American Dynasty
by By Phillips, Kevin P.
Category: Political Science , History & Theory

Despite their years in the political limelight, the Bushes are the family nobody really knows - so contends Kevin Phillips, onetime Republican strategist and one of the country's premier political and economic commentators. The cozy imagery of Maine summer cottages, a gray-haired national grandmother, and cowboy boots has emphasized comforting family values. It has also distracted us from the fact that the Bush family has used all its resources to create a political dynasty that has gained the White House to further its family and ideological agenda, which would have horrified America's founding fathers. They, after all, led a revolution against a succession of royal Georges.In this book, Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes, beginning with the original alliance between George Herbert Walker and Samuel P. Bush, have ascended the ladder of national power since World War I, solidifying their place in the American establishment - at Yale, on Wall Street, in the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the White House. The Bush family has never produced a doctor, judge, teacher, scholar, or lawyer of note. As far back as World War I, the family's single-minded focus has been on three major areas: intelligence, energy, and national security. It is no coincidence that these three categories of Bush family operations were also three of the key enterprises of the American twentieth century.Phillips demonstrates how the Bush family has perfectly exemplified many of the growing trends in American political life - policy favoritism to the top 1 percent, paper entrepreneurialism, and crony capitalism a la Enron (the Bushes' dealings with Enron go back to 1986). Far more than any previous political family, it represents an interlock between the hitherto temporary presidency and permanent government. As such, the family has threaded its way through political and armaments scandals and, since the 1980s, faint hints of acts that might in another climate have led to presidential impeachment.