The author of Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips, who is a small "r" republican, new book "American Dynasty - Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" has just hit the shelves. I got so engrossed in this book at my local Barnes & Noble tonight I had to buy it even though I had it on preorder with Amazon (luckily I was able to cancel latter).
This book belongs on all our shelves. Every Dem candidate ought to be carrying this one. It exposes the whole sordid history of the Bush cabal.
From the dust jacket:
In this biting 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 WWI, soldifying 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 WWI, 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 of 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 the permanent government. As such, the family has threaded its way through political and armaments scandals and, since the 1980's, faint hints of acts that might in another climate have led to presidential impeachment.
American Dynasty brings together many circumstances and relationships that, for reasons both unusual and unfortunate, have never before been examined together and seriously discussed. The evidence accrued over four generations of special interests, biases, scandals (especially related to arms dealings), and blatant favoritism is extraordinarily damning. And given the culture of secrecy that the Bushes have cultivated as an implement of power, dating back to Yale years for several men in the family, deceit and disinformation have become their political hallmarks.
In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with brilliant timing, twisting and turning from silver-spoon Yankees to born-again Texans. As a public family, they are writing a dangerous new definition of the presidency. 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 and to subvert the very core of American democracy, government by and for the people.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670032646/qid=1072845311//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/104-5100852-7583952?v=glance&s=books&n=507846There are many Bush-bashing books out there, but this one is quite different. Ivins, Franken, and Conason, among others, have focused primarily on the current president's administration. This book, written by a former Republican strategist, is more wide ranging, more scholarly, and in many ways, more disturbing. Focusing on the last four generations of Bush men, Phillips brings the reader into the secretive upper echelon of the American power establishment, where connections are made in Ivy League clubs, and he shows how members of that old-boy network become the policymakers of the country. In the case of the Bushes, this resulted not only in money and power but also in links to the CIA, the energy industry, and the military-industrial complex--links that have shaped this country's national and foreign policy for decades. Phillips explains the Bushes' relationship with Enron and the House of Saud in eyebrow-raising detail and adds confirming information about troubling claims, including the notion that the Reagan-Bush ticket arranged that American captives would not be released from Iran until Reagan took office. One of Phillips' main points is the juxtaposition between the Bush family ascent and European aristocracies, but this discussion almost seems intrusive. Unfortunately, Phillips' source notes were not appended in the galley; it will be interesting to peruse them in the finished book, which will generate much debate in the coming months. Ilene Cooper