-going and sometimes playful, in stark contrast to the starchy, patrician image adopted by his father.

But his nonchalance and apparent disdain for intellectualism hide a fiercely competitive streak and fidelity to core beliefs, evidenced in his refusal to give an inch to Al Gore in a tortuous legal battle after the inconclusive election, as well as his unshakeable belief in the Texas death penalty.

By emerging from the month-long fog of litigation as victor, 54-year-old Bush is faced with a fractured political landscape which will test to the full his claim that he is skilled at uniting bitter political rivals.

He must also prove that his mantra of "compassionate conservatism", coined to place him on the political middle ground away from radical Congressional Republicans, is a viable concept -- not just a campaign slogan.

Drawing on a family history which boasts a recent president, a respected senator (late grandfather Prescott), another current governor (brother Jeb in Florida), Bush styled himself as ready to restore honour to Washington.

The unspoken rubric of his campaign was that Clinton, the first of the post-war generation to reach the White House had squandered his chance and sullied his office with a litany of scandals.

"Our generation has a chance to reclaim essential values -- to show we have grown up before we grow old," Bush said when he accepted his party's nomination at the Republican convention in July.

That line might have been a character sketch of Bush, who admits to a wild and prolonged youth in which he drank far too much.

But like Shakespeare's Henry V, who infuriated his ruling father with riotous living but emerged from lowlife culture as a leader, Bush underwent a personal transformation.

Bush credits his change of life to wife Laura, a Texas librarian with whom he has 18-year-old twin daughters and who anchored his rise through politics.

"You can judge a man by the company he keeps," Bush said in every campaign speech, referring fondly to his wife.

But despite his heritage, Bush has been forced to confront claims that he has insufficient gravity to be president, woefully lacking in knowledge of foreign affairs and weighty domestic policy.

To offset that attack, Bush surrounded himself with respected members of his father's circle, including former Gulf War general Colin Powell and his vice presidential nominee Richard Cheney.

But even that caused him problems, leaving him with the task of confounding the ridicule of commentators and the media, who charge he is merely a puppet of a Republican party establishment desperate for power.

George W Bush, the oldest of six children, was born in New Haven, Connecticut on July 6, 1946 and spent his early days in dusty Midland, Texas, where his father began a lucrative career in the oil industry.

After an idyllic Texas childhood, Bush studied at Yale and Harvard Business School, but was not considered an academic high riser.

He served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard, exposing him to later accusations he used family connections to escape the Vietnam war.

After following his father into the oil industry, Bush then headed a coalition that bought the Texas Rangers baseball team, a period of life he appears to have enjoyed immensely.

Bush then turned to politics, defeating fearsome Texas Governor Ann Richards in 1994 and laying to rest his own, disastrous run for Congress in 1978.

He was re-elected in 1998, by which time he had already emerged front-runner for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination.

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