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American Dynasty:
Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House
of Bush by Kevin Phillips
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- Hardcover: 416 pages ; Dimensions
(in inches): 1.33 x 9.20 x 6.30
- Publisher: Viking Press; (January
1, 2004)
- ISBN: 0670032646
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Book Description
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.
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Paraphrasing a passage from Machiavelli's
The Prince, Kevin Phillips writes, "a ruler can ignore the
mob and devote himself to the interests of the ruling class, gulling
the inert majority who constitute the ruled." He then says, "Borgia
references aside, 21st-century American readers of The Prince
may feel that they have stumbled on a thinly disguised Bush White
House political memo."
These pointed words would
sting regardless of who uttered them, but coming from Phillips, a
former Republican strategist, they have an added piquancy.
In American Dynasty:
Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of
Bush, Phillips traces the rise of the Bush family from
investment banking elites to political power brokers, using their
Ivy League network, vast wealth, and questionable political
maneuvering to obtain the White House and consequently, shake the
foundation of constitutional American democracy.
Citing the Bush family
mainstays of finance, energy (oil), the military industrial complex,
and national security and intelligence (the CIA), Phillips uses
copious examples to show the dangerous alliance between the Bushes'
business interests (huge corporations such as Enron and Haliburton)
and the formation of national policy.
No other family, Phillips
says, that has fulfilled its presidential aspirations has been so
involved in the ascendancy of the arms industry and of the
21st-century American imperium--often at the expense of regional and
world peace and for their personal gain.
It is hard to tell what offends Phillips the
most: the Bushes' systematic deceit and secrecy, their shady
business dealings, their cronyism, or their family philosophy that
privileges the very wealthy and utterly dismisses all the rest. It
is clearly all of these things combined.
But at the top of Phillips' list is the
dynastic nature of their family power, for it is that concentration
of power and influence that strikes at the heart of our democracy.
Past administrations have transgressed, albeit not so egregiously,
and other political families have had dynastic ambitions. But none
have succeeded as thoroughly as the Bushes.
Jefferson and Madison would be horrified, and
according to Phillips, we should be too. --Silvana
Tropea
Devastating critique of the Bush
aristocracy., January 13, 2004
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Reviewer: A reader from Lake
Oswego, OR United States |
Kevin Phillips, republican and author of the party's
'southern strategy,' has written an honest and devastating
critique of the Bush aristocracy. In it, he details "the
politics of deceit in the House of Bush," accusing the
administration of dishonesty and secrecy that would make
'tricky' Dick Nixon blush.
He traces the course of Bush's family over the past 100 years,
detailing how they sought influence "in the back corridors" of
the oil and defense industries, investment banking and the
intelligence establishment. Elites, not elections, put Bush in
power. "Four generations of building toward dynasty have infused
the Bush family's hunger for power and practices of crony
capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the
democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government."
As a result, he says, "deceit and disinformation have become
Bush political hallmarks."
A must read for all Americans concerned about our country's
future!
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