Thursday, December 22, 2005

The Miscreant Dynasty

The Age posts an excellent piece by Howell Raines, who looks at how the "Bush generations have enriched themselves while impoverishing the presidency." His basic premise is that political "dirty tricks" have been around since the beginning of our republic but the Bush dynasty has lowered it to a dark art that threatens to permanently taint our form of government.

The money quotes:
Behind George W, there are four generations of Bushes and Walkers devoted first to using political networks to pile up and protect personal fortunes and, latterly, to using absolutely any means to gain office, not because they want to do good, but because they are what passes in American for hereditary aristocrats. In sum, George Bush stands at the apex of a pyramid of privilege whose history and social significance that, given his animosity to scholarly thought, he almost certainly does not understand.
Let's hope the electorate finds an antidote to their poisonous methodology else I think it will infect the whole system. Raines still holds some optimism.
With the right leadership — the kind of flawed, but principled presidents sprinkled through its history — the United States can stop the blood-letting in Iraq, regain its standing in the world, avert the crises in health care and Social Security, and even bring disaster relief to the Gulf Coast.
We live in hope.
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5 Comments:

Blogger Matt Menendez said...

while i try to evaluate someone's words apart from who they are, every time i see raines' name i'm reminded of how he personally pushed the times to "flood the zone" during the clinton scandals because he was disappointed in him as a fellow southerner. not to mention assigning bumiller to "cover" the gore campaign, while kit steeyle went with bush. i'm glad to see raines is upset with the coutry, but i wonder if he ever stops and wonders how much he contributed to the disgusting 2000 election.

8:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That crossed my mind as well Matty but it shows just how far the Bush regime has gone over the edge when someone like Raines comes down on them.

9:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Substitute "Kennedy" for "Bush" in that quote. It's more truthful that way.

Acidman

10:47:00 PM  
Blogger Kathy said...

Acidman, this is the quote about the Kennedy's that points to the major differences between the two families:

In their campaigns, the Kennedys used money, image-manipulation, old-boy networks and, when necessary, personal attacks on worthy adversaries such as Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey. But there was also a solid foundation of knowledge and purpose undergirding John Kennedy's sophisticated internationalism, his Medicare initiative, his late-blooming devotion to racial justice, and Robert Kennedy's opposition to corporate and union gangsterism. Like Truman, Roosevelt and, yes, even Lincoln, two generations of Kennedys believed that a certain amount of political chicanery was tolerable in the service of altruism.

The Kennedy's cared about justice, racial equality, etc. The Bush's only care about themselves and their "rich base" of friends.

9:27:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You didn't read the link A-man. No one disputes that the Kennedys and all the dynastys, hell all the presidents really, are guilty of dirty tricks. The point is they still maintained some sense of the common good and compassion for the plight of the poor and undereducated. The Bush family simply doesn't.

9:29:00 AM  

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