George W. Bush

In 1986, the day after his fortieth birthday, George W. Bush quit drinking. He has described waking up hungover after a celebration and deciding he was done, and he has said that without that decision he would never have become governor of Texas, let alone president. It was a turning point made privately, by a man whose public life was about to begin in earnest.

The tension between a private self and a public persona is written into his chart. Bush was born at 7:26 a.m. on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, a time from his birth certificate, while his father was a student at Yale. The early-morning hour puts his Sun in Cancer in the twelfth house, alongside Saturn, also in Cancer. Cancer is the sign of family, loyalty and home; the twelfth house is the private, hidden end of the chart, associated with inner life and with things that happen out of view. A Cancer Sun in the twelfth suggests that the deepest loyalties, to family above all, sit behind the public figure.

For Bush, family was also destiny. He was the eldest son of George H. W. Bush, who would become the 41st president, and grandson of a U.S. senator. He grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas, went to Yale and then Harvard Business School, the first president with an MBA, and spent years in the oil business before becoming a co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Leo rises in his chart, with Mercury, Venus and Pluto all in Leo in the first house. Leo is warm, confident and theatrical, and a crowded first house makes personality the calling card. That fits the public Bush: the nicknames, the plainspoken style, the ease with crowds that made him a formidable campaigner, first for governor of Texas in 1994 and then for president in 2000, an election decided only after a disputed Florida recount and the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore.

His presidency was defined by crisis: the September 11 attacks in 2001, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the 2008 financial collapse. It also produced PEPFAR, the global AIDS relief program credited with saving millions of lives.

The Moon is in Libra in the third house, with Jupiter also in Libra there. The third house governs siblings, neighbors and everyday communication, and a Libra Moon looks for harmony and good relations. Bush has remained close to his siblings, and in retirement he has shown a gentler, more conciliatory side, including an unlikely public friendship with Michelle Obama.

He also took up painting after leaving office, and in 2017 published Portraits of Courage, a book of his paintings of military veterans. The private Cancer in the twelfth house, it seems, found a quieter way to speak.