Great dynasties of the world: The Bushes

In 2001, the newly elected president of the United States, George Bush, received an honorary degree from his alma mater, Yale University. Several hundred members of the Yale faculty protested about honouring someone they referred to as a “mediocre man” – Bush had graduated from Yale with a poor degree and could boast of few intellectual distinctions. But Bush defended himself in self-deprecating mode, claiming that his success should encourage all students to believe that they too could become president. Not for the last time in his presidency, Bush was being disingenuous. The incredible rise and ascent of George Bush represents the triumph not of the American dream, but of an American dynasty.

There have been four great American political dynasties: the Adamses, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys and the Bushes. The Adams family could boast two presidents to their name – John and John Quincy, father and son. The Roosevelt presidents, FDR and Teddy, were distant cousins. And members of the Kennedy clan have probably held various high government office for longer than any other American political family. But the Bushes – with two presidencies under their belt, plus a senator and a governor – have arguably been the most successful, and probably the most controversial.

In a characteristically broad brush-stroke approach to her subject, Kitty Kelley, in The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (2004), paints a portrait of the Bushes as a bunch of upper-class thugs who schemed and scrambled their way to the top. For his part, Kevin Phillips, in a rather more nuanced account, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (2004), describes how the Bush family used their money and influence to establish themselves at the heart of American democracy. Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, meanwhile, in The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty (2004), offer a more benign account of the family they call the “unKennedys”. According to the Schweizers, the Bushes are in fact self-effacing, modest, and devoted to public service; they’re good guys.

Whichever account you prefer, all chroniclers of the Bushes agree that the family have a sense of themselves as somehow unique and special. “Life writes its own story,” remarked George Bush in his Yale commencement address. “Along the way we realise we are not the author.” Well, at least he was right about something.

For most commentators and historians, the real author of the Bush success story is George Herbert Walker, grandfather of the first President Bush and great-grandfather of George Bush. Walker was a banker and a businessman who, in Kelley’s memorable phrase, “head-butted his way through life”.

It’s possible, though, that the real star of the Bush family story is not Walker but rather his daughter, Dorothy, who married Prescott Bush in 1921, thus uniting two already powerful families. The Walkers had money and influence, but Prescott Bush had good looks, charm and political ambition. The combination of the two was irresistible. Prescott went on to become a senator. Dorothy raised the children. When her son George was elected president in 1988, he visited Dorothy and told reporters: “I just came to get my instructions from the head of the family here on how to do my job.”

This was more than just a pleasantry. The wives and mothers of the presidents have always played a significant role in American history. “God bless my mother, all I am or ever hope to be I owe to her,” said Abraham Lincoln. Freud wrote: “A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.” George Bush has a sister, Dorothy. She helped raised funds for his presidential campaigns.

IAN SANSOM