"I couldn't stand to support this dynasty of deceit"

Kevin Phillips talks about his big Bush book, all the rumors surrounding George W. (some of them true), and how the Democrats can stop sabotaging themselves.

By Joan Walsh

Jan 27, 2004 | In the 1960s Kevin Phillips helped Republicans ride to power on a wave of populist frustration with know-it-all elites in both parties. Now he says Democrats can ride a similar wave, if they nominate somebody who combines a populist critique of Bush "crony capitalism" with strong national security credentials. In a long conversation with Salon the day after the Iowa caucus, he gave free advice to Democrats scrambling to take back the White House.

Earlier in the primary campaign you praised Howard Dean for channeling anger at the war in Iraq. What do you make of the fact that he did so poorly in Iowa?

I actually think it was a good thing for the Democrats. I think that Dean had lost his connection, and he started to drop quickly. I think it's crucial for the Democrats to nominate someone who can substantively, effectively indict several combinations of George Bush politics: One is the economy, and the others are foreign policy and terror and Iraq. I think if you've got either a Kerry or a Clark, you've got somebody who's able to reverse the jujitsu of the war on terror issue. Because Bush is somebody who doesn't have any military skills, and who also has a dubious record of time in the Texas Air National Guard.

Do you think that story could have legs again? Your book looks a lot at the dark side of Bush's past: The holes in his résumé, the circumstantial evidence for drug abuse, as well as the charge that he went missing in the National Guard. Why do you think those things never got the spotlight from the media that every Clinton scandal did?

Well, I don't agree there was a spotlight on every Clinton scandal. At all. I do agree they haven't put enough of a spotlight on Bush, or the two Bushes. One of the reasons is 9/11.

Even before 9/11 -- during the campaign there wasn't the same kind of scrutiny on Bush.

Oh, I don't agree. I mean, there was a lot of attention to the draft business and the obvious question marks in his résumé. That's why, from the summer of 2000 when he was six to eight points ahead of Gore through the fall, the race really tightened up, from exposure. People began to see there were shortfalls. And then came Florida ...

Which we'll talk about. One thing your book makes clear: God, the last two generations of Bushes are bad at business. Neither George Bush was a smashing success, despite the help they had from friends and family -- and don't even talk about the fringy business dealings of Marvin, Neil and Jeb. Clearly the father wasn't so good at foreign policy -- first he built up Saddam, then fought him, then left him in place. But now we're pursuing the family's global grudges because they're good at politics and they elected their second president.

See, I don't think they're even that good at politics. I think they got a terrific break in 1988: The Democrats picked Michael Dukakis, a Harvard dweeb type of Democrat. Then in 2000, they get Albert Gore. OK, he didn't really claim he invented the Internet, but here's this guy, the son of a senator, he certainly couldn't use the dynasty issue, he couldn't use any of that. So the Democrats have run people against the Bushes who've given the Bushes a fair pass on their issues.

Well, wouldn't you say they're getting better at politics? The first George Bush couldn't get himself elected to the Senate -- he really wasn't accepted in Texas. But thanks to his appointments, he became vice president. But Jeb and George W. became governors, and the current president really managed to get rid of the Eastern elitist thing, all the things about his father that Texans found grating.

But there are a new set of things in the son that other people find grating. I mean, the father had things that annoyed the city ethnics, the Southern fundamentalists, he seemed too much an Ivy Leaguer. The son took care of the fundamentalists and the Texans, the good ol' boys love him, but an awful lot of people from New England and the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest listen to that twang and see the Texas Ranger foreign policy, and say, "I can't take this."

Your chapter on the religious right was eye-opening in a couple of ways -- especially the way the son cultivated the right, and how dependent he is on it. But also, it made me realize how he is the perfect standard-bearer for this kind of politics, because he's a sinner who was redeemed through Christ. It's part of his appeal -- the struggles of his youth, alcoholism, and then being saved by Billy Graham and Jesus.

Well, up to a point. If it turns out alcohol was only one of his problems, if he had substance abuse problems, he could blow the redemption factor a little bit.

Yes, you take the idea seriously that he may have used cocaine, as rumored, in the '70s. And he more or less admitted some kind of drug use before 1974. [In 1999 Bush's campaign staff said he could have passed the FBI's seven-year drug-use background check for federal appointee even if it went back 25 years, but Bush refused to say he'd never used illegal drugs.]

He didn't more or less admit it, but he more or less set up a circumstantial presumption, and that's an important distinction.

You're right, but at any rate, I'm aware of no allegation that any drug use continued past the '70s. Long-ago drug use, by someone who's now clean and sober and born again, probably isn't that big a deal, especially given his heartfelt religious conversion.

There's some truth to that, because he carried about 84 percent of the fundamentalist/evangelical folks. That was extraordinary. But you know, you've also got a generation gap in Republican politics. Most of the people involved in the Nixon or early Reagan years, they're older than I am, they're in their 60s and 70s, and this crowd is not particularly high on the Bushes. But you've got most of Congress on the Republican side that's in their 40s and 50s, and they've come up in a Bush-friendly era. They're used to the Bushes. I went off the reservation at the time of the first Bush. But an awful lot of Republicans my age and older -- in the Northeast, in the Pacific Northwest, in the Great Lakes -- they're very unhappy ...

Do you see a defection to Democrats?

Well, there's been a defection for years. Dukakis carried Wisconsin and Minnesota and half of New England against George Bush. A lot of people have left the Republicans already. George W. carried only one state in New England. He lost Washington, Oregon and California. So there was some softening for Republicans and some growth for Democrats.

Yeah, that was the point of a great book by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, "The Emerging Democratic Majority" -- the title, of course, a tribute to your book. Did you read it?

No, I don't read anybody who's talking about an "emerging Democratic" anything anymore, because they've been wrong for 30 years. On top of that, 9/11 scrambled everything again, so I wouldn't pay attention to anybody's "majority book" right now, because nobody knows yet how this is going to play out. What's really amazing to me is there's been no attention to the continuity between the two Bush administrations, the continuity of the involvement with Iraq, the conflicts of interest in their involvement with the Saudi Arabians, the continuity of involvement in the Middle East. That really deserves attention.

Next Page: Bush was clearly involved in the "October surprise" of 1980. Why didn't anybody notice?

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