Josiah Bartlet (born 1942) was President of the United States from 20 January 1999 to 20 January 2007, preceding Matt Santos.
Biography[]
Josiah Bartlet was born in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1942, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Continental Congress delegate Josiah Bartlett. He was brought up in his mother's Catholic faith. Bartlet was educated at Harvard, Yale, Williams College, and Notre Dame, and he considered becoming a Catholic priest. He instead met his wife there and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in American Studies and a minor in theology. After Notre Dame, he was educated at the London School of Economics, and he received a doctorate from the school.
Bartlet became a tenured economics professor at Dartmouth University, and he entered politics in the early 1970s. In 1971, he was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, serving until 1981, and he served on the New Hampshire State Board of Education from 1981 to 1989. He defeated Republican Party politician Elliot Roush to enter the US House of Representatives in 1989, serving until 1995. That year, he was elected Governor, serving two terms. In the fall of 1997, his best friend, Leo McGarry, convinced him to run for President. Although initially a dark horse, he defeated the frontrunner, Texas senator John Hoynes, to win the Democratic nomination, and he made Hoynes his running mate. He won a close election with 303 lectoral votes to the Republicans' 235.
Presidency[]
Bartlet's accomplishments as President included nominating the first Hispanic US Supreme Court justice and the first female Chief Justice, a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine, the creation of millions of new jobs, proving strong support for alternative energy, and orchestrating a Social Security reform plan. He pursued a bold interventionist foreign policy doctrine, intervening in Equatorial Kundu in response to a genocide there. In 2000, he was shot in the back at a town hall in Rosslyn, Virginia, with two white supremacist gunmen attempting to assassinate him and his African-American personal aide Charlie Young, who was dating Bartlet's daughter. He also suffered from multiple sclerosis, and he was left temporarily paralyzed at one point from his disease. In 2007, he was succeeded as President by Democrat Matt Santos.