June 28
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Kevin Phillips (2004)

Once again I'm guessing at the date when I finished the book. It was quite a while ago. I read this one intermittently over a period of more than two months (and two different copies of the book). Now I find I'm writing this review intermittently and piecemeal as well

Perhaps that has affected my perception of the book. It's hard for me to think of it as a whole, rather than a collection of little essays on various political topics in some way connected to the Bush clan. Of these pieces, I appreciated about half -- the ones that filled me in on some of the themes I've often seen floating around in the news-and-commentary air but somehow never really learned much about. For these, Phillips can be informative, though he doesn't so much satisfy me as leave me wanting to read some other book to get the complete picture. But that's a good thing.

The supposedly unifying theme, as the title suggests, is that the Bush family represents a dynasty, and in electing the second Bush our American republic is moving in the direction of monarchy. Within this theme are a few good points. It's true that knowing any president's family background tells us a lot about his view of the world, and to elect two presidents from the same family without a decent interval between -- the Adamses and Roosevelts were each separated by 24 years -- invites cronyism and tends to make the second president's politics too personal. (This is a reason not to vote for Hillary Clinton for president, by the way.)

But these arguments might have been well made in the context of a book with a theme of "what makes Bush tick". Instead, Phillips repeatedly refers to Bush 43's election as a "restoration" and compares it to that of the Stuart and Bourbon kings (17th century England and 19th century France) and even the Borgia family's takeover of renaissance Florence. I like an off-the-wall historical reference as much as the next guy -- more, actually -- but these did nothing for me.

The further Phillips strays from his theme, the better the book gets. America's post-Cold War military strategy and its strong emphasis on petroleum resources (ie, our "energy policy") is very interesting, but it has little to do with the dynastic nature of the Bush family. Bush 43's close connection to evangelical Christian groups is very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the dynasty. On the other side of the coin is Phillips' efforts to fill us in on Bush patriarchs Samuel Bush, George Herbert Walker, and Prescott Bush. Before reading the book, I expected this to be interesting, but I was wrong. The problem is that there isn't much there. The Bush progenitors were wealthy and successful industrial capitalists -- which does indeed tell us quite a bit about the investment-class culture that the later Bushes grew up in -- but in the larger scheme of things, the earlier Bushes and Walkers are second-rate players, always hovering nearby the great individuals and great scandals, but never central.

This lack of a story leads Phillips to his most annoying habit. Whenever he wants to suggest an idea for which he has no real evidence, he relies on innuendo and circumstance. Rummaging through the book just now, here's the first example I happen to find (not a very interesting one, I'm afraid):

Well, yes, one can easily imagine. But that doesn't prove anything. Unfortunately, there's a lot of this sort of thing in the book -- particularly when Phillips is trying to make a dull topic seem more sensational than it really is, or when he wants to tie some Bush more closely to an interesting scandal to which he was only peripheral. After a while it becomes almost comical when the "one can easily imagine" punch line arrives.

While reading I often found myself wishing that Phillips would abandon the silly dynasty idea and go into more depth on one of the topics I liked. Enron, for example, is a name that I've heard tossed around a lot, but I really don't that much about it. I had a vague sense that Enron used its political connections to enrich its upper management and then used fraud to foist the losses on the mass of shareholders. What I didn't realize is how vast Enron's political connections were nor how enormous and lightning-fast was its rise from practically nothing to one of the wealthiest corporations in America (and then back to nothing). For that matter, I didn't really even know how Enron made its money. It was not so much a provider of energy as a speculator in the market of energy futures, a market more or less invented by Enron-friendly regulators. I'm pretty friendly to the capitalist idea, and I know that there are always winners and losers in a market, but behind it all is the idea that the market as a whole adds efficiency to the distribution of resources. In this case, there were certainly winners and losers, but it's not at all clear where the efficiency gain is.

When Phillips ends his chapter, raising questions like these in my mind but not sticking around long enough to answer, I am frustrated. Looking back on it now, though, not so much. He did his job. He's not writing a book on Enron, but someone else no doubt has, so now I just have to go find that other book and read it next. Likewise for oil in American geopolitical strategy and Christian fundamentalism in American politics.

Among those political figures I did not realize had an Enron connection: Robert Zoellick was an undersecretary of State in the first Bush administration (and in the Treasury Dept under Reagan) and is U.S. Trade Representative in the current Bush administration; in the interim he was a legal advisor for Enron. Marc Racicot was governor of Montana and more recently became chairman of the Republican National Committee (and now chairman of Bush-Cheney 04); in the interim, he was a lobbyist for Enron. Lawrence Lindsay, George W Bush's former chief economic advisor, who resigned at the same time as Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, was a member of Enron's advisory board. I did know about Army Secretary Thomas White, who had been vice chairman of Enron Energy Services.

I also knew that Wendy Gramm, wife of Texas senator Phil Gramm, was chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a regulatory body instrumental in creating the energy futures market that made Enron rich, and that shortly after resigning that position she joined Enron's board of directors. But I did not know that the wives of both Richard Armey and Tom DeLay were also employed by Enron's Washington office. Armey was House majority leader from 1994, when the Republicans took control in the House, until he retired after the 2002 term. He was succeeded as majority leader by DeLay. Both are from Texas.

Another Texan is Dick Cheney, notwithstanding the legal fiction that his home state is Wyoming. In real life, Cheney's non-Washington home is in Dallas, not Wyoming. Leading up to the 2000 election there was some idle speculation that Texas electors could not support the Bush-Cheney ticket due to the 12th Amendment, which says, "The Electors shall ... vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves." There was never much to this argument, since it is pretty easy to change one's legal residence in a hurry. Hillary Clinton was certainly not the first to do so in order to win a Senate seat. Still, even if it abides with the letter of the constitution, the Texas-Texas ticket breaks the spirit of the law. As Phillips notes in the course of pursuing his dynasty argument, the Founders passed that amendment precisely because they didn't want the political machine of a single state to dominate the entire government. And now that's exact what Texas Republicans have done.

Another topic where my interest was piqued but not sated was the Bush wing of the Republican Party's close connection to Christian fundamentalism. Although this gets mentioned a lot, the mainstream press displays an annoying unwillingness to take it seriously. It's as if everyone is so determined that religion and politics should not be mixed that to even inquire about it is viewed as betraying the separation of church and state.

That's silly. Either religion is affecting politics or it's not, but refusing to talk about it doesn't make it any less so. If our President is engaging in faith-based policymaking, then we ought to know about it, for better or for worse. I can think of a whole lot of questions I'd like to hear some reporter ask the president:

• Do you believe that members of the U.S. Congress should use scripture as a guideline for determining law? (Same question for judges interpreting the law.)

• Is prayer an effective strategy for making America more safe from terrorism? Is your opponent less qualified to implement this strategy than you are?

• Do you believe Armageddon is coming in our lifetime? If so should our foreign policy try to prevent it or bring it to be?

• The Pope says the war in Iraq is not a just war. Is he right or wrong?

• Do you believe that you were chosen by God to be our nation's leader?

As a secular Democrat, I like to think such questions will force Bush to take a position that might drive a wedge between the religious and secular camps among his supporters and thus damage him politically. On the other hand, it might well energize and solidify his religious base who will thrill to finally hear a leader speak of Armageddon as a foreign policy goal. Either way, the questions ought to be asked. And if some clever reporter tries to turn it around and embarrass Kerry by asking him the same questions, so be it. I believe in democracy. If it is the popular will to have a president who believes he is on a mission from God, then that's what we'll have, but if that's the choice it should be done openly and not by stealth.

In the course of a comparison of the Iraq and Vietnam wars, Phillips describes Iraq as "a nation with a population less than one-third of Vietnam". This surprised me a lot. I've always imagined the two about the same size, with Iraq slightly larger.

Looking at population figures in my almanac, I see that Phillips is right. I would have guessed about 35 million for Vietnam and 40 million for Iraq. In fact, it's 23 million for Iraq and 79 million for Vietnam.

For the sake of comparison (all are millions): China, 1,261; United States, 276; Russia, 146; Japan, 127; Germany, 83; Britain, 60; France, 59; Italy, 58; Canada, 31; Mexico, 100; California, 33; Texas, 20; New York, 18.

Reviewing population figures can be enlightening. Looking at a map of the United States, we know that the big states in the middle are relatively empty while some of the smaller ones in the northeast are much "larger", but someone else looking at the map without that information would get an inaccurate sense of our states. I remember years ago going through the process with the nations of Africa, where there are some significant population imbalances I was unaware of (especially the huge concentration in Nigeria).

The Middle East looks like this: Turkey, 66; Syria, 16; Egypt, 68; Israel, 5.8; Lebanon, 3.6; Saudi Arabia, 22; Iraq, 23; Iran, 66; Afghanistan, 26; Pakistan, 142. Most of that is about what I thought, except that I imagined Iraq larger and Saudi Arabia smaller. I knew that Iran was much bigger than Iraq, but I thought it was a ratio of about two to one, rather than three to one. But my most significant error was about Vietnam. Cambodia and Laos are about what I expected (12 and 5.5), but Vietnam is huge -- bigger even than Thailand. I had no idea.

Oh, and just to round out the Axis of Evil, North Korea is 22 million (and South Korea is 47).

All figures are from my 2001 World Almanac. Probably there's some minor discrepancies in when each census was taken, but we're just looking at rough relative numbers here.

Discussing the United States budget for intelligence, Phillips quotes another author. (The footnote says, "Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy".)

In the current political game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, several Republicans have suggested that the 9/11 attack and/or the gross misread of the political situation in Iraq are the fault of the Democrats, because after all it was President Clinton who cut the budget for intelligence. Subsequently, Democrats and Republicans alike fell all over themselves to advocate an immediate increase in intelligence spending.

This troubles me. One of the things I used to like about Republicans was their resistance to the foolish idea that the measure of a government program's success is the size of its budget. Like everything else that I used to like about Republicans, this has disappeared under the new regime. The fact is we spent a hell of a lot of money on intelligence and that intelligence turned out to be shit. If you spend a lot of money on a government program and it fails, what is the proper response? Today's Republicans say the solution is to increase the program's budget. That's the same idiotic reasoning for which yesterday's Republicans rightly ridiculed yesterday's Democrats.

Pursuing his dynasty theme in the introduction, Phillips discusses current U.S. Senators who benefitted from family connections:

This last sentence is unfair to Maine's Sen Olympia Snowe, not to mention the reader. Phillips cleverly insinuates that the influence of Snowe's governor husband somehow helped her gain the seat in the Senate. A proper timeline tells a very different story: Olympia Snowe was first elected to the House in 1978. John McKernan was first elected to the House in 1982. McKernan was elected governor in 1986. Snowe and McKernan married in 1989. Snowe was elected to the Senate in 1994.

To the senators already named, I would add a few more. In 2002 Arkansas Sen Mark Pryor was elected to the same seat his father David H Pryor had vacated six years earlier. In 1998 Indiana Sen Evan Bayh was elected to the same seat his father Birch Bayh had vacated 18 years earlier. West Virginia Sen Jay Rockefeller's father was not an elected politician, but two of his uncles were. Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York (and briefly vice president of the United States), and Orville Rockefeller was governor of Arkansas. Also, Jay's father-in-law is Charles Percy, former senator from Illinois.

The most blatant product of nepotism in the Senate today is Alaska Sen Lisa Murkowski. In 1998 her father, Sen Frank Murkowski, was re-elected to the Senate for his fourth term. In 2000, he was elected governor, whereupon he resigned from the Senate, was sworn in as governor, and then promptly appointed his daughter to fill the Senate seat he had just vacated.

I didn't take many notes for this book, and most of them are from the first 100 pages, which I read in California in May. I don't even recall if passage line is in the context of attacking Clinton or defending him:

I like "Beelzebubba". That's cute.

As for the final claim, if it is indeed true that there is "no doubt" of this, it's only because White House interns -- or at least female ones -- are such a recent phenomenon. How long have there been interns in the White House? I don't even know.

Setting aside the intern restriction, do we really know that John F Kennedy never made use of the Oval Office for a blow job? I should think it rather likely that he did. Or Warren Harding. Or Grover Cleveland.

Other than "Beelzebubba", the only word on my list of notes is bothy. Prescott Bush was an enthusiastic member of the Whiffenpoofs, Yale's elite group of a cappella singers. Among the songs he sang there, Phillips reports, were "bothy ballads". I'm still not sure what bothy means, but from a quick Google search, I see that the bothy ballads are some sort of Scottish songs.

A couple of things about the typography caught my eye. One was that the book contained a lot of widows. "Widow" is a typography term for what occurs when the last word of a paragraph is hyphenated over a line break. The resulting half-word which sits all alone on a line is a widow. Typographic standards say that widows are to be avoided. If a long word ends a paragraph in a narrow newspaper column, a widow might be easily forgiven, but there's really no excuse for them in a book, where the column width is long enough that they're easily avoided. I wouldn't say there were a whole lot of widows here -- perhaps 20 or 30 in the whole book -- but it was enough that I noticed.

In a section where Phillips makes some silly references to Renaissance Florence, I noticed that on more than one occasion, the name Machiavelli is hyphenated as "Machi-avelli", which feels quite wrong to me. Maybe this is just because too much immersion in Italian opera has left me out of touch with how Americans say the name, but I hear the "chia" as a single syllable, so hyphenating in the middle of it makes about as much sense as "preci-ous". Am I nuts? Do most people say "Machiavelli" as five syllables, sort of like how some people say "Giambi" as three? I really don't know.

The other thing I noticed was that the typeface used in this book -- Minion, a relatively new face designed by Adobe -- has an unusually long en-dash. I was planning to continue with a discourse about how the various dashes should be shaped and sized for maximum functionality, but I've run out of gas for tonight, and this piece has been delayed too long already, so I'll just stop now.

1:25:23 AM  [permalink]  comment []