American DynastyAmerican Dynasty
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.
The Bushes are the family nobody really knows, says Kevin Phillips. This popular lack of acquaintance—nurtured by gauzy imagery of Maine summer cottages, gray-haired national grandmothers, July Fourth sparklers, and cowboy boots—has let national politics create a dynasticized presidency that would have horrified America’s founding fathers. They, after all, had led a revolution against a succession of royal Georges.
In this devastating book, onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since World War One, becoming entrenched within the American establishment—Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the presidency—through a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, and political deception. By uncovering relationships and connecting facts with new clarity, Phillips comes to a stunning conclusion: The Bush family has systematically used its financial and social empire—its “aristocracy”—to gain the White House, thereby subverting the very core of American democracy. In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with brilliant timing, twisting and turning from silver spoon Yankees to born-again evangelical Texans. As America—and the world—holds its breath for the 2004 presidential election, American Dynasty explains how it happened and what it all means.
A in-depth and critical portrait of the Bush political dynasty describes their rise to political power over the course of four generations, from World War I to the present day, arguing that the Bush family has used its financial and social empire to gain the White House, in the process subverting American democracy, and exploring its prospects for the 2004 presidential election. 125,000 first printing.
A critical portrait of the Bush political dynasty describes their rise to power over the course of four generations, arguing that the Bush family has used its financial and social empire to gain the White House.
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