Prior to his candidacy, Bush had held a number of elected and appointed offices, most recently serving as the 11th Director of Central Intelligence Agency.

Bush's tenure at the CIA ended after Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election.

[5] He also spent a year as a part-time professor of Administrative Science at Rice University's Jones School of Business,[6] continued his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, and joined the Trilateral Commission.

[3] Bush officially announced his candidacy in a speech on the morning of May 1, 1979, criticizing "tax and spend" policies which he broadly attributed to the Democratic Party, while not mentioning President Carter by name.

[1] Bush's campaign cast him as a youthful, "thinking man's candidate" who would emulate the pragmatic conservatism of President Eisenhower.

While Reagan did not attend many of the multi-candidate forums and straw polls in the summer and fall of 1979, Bush did go to all the so-called "cattle calls", and began to come in first at a number of these events.

At the outset of the race, Bush focused heavily on winning the January 21 Iowa caucuses, making 31 visits to the state.

[19] Criticizing his more conservative rival's policy proposals, Bush famously labeled Reagan's supply side-influenced plans for massive tax cuts as "voodoo economics".

[26] At the 1980 Republican National Convention, Reagan made the last-minute decision to select Bush as his vice presidential nominee after negotiations with Ford regarding a Reagan–Ford ticket collapsed.

[29] Though the race was widely regarded as a close contest for most of the campaign, Reagan ultimately won over the large majority of undecided voters.