AMERICAN DYNASTY: ARISTOCRACY, FORTUNE, AND THE POLITICS OF DECEIT IN THE HOUSE OF BUSH
By Kevin Phillips (Viking, $25.95)
Katherine Lambert
Alarmist Phillips.
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Books predicting the next political watershed are a dime a dozen, but one writer who has a high batting average in the genre is political analyst, columnist, and NPR commentator Kevin Phillips. In prior books, he's shed light on important trends including middle-class voter disenchantment; the "Red" and "Blue" state divide of the 2000 electoral map; and the alarming concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy.
One of the most interesting things about Phillips, aside from how often correct and earnest he is, is that he's a traditional, establishment conservative. At least he was. It's not so much that his politics have changed, but that this onetime Nixon campaign aide has witnessed the center of American politics shift so far to the right that he now finds himself ensconced on the left.
Scary to think that the Nixon-Eisenhower Republicans of one era are on the fringes of mainstream politics today, especially as both parties promote massive tax cuts, embrace globalization, tolerate huge deficits, and relish a strong-arm foreign policy. Indeed, Bill Clinton's declaration that the era of big government is over seems to have given impetus to the extremist idea that government itself is barely justifiableunless it helps the rich.
But traditional conservatives didn't question the need for government; they warned about being held hostage to corporate interests (Teddy Roosevelt) and the military establishment (Ike); pushed strongly for lower- and middle-class entitlements (Nixon); and strongly defended civil liberties (Goldwater). Forget about the menace of creeping Canadian socialism. These ideas are now the "radical" notions in the Bush II era, as Phillips foresaw before most of us.
His latest book takes a surprisingly hard swing at the presidents Bush, senior and junior. Dynasty is not simply another exercise in Molly Ivins-esque Bush bashing, but an outgrowth of Phillips' longtime concerns that our republic is falling prey to the fusion of money, power, and entitlementa danger our founding fathers anticipated. He attempts to explain how the Bush dynasty embodies the very worst aspects of this trend. For three generations, the family has devoted itself to making money (investment banking, oil) and fusing private interests (cronyism) with public ones (especially in the intelligence arena). Grandpa traded with the Nazis; Poppy headed the CIA; and Dubya is now entrenching family interests at home while ruthlessly expanding markets abroad. Tax cuts for the wealthy and eliminating the inheritance tax are not initiatives to curry trickle-down favor with the electorate. Instead, they benefit the wealthy ruling-class cabal that increasingly runs the place. In case I didn't emphasize this enough, this case is being made by a onetime Republican.
America, Phillips argues, has long been warned about the volatility of a gulf between rich and poor, and the corrupting power of aristocracies. Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison must be spinning in their graves as their beloved small-R republican experiment is reversed by the Bushes.
Dynasty does read a bit as if written on the flyideas are repeated, and historical analogies are mismatched (Bush senior is compared with William Howard Taft, while Dubya is likened to Britain's Charles II). Phillips' thesis could be more methodicallyand even more dispassionatelyargued. But it is also important to listen to a conservative argue, forcefully and more convincingly than many liberals, that there are real dangers lurking in the Bush dynasty. (And let's not forget Gov. Jeb, biding his time in Florida until 2008.) If an establishment guy like Phillips is becoming unhinged at the prospect of four more years, we should all pay attentionand question who is genuinely out of the political mainstream. KNUTE BERGER
Kevin Phillips will appear at Elliott Bay Book Co. (101 S. Main St., 206-624-6600), 7:30 p.m. Thurs., Jan. 15; and at Town Hall (1119 Eighth Ave., 206-652-4255, $10-15), 8:00 p.m. Fri., Jan. 16.
THE WINEMAKER'S DAUGHTER
By Timothy Egan (Knopf, $24.95)
Every good journalist probably has at least one bad novel in him, and Seattle-based New York Times writer Timothy Egan meets quota with his very first effort. He's previously shared a Pulitzer for his Times reporting, but no such accolades will greet the thoroughly clumsy, clunky Daughter, which can't make up its mind whether to be an eco-screed, Nancy Drew mystery, cookbook, Norman Maclean nature paean, Crichton-style thriller, or echt Under the Tuscan Sun travelogue. It's a novel about water rights, which sounds unpromising unless you remember that Chinatown is a movie about water rights. Of course, that flick, however convoluted, has great characters, while characterization and dialogue remain beyond Egan's grasp. ("Oh, sweet mud sharks," exclaims a supposedly colorful commercial fisherman making a great haul; I don't care if, in Egan's actual reporting experience, fishermen really say that kind of thingyou don't have to write it down.)
Still, Daughter is a satisfactory page-turner, since you look forward to each eye-rollingly bad plot turn, conveniently discovered clue, and melodramatic outburst. It keeps moving, like the mighty Columbia, like the salmon spawning in it, like intrepid Seattle architectural preservationist Brunella Cartolano, raised on a vineyard in Eastern Washington and now pitted against evil developers, Gatesian software barons, unscrupulous Indian casino builders, and mysterious water-rights rustlersall of them encroaching upon the winery of her aged papa, Angelo. Another thing father and daughter are against: bad wine.
