First, of many, GOP books against Bush Clan

Former Reagan-era Republican strategist sets the record straight on the Bush family.
This is the second review I've read on the book, making it a must read for me.
Folks forget that, with the Bush style of Republicanism, real Conservatives have been betrayed as well.

.....it is with welcome relief that political commentator and one-time GOP strategist Kevin Phillips has stepped into the fray. Unlike the recent spate of anti-Bush books, Phillips' American Dynasty -- an erudite manifesto on the dangers of cronyism, hereditary privilege, "paper entrepreneurialism," and tax shelters -- is devastating due to its analytical fair-mindedness. Essentially, he traces how four generations of Bushes corrupted U.S. foreign policy through international business ventures that benefited the family. The most recent two George Bushes aren't evil people, Phillips argues, just greedy and ambitious Ivy League Texans. The Bush family has brought the American political system to a "perilous state," he believes, due to their cunning brand of petro-politics. "The family's ties to oil date back to Ohio steelmaker Samuel Bush's relationship to Standard Oil a century ago, while its ultimately dynastic connection to Enron spanned the first national Bush administration, the six years of George W. Bush's governorship of Texas, and the first year of his Washington incumbency," he writes. "No other presidential family has made such prolonged efforts on behalf of a single corporation."

With great skill, Phillips illuminates how the "Bush Dynasty" has long used such old-boy organizations as Yale's Skull and Bones, the CIA, Dillon Read, and most recently the Carlyle Group to further its main objective: political-economic power. He delineates the family's ethically questionable dealings with such companies as Enron, Zapata Petroleum, and Halliburton. We even learn that Prescott Bush, George H.W.'s father and a U.S. senator from Connecticut, had investment dealings with Nazi Germany in the 1930s while working for the banking firm Brown Brothers Harriman.

A major motif that Phillips develops throughout American Dynasty is the influence of Texas machismo on modern political culture. In his view, the Lone Star State has "an ego to match its acreage." Phillips sees the Dallas-Houston-Waco-Austin- Midland way of doing things as detrimental -- even menacing -- to the world at large. Cleverly, the Bush Dynasty, with its deep New England roots, shifted its operations to Texas after World War II to a land where the law could be more easily manipulated, he claims. Instead of sipping sherry at the Century Club in New York, the Bushes, by the time the Astrodome was built in the mid-1960s, were plopping their cowboy boots on the velvet sofas at the Petroleum Club in Houston. Phillips, however, makes clear that the genius behind the Bush Dynasty is its ability to be from both the Permian Basin and Wall Street. He quotes University of Pennsylvania professor John J. DiIulio -- who had been the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives -- as deeming this dynastic synergy the rise of "Mayberry Machiavellianism."

There is nothing new about Texans rising to the top in American politics. Dwight Eisenhower hailed from Denison and Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, and Phillips has no beef with either of them. Neither of these national leaders, however, was a religious fundamentalist like George W. Bush. It's the certitude of our current president's born-againism that disturbs Phillips the most. Somehow his descriptions of oil greed or CIA intrigue or Beltway manipulation are less alarmist than the long chapter devoted to Bush's evangelism. "George W. Bush's early emergence in national politics, between 1986 and 1994, tapped religious forces akin to those promoting Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and fueling the rise of Islamic parties in Pakistan, Turkey, and elsewhere," Phillips writes. While this assertion may not be provable, Phillips does a credible job of connecting Protestant fundamentalism in Dixie with similar movements in the Middle East and East Asia. His expos� on the history of Armageddon as an influential concept in American foreign policy is simultaneously humorous and scary.

continued......

www.motherjones.com...

President Bush showed little interest in policy discussions in his first two years in the White House, leading Cabinet meetings "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people," former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill says in an upcoming book on the Bush White House.

Quotes:
O'Neil: "Bush was so inscrutable that administration officials had to devise White House policy on "little more than hunches about what the president might think."

John J. DiIulio Jr., the former head of Bush's faith-based policy office: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. . . . What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

From: The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill."

The book will be released next week.

In the case of O'Neil, amazing how he defines "loyalty" isn't it?
Books....I love books. They will be well worth the read.
Timing is a bit of a "mystery" but hey, everything works for a purpose, doesn't it?



regards
seekerof

I love that line: "It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

So artfully poignant, and so freaking TRUE.

BUSH:

...Is a phrase that comes to mind immediately. My opinion on the content of the NOVEL, er "Book", is not what I wish to express here though...

Being a man who was raised in and lives in Dallas, Texas I take umbrage with the negative comments about Texas from the like of this goon.

P...
m...

These books will be interesting reads. I happen to catch Kevin Phillips (American Dynasty) on Washington Journal...he seems to be a really interesting, knowledgable guy. I knew I would read his book right away. Its okay to dismiss it after you've actually read it. Some of the conclusions could be far fetched but the facts he basis them on are still important facts for anyone considering casting a vote for a Bush. He talked about the reign of the Bush family, and even the Clintons. Bush41 was in or involved in the whitehouse for 12 years...with an 8 year break another Bush is in the whitehouse bringing along with him some of his father's team--meaning this country has been ran by the same people for nearly 16 years...and surely Jeb will run in 08. These are important facts for americans to consider. Even adding another Clinton in such a short time span can be toxic to our political culture.

These issues are coming from insiders, people that have worked close with both Bush's--you can't just say "oh consider the source...blah, blah". Especially when it's coming from the GOP. They've been marching in lock step for 3 years bout time someone broke from the pack. America is not a country for dynasty. But it seems we're heading that way. Passing down of rule from father to son or even husband to wife may not be a good thing.

good post BT.