Doug Wead
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Doug Wead, presidential historian, philanthropist and public speaker was a Special Assistant to former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and is the author of over thirty books, including the New York Times best-seller All the Presidents’ Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of the First Families. He has authored a sequel which examines the childhoods of U.S. Presidents, The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders.
In 1979, Mr. Wead joined entertainer Pat Boone and Dan O’Neil in co-founding Mercy Corps which has grown to become one of the world’s premier relief and humanitarian organizations. It has distributed more than $500 million of food and medicine around the world. In 1991, Mr. Wead’s personal donation became the seed money that helped launch a Mercy Corps economic recovery program in the newly formed Republic of Kazakhstan. [1] It has resulted in a food and housing program that has affected millions of citizens.
In the 1980’s, Mr. Wead organized the National Charity Awards. [2] Ten First Ladies and Presidents have served as honorary chairmen of this prestigious event including Lady Bird Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, George H. W. and Barbara Bush and George W. and Laura Bush. The event has involved some of the nation’s most celebrated business and entertainment personalities from William Shatner to Coretta Scott King. There have been five White House receptions or special briefings for participants of the Awards event, occurring in both Democrat and Republican administrations.
From 1984 to 2000, Doug Wead served as an on and off adviser to both George H. W. Bush (the father) and George W. Bush (the son). In 1988, Mr. Wead teamed up with George W. in successfully galvanizing the religious right behind the presidential campaign of the elder Bush, surprising many in the GOP who had surmised that the vice president would receive only tepid support from evangelicals. The Senior Bush polled 81% of the 1988 evangelical vote. Mr. Wead also was an active behind-the-scenes player in campaign 2000, receiving some credit for George W.'s victory in the Iowa straw polls of 1999. (source: “Wead Helps Keep the Faith in Politics” by Doug Burton, Insight Magazine, May 14, 2001) Time magazine called Mr. Wead an insider in the Bush family orbit and “the man who coined the phrase Compassionate Conservative.” (source: Time magazine, Nov. 6, 2000, p. 63.)
In February 2005, after an article in the New York Times, Mr. Wead acknowledged that he had secretly tape recorded conversations with President George W. Bush. Mr. Wead contended that he began tape recording these conversations in 1998, in order to create a record of Bush, then Governor of Texas, as a historical figure and that it was his intention that they never see the light of day. Only a few minutes of the nine hours of conversations were made public, in them Bush is heard discussing potential 2000 presidential foes such as John McCain and Steve Forbes, and hints that he had smoked marijuana, but would not admit to it for fear of becoming a bad role model for children.
Mr. Wead asserted his tapes were not intended to hurt the president politically, nor to improve Mr. Wead's own marketability. He noted that, had those been his motives, he could have achieved them much more effectively had he released the tapes prior to the 2000 or 2004 election. Less than a week after the existence of the tapes became known, Wead spurned million dollar offers, announcing that he considered his personal friendship with Bush "more important than history." He said he would have the tapes turned over to the President. He expressed regret at having made the tapes, saying he was "certainly wrong to tape the president without his permission." [3]
In 1992, Mr. Wead was the Republican candidate for U.S. Congress in Arizona's 6th Congressional District. Despite having lived in Arizona for just a couple years, Mr. Wead defied expectations and won the Republican nomination after championing a tax limitation initiative and airing a television commercial featuring praise by former President Ronald Reagan for Mr. Wead's humanitarian efforts. However, the general election campaign did not go well for Mr. Wead. Former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater endorsed his Democratic opponent, Karan English, and Fall 1992 was a difficult time in general for Republicans politically. Mr. Wead’s old boss, George H. W. Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton and Wead was defeated by English.
Doug Wead is also an accomplished Independent Business Owner in partnership with Quixtar and Network TwentyOne. [4] He is a popular corporate speaker, addressing audiences in soccer stadiums and coliseums around the world. In 1995 he helped reopen Canyonville Christian Academy, [5] a private boarding school for teenagers in southern Oregon originally founded in 1924. For three years, Mr. Wead personally subsidized the school’s monthly budget. It is now a thriving, award winning international academy whose seminars have been featured on C-SPAN. The academy has students representing thirty countries. Mr. Wead serves as its president.
In July, 2005, in a ceremony before 50,000 people at Olympic Stadium in Moscow, Mr. Wead became the first American to be knighted by Russian aristocracy since the fall of communism. He was bestowed the honor because of his philanthropic work.
