In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
The privileged losers
The Ruling Class
In this angry, devastating examination of "the House of Bush," Kevin Phillips asks the question that seems to have occurred to no one else: How did these people get so entitled? How is it that a family in no way distinguished by genuine accomplishment, moral and/or political conviction or exceptional intelligence has managed to lay claim as a matter of right to the American presidency, and how is it -- this is the real puzzler -- that the American people seem to have acquiesced in this presumption? How did we manage to put ourselves in the hands of a family that clearly believes it has dynastic stature, with all the privileges and entitlements attendant thereto, and behaves accordingly?
Phillips, an experienced political strategist and former White House aide, is correct to say that what he calls the Bush "restoration" -- the election to the White House in 2000 of George W. Bush, only eight years after the public's emphatic repudiation of his father, George H.W. Bush -- is unprecedented in American history. The two Adams presidents were elected a quarter-century apart and represented different parties, the two Roosevelts were separated by two decades and came from different branches of the family, and any Kennedy dynastic aspirations were thwarted by bizarre twists of fate. Yet even though the first Bush presidency was by any reasonable standard a failure, the inner leadership of the Republican Party felt so beholden to the first George Bush that it anointed his callow son and namesake almost upon the moment he won the governorship of Texas and, hand in glove with the big-money interests to which the Bushes have always cozied up, effectively closed the 2000 nominating process to anyone else.
Along with O'Neill's book, there is hope that this literary one to push that might send Rove in panic mode, they're already talking about a probe against Paul O'Neill.
The U.S. Treasury has asked the U.S. inspector general's office to investigate how a possibly classified document appeared on Sunday in a televised interview of ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, a department spokesman said on Monday.
"It's based on the (CBS program) '60 Minutes' segment, and I'll be even more clear -- the document as shown on '60 Minutes' that said 'secret,"' Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols told reporters at a weekly briefing.
In a new book about his term as Treasury chief, O'Neill, who left the job in December 2002 in a shake-up of President Bush's economic team, criticized White House policies and provided author Ron Suskind with thousands of administration documents.
While Nichols said it is customary for departing officials to take documents when they leave, this probe will focus on how possibly classified information appeared on a television interview as one of O'Neill's papers.
The probe will get more resources than the 9/11 commission and the CIA leak investigation combined.
The books themselves:
- rob 4:29 PM - [PermaLink] -
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