Bush Family Values

The Nation on former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips' new book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush:

Of the old-school financiers, Phillips says that they "also diverted--one should not think they deserted--to Midland, the Ivy League beachhead in a boom-flushed state where the larger oil and oil service firms still had major ownership ties to Wall Street and the East." Midland was one of the two main towns (along with Odessa) in the Permian Basin, which, Phillips writes, "represented one of the century's great American wealth opportunities, which nobody knew better than the New York capitalists." (In a footnote, Phillips points out that by the year 2000 Alaska was the only state to produce more oil and gas than the Permian Basin.) This is where the "entrepreneurial" Bushes planted themselves. Phillips points out the nexus between oil profits and tax shelters, on which the industry is heavily dependent for profits, and asserts that investment bankers kept bailing out Bush fils. And Bush père's brothers and sons--all but George W.--went into the investment business. As for George W.'s business career, Phillips writes, it "was spent primarily in obtaining new financing or lining up rescuers for his unsuccessful oil and gas ventures," and he quotes one wag as observing that every time George W. "drilled a dry hole...someone always filled it up with money for him." At Yale, Phillips notes, Bush the son wanted to be a stockbroker who amassed great wealth. He didn't become a stockbroker, but he did amass great wealth.

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