Monday, January 5, 2004
In The Northwest: Trend spotter deconstructs the
House of Bush
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
In his best seller "The Selling of the President 1968," author Joe McGinniss
poked fun at a youthful, nerdy, number-crunching Richard Nixon aide who
predicted an emerging Republican majority in the United States.
The laugh was on McGinniss. The Age of Aquarius fizzled, and Kevin Phillips was correct in his
forecast that political power would take a right turn and flow to the South and Sun Belt.
Phillips has since devoted himself to mapping his country's political, economic and social trends.
He has done so with startling accuracy and unsparing intellectual honesty.
Phillips is out with a provocative book about a family of blue bloods and its retainers who have
accomplished a restoration and are now asking voters for unchecked power.
It is called "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of
Bush" (Viking Press, $25.95).
As Phillips explained on the phone, there is "an enormous similarity" between the United States
under Bush II and the country that was beginning to throw off 35 years of Democratic domination
in 1968.
"Go back to the 1960s," he said, "and what you saw was an enormous cockiness -- the intervention
in Vietnam, the arrogant liberal establishment, its feeling that any social problem could be solved.
"They muffed it on three levels. The war went bad. You had Lyndon Johnson's talk about 'nailing
a coonskin to the wall' in Vietnam. The deficit got out of hand, trying to have guns and butter. And
they tried too much social engineering."
A sweeping Democratic triumph in 1964 over a shoot-from-the-lip Republican -- Barry Goldwater
-- unleashed a hubris that would prove the liberals' undoing just four years later.
Cut to today's America under the
restored Bush dynasty.
"You have a geopolitical hubris
coupled with an overseas war in
Iraq, which I am not sure can be
controlled and brought to a clear
successful conclusion," Phillips
said. "You have ideological excess
on the right in the same way liberals
were carried away in the 1960s.
You have a juggling act with the
economy: The dollar is
hemorrhaging in value, the deficit is
out of control, and inflation may
again rear its ugly head."
The other similarity will bring chills
to liberals. Phillips sees a
21st-century parallel to Goldwater
in what is a largely maladroit and
ineffective opposition to Bush.
"I vividly remember the ineptness of Republicans in the 1960s," he said. "It may be that the
Democrats will have to go through their equivalent of the Goldwater experience.
"They may go down the path of offering an alternative too extreme for the American people. If
George W. has a second term, however, I believe his shortcomings will be on display in living
color -- every bit as much as Lyndon Johnson's."
Phillips is looking ahead. What "American Dynasty" does best, however, is look back at how the
Bush dynasty was shaped.
A pretty story it is not, of two future Bush presidents making their money by playing on family
connections and government contracts -- and being in tight with a military-industrial complex far
more powerful than what the Republican president to whom Phillips dedicates this book -- Dwight
Eisenhower -- warned against in 1960.
The network of connections and alliances, begun by patrician patriarchs 75 years ago, has helped
the Bushes trump the Kennedys as the United States' reigning political dynasty.
"The first generation of this family -- George Herbert Walker and Samuel Bush -- were
entrepreneurs. They were like Joseph P. Kennedy," Phillips said. "The big difference is the Bushes
built themselves into the establishment.
"Joe Kennedy was a thumb in the eye of the establishment. He wasn't in any sense an
establishment type, and he never thought he was. The Kennedys have never been part of the
national security establishment."
As is proving out in Iraq, we now have war by Halliburton -- Dick Cheney's former company --
and how sweet its deals.
"The national security establishment is more powerful than it was back when Eisenhower spoke for
the simple reason that profit is far greater," Phillips said.
"Forty years ago, military contracts were for big heavy equipment. Companies would earn 2 or 3
percent. Now, an enormous amount of the budget is not for steel and soldiers, but for technology
and quick deployment. At the zenith of the system, with Halliburton, you don't even have to give
an estimate."
One more stanchion supports the Bush dynasty -- religion.
A family of staid Episcopalians has produced -- in George W. Bush -- a politician whom Phillips
characterizes as leader of the religious right in the United States.
How so? Phillips sees a tide toward fundamentalism running across the world's religious
landscape, from Islam to Hinduism to Christianity. In the United States, cosmopolitan mainline
churches have "been totally overshadowed by the rise of fundamentalism, Pentecostalism and the
Southern Baptists."
In this equation, George W. Bush is "the prodigal son," brought back to God after waywardness.
Once again, a family friend was there when needed: The Rev. Billy Graham helped plant the
mustard seed in Dubya's heart.
The future president also learned the culture, serving as his father's political liaison with the
religious right, the man who set up the elder Bush's dinner with evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye
Bakker.
"The religious aspect to the Bush restoration can be explained in that it is led by the South, the most
intensely traditional and churchgoing part of the country," Phillips said.
It's fascinating stuff, from the 43rd president's scriptural references to the 41st president's
profitable post-White House association with the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, self-styled "Lord of the Second Advent."
Kevin Phillips, the man who originally mapped the Republican Party's path to power, now fears
for the country's republican traditions. Not surprisingly, he is no longer on the Bushes' Christmas
card list.
He'll be here Jan. 16 to talk about "American Dynasty" at Town Hall Seattle. Call 206-325-3554 or
visit www.foolproof.org for information.
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or
joelconnelly@seattlepi.com
seattlepi.nwsource.com |
