In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
More on American Dynasty
What powers the Bush clan?
Kevin Phillips is no hotheaded bomb-thrower but a seasoned wise man with deep roots in the Republican party. Nonetheless, his new book on the Bush family is more incendiary than the Bill-Clinton-murdered-Vince-Foster books so popular during the '90s. Unlike them, however, American Dynasty is not sensationalistic and its claims are historically verifiable.
...
Phillips examines at length the current president's grandfather Prescott Bush (and Prescott's father-in-law, George Herbert Walker). Prescott, Phillips writes, tried to duck his family's "aura of wealth" when he ran for the Senate: "He had tried to minimize the connotations of his rich-family, Wall Street resume by seeming less stuffy and emphasizing his involvement in charitable, educational, and civil rights causes."
And, Phillips makes clear, successive generations of political Bushes also masqueraded as the common man. For those who have paid keen attention to the career of George W. Bush, a lot of the facts in American Dynasty are not news, however startling. But it is Phillips' training as a historian and the context he provides that makes his book so fresh and damning.
Phillips admits to being aghast at what he discovered: "[I]n examining two Bush presidencies and a four-generation pursuit of national prominence and power through an unusual lens -- one that highlighted elite associations, recurring political practices, and dynastic ambitions -- I learned much more, and I admit to being shocked at some of what I found. The result is an unusual and unflattering portrait of a great family (in power, not morality) that has built a base over the course of the twentieth century in the back corridors of the new military-industrial complex and in close association with the growing national security establishment. In doing so, the family has threaded its way through damning political and armaments scandals and, since the 1980s, faint hints, never more, of acts that in another climate might have led to presidential impeachment." Emphasis mine.
Acts that might lead to impeachement. We aren't just talking Dubya here. Coming soon to TCS: a lot o' links about The October Surprise.
- rob 4:59 PM - [PermaLink] -
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