Sunday, January 11, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
Book Review
The rise of the House of Bush
By Mary Ann Gwinn
Seattle Times book editor
On the cover of Kevin Phillips' new book about four
generations of the Bush family, George Herbert Walker
Bush and George Walker Bush incline their heads
toward one another, smiling as if sharing a secret joke.
What this father and son really share contributes
mightily to the detriment of democracy, contends
Phillips in this dense, provocative and disturbing book.
In "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the
Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," Phillips
examines the Bush family of the 20th century — its
involvement in the oil and energy business, the political
and personal connections that created its wealth, and
its roots in what Phillips calls our "national security
state," America's increasing investment in and
dependence on military hardware, covert intelligence
and arms sales.
Finally, he looks askance at the intersection of these
trends in a president whose born-again vision of
America has attracted a politically important group of
hard-core followers, true believers whose interpretation
of events in the Middle East is biblical, literal and
tinged with a belief in Armageddon.
But first, a word: Why pay particular attention to this
book, among the dozens of Bush-slamming volumes on the shelves right now? Because Phillips brings
gravitas to the task, as well as the long view.
A former strategist in the Nixon White House, Phillip
penned the prescient 1969 "The Emerging Republican
Majority," which correctly predicted the Republican
Party would achieve ascendancy with the support of
the South. Along the way, he fell out with the
ever-rightward direction of the party. He's written two
books, "The Politics of Rich and Poor" and "Wealth and
Democracy," examining the growing gulf between
America's haves and have nots and the role of war in
creating power elites. (Phillips' batting average for political prophecy is less than 1.000: He's also
predicted that Americans would mount an effective political opposition to the growing disparity of wealth,
something that hasn't happened yet.)
He makes no bones about his bias: He writes that his
research "has been an education, one with some
psychological rewards: I didn't like the Bushes when I
was involved in GOP politics before their two
presidencies, and now I understand why."
"American Dynasty" is awash in statistics, laced with
political analysis and undergirded by painstakingly
uncovered history. "The Bushes' preoccupations are
not clear until you consider the whole dynasty," he
writes. Those preoccupations are the "mainstays" of the
security state: "finance, oil and energy, the federal
government, the so-called military-industrial complex,
and the CIA, the National Security Agency and the rest
of the intelligence community."
This family saga begins with two wealthy Midwestern
businessmen, George Herbert Walker and Samuel Bush. Both increased their fortunes through oil, finance
and armaments production.
Walker was an immensely wealthy man, who at one
point was a director of 17 corporations (his interests
are detailed in an appendix). Several, including the
W.A. Harriman investment firm (Walker served as its
president) were owned or run by the Averell Harriman
family. In the 1930s, these firms heavily invested in
Russian and Central Asian oil fields and funneled
money into shipping and manufacturing firms that
participated in rearming Germany.
As war approached, the Yale-educated business
associates in Walker's circle would become a key
source of military intelligence. Many of the same men
who did deals in Germany would come to hold key
posts in the U.S. war effort, including its intelligence
arm.
Samuel Bush's son Prescott (a W.A. Harriman vice
president), married Walker's daughter Dorothy.
Postwar, Prescott Bush ran successfully for Senate
and sat on the Armed Services Committee. (In an early
echo of his son and grandson's attempts to cloak their
privileged past, Prescott once told the compiler of an
oral history: "My father wasn't able to support me. He
had a modest income, but he couldn't support his adult children, and I didn't want him to anyway.")
By now a pattern had emerged: The Bush family made its money through businesses highly dependent on
big-stakes financing, favorable tax policy and government involvement, either through the military or
regulation (or lack of same). The family's core belief, Phillips writes, was that "Investment drove the
economy, and what fueled investment was tax advantage.
Prescott Bush, a former officer and board member of Dresser Industries (an oil-services firm which
provided materials for assembling the atomic bomb, incendiary bombs dropped on Tokyo and wartime
radar), helped his son George Herbert Walker Bush get a job with Dresser. George H.W. Bush headed to
Texas. Later he started his own firm, Zapata Petroleum, with an $850,000 stake from uncle George Herbert
Walker Jr. and friends.
Though Phillips speculates that Prescott Bush may have been an éminence grise for the Central
Intelligence Agency, his portrayal of a family at the center of the oil/covert intelligence/national security
state triad achieves new resonance with George H.W. Bush, who ultimately became head of the CIA under
Gerald Ford in 1976. Phillips presents information that suggests one of Zapata Oil's Mexican subsidiaries
was a part-time purchasing front for the CIA during the Bay of Pigs era. George Bush the Elder also
initiated the family's business involvements in the Middle East — Zapata's offshore arm organized a
subsidiary to carry out Kuwait's first deep-sea oil drilling in 1961
From the 1970s on, the Bushes wielded enormous influence. "Two men named George Bush would be CIA
director, vice president, or president of the United States for seventeen of the twenty-eight years between
1976 and 2004," Phillips writes. The senior Bush would lead the effort to arm Iraq during its 1980-88 war
with Iran, then attempt to depose Saddam Hussein when his former ally let his expansionist tendencies
stray too far into America's sphere of influence.
To my mind, the most fascinating chapters in "American Dynasty" concern our current president, George
Walker Bush. As a floundering young man, he managed to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars of family
and friends' money in the oil business, leading to the omnipresent Texas joke that "whenever he's struck a
dry well, someone has always been willing to fill it with money for him."
Then his life changed — he was converted to born-again Christianity after a meeting with Billy Graham in
1985, and he quit drinking shortly thereafter. (Phillips does credit that the conversion was probably sincere
and not just politically advantageous.) He became the lead point man with the Christian Right during his
father's re-election campaigns. This political relationship would prove immensely helpful to his own 2000
presidential campaign, helping him win Southern states, particularly in South Carolina, where he knocked
John McCain out of the race for the Republican nomination.
"American Dynasty" leads the reader in many directions. There's the Bush family relationship with Enron
(Ken Lay was a co-chair of the elder Bush's 1992 re-election committee and chairman of that summer's
Republican National Convention). There is the dense history of business cronyism and government
subsidy (millions from the savings-and-loan bailout alone) of various Bush relatives. There's the
four-decade relationship between the Bushes and the Saudi elite.
There's the Dick Cheney/Halliburton connection, in the headlines today with allegations (recently cleared)
of the $61 million overcharge to the government for fuel in Iraq by KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary. There's
the worrisome trend of the assumption of military support services by companies like Halliburton —
including intelligence gathering.
A provocative aspect of "American Dynasty" is Phillips' assessment of our current president's relationship
with the Christian Right, folks who believe that saving Israel is not just a good idea but a divine imperative,
and that Baghdad is the biblical Babylon. Perhaps the most disquieting quote in the whole book, if you
believe in the constitutional separation of church and state, comes from Gary Bauer, the conservative
presidential candidate who explained why Pat Robertson stepped down from the presidency of the
Christian Coalition in late 2002: "I think that Robertson stepped down ... because the position has already
been filled" ... the president "is that leader right now."
There's plenty to be exasperated about in "American Dynasty," particularly if you're well-disposed toward
George Walker Bush. Phillips' writing suffers from repetition and the sound of an ax perpetually grinding.
His thesis that the Bushes approach European royalty in their dynastic aspirations is undercut when he
posits the Clinton family as an alternate dynasty (hard to believe that the stepson of a car dealer from Hot
Springs, Ark., could so quickly rise to the occasion). I'm not equipped to evaluate his assessment of the
shady business dealings and covert government operations in which some Bush family members have
been implicated.
But what really comes home upon considering four Bush generations is how disconnected the family is
from the lives of the people they aspire to lead. Generation upon generation have ascended to wealth and
power with the help of friends and have shown little occupational interest in any other aspect of the human
condition. (The book states that the Bush family has never produced a doctor, judge, teacher, scholar or
lawyer of note.) Are these the leaders best equipped to confront the national dilemmas of health care,
unemployment and declining standards of education?
In the late 18th century, John Adams made a list of factors that drain the life from republics. Phillips writes
of Adams' 1787 list: "prominent sapping and debilitating factors were the rise of hereditary offices,
aristocracies, and rulers. Luxury, great wealth and corruption were other dangers, along with imperial
ambitions and wars." "American Dynasty," written with the passion of a modern-day Tom Paine, recalls all
too clearly the Founding Father's words, little more than 200 years later.
seattletimes.nwsource.com.
Rascal @HittingTheFan.com |
