There 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....
In Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips examined how the machinery of wealth erodes the foundations of democracy. Phillips is a "former Republican strategist" who has managed to free himself from the enormous, self-blinding ethical lapses that are the prerequisite for a career in the GOP. Now he offers us a glimpse behind the curtain of Oz at the huffing and puffing men, none of whom are wizards, working the controls on the elaborate machinery of lying, deceit, and deception in Emerald City.
