How the Bushes’ resolve, connections built a dynasty

THE BUSHES: PORTRAIT OF A DYNASTY

By Peter and Rochelle Schweizer

Doubleday, $27.95, 592 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY LYN NOFZIGER

Every fourth year in these United States, two things having to do with the presidency occur. First, we elect or reelect a president. Second, we are flooded with books about would-be presidents, most of which are puff pieces written to make those who seek the office look better than they really are.

Some of these books, however, are published primarily to take advantage of the fact that, in election years, Americans pay more attention to politics and the men and women who dominate the political scene.

This year is no exception. And one family that is going to have a lot written about it, both good and bad, both pro- and anti-, is the family that includes the current president George Walker Bush. The rise of the Bush family and their development into a political dynasty has been chronicled pretty thoroughly in a new book by Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, appropriately titled “The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty.”

Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, is also the author of “Reagan’s War,” which credits Ronald Reagan with winning the Cold War. Given the author’s background one might expect “The Bushes” to be one of those books that presidential candidates often pay someone to write, and someone else to publish, for the sole purpose of making them look good.

Not so in this case. In fact, “The Bushes” is only incidentally a political book. True, it gives the most space to the Bushes who have held or now hold high political office. But it also talks about the history of the clan, who its members are, and how the family reached its present prominence.

The average American when thinking of the Bush clan, if he does at all, probably doesn’t get beyond the current president or, perhaps, his father, the past president once removed. While most voters may be vaguely aware that President Bush is the son of a former president and has daughters and siblings (including brother Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida), what they may not know, or give much thought to, is that there is a whole slew of Bushes and Bush relatives scattered throughout the country.

In fact, though the Bushes seem not to like the term, they are undoubtedly the nation’s number-one political dynasty.

The Democrat Kennedys come close, but it is the Republican Bushes (and the Bushes think of themselves as the un-Kennedys) who have provided the nation with two presidents, a two-term vice president, a major state governor, a U.S. senator and a two-term congressman. Only the Adams family, in the nation’s early days, matched the Bushes’ father-and-son presidencies.

The best the Kennedys have managed is one president, three senators, two or three congressmen, one lieutenant governor, a couple of state legislators and one in-law recently elected governor of California as — ouch — a Republican.

In high-level appointive jobs the Kennedys also have to take a back seat to the Bushes, with their single attorney general and an in-law who headed up the Peace Corps. On the Bush side, George H.W. Bush, the 41st president (George W. is the 43rd) has to be among the all-time leaders of those holding high appointive positions. He has been head of the CIA, ambassador to China, ambassador to the United Nations, and chairman of the Republican National Committee.

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