The United States of Texas

Two new books document the death grip that Bush, Cheney and their corporate cronies have on America.

By Farhad Manjoo

Jun 24, 2004 | Four years ago, in an otherwise utterly undistinguished vice presidential debate, Joe Lieberman got off one clean shot at Dick Cheney.

"I'm pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years ago," the senator said. It was a nice dig at Cheney's immense wealth, but the response was better. With a self-satisfied grin that dominated the news for the next few days, Cheney shot back, "I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."

In Dick Cheney's version of the life story of Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney is a self-made man. During the 2000 debate, and countless times since, Cheney has credited his fortune to the magical powers of the "private sector"; for Cheney, the millions he earned as the CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services firm, are completely unrelated to the close connections he forged with government officials during the decades he spent in public office. To hear Cheney describe it, becoming Halliburton's CEO was a testament to his own individualistic business savvy; just part of Dick Cheney's fulfillment of the American dream.

But on its face, Cheney's line is impossible to swallow. If we didn't know it in 2000, by now just about every voter in the land understands that Halliburton is an immensely successful federal contractor, and many of its biggest deals have involved government agencies. It's not just the war in Iraq -- for more than half a century, Halliburton's fortunes, and especially the fortunes of Halliburton's construction subsidiary Brown & Root (which has received some of the largest contracts in Iraq), have tracked closely with the fortunes of the politicians it has chosen to get close to.

Two engaging new books by well-regarded journalists -- "The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money," by Dan Briody, and "Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate," by Robert Bryce -- outline these symbiotic relationships in great detail. They paint a fascinating picture of a company that has been singularly successful in getting what it wants out of government. Halliburton's Brown & Root stands as the epitome of Texas-based crony capitalism. Despite what the vice president says, when it comes to Halliburton's success, the government had absolutely everything to do with it.

Yet in a broader sense, Cheney is not so wrong in his suggestion that there was something self-made in his and Halliburton's business success. Those who disparage cronyism tend to do so on the grounds that it's unfair, which is true, and that it's easy, which it's not. If Brown & Root's history as outlined in these books teaches anything, it's that cronyism can be dicey as a business strategy. When you run your business, as Brown & Root has, on the basis of how well you can befriend important people (rather than on the basis of how well you can do important things), getting ahead can be tricky. What happens if you bet on the wrong horse? What happens when, as Brown & Root has done in the past, you cast your lot with the Shah of Iran, or Saddam Hussein? And what happens, if, as occurred with former President Lyndon Johnson, the president that you bankrolled embroils your country so deeply in an unpopular foreign war that he ends up bowing out of office?

For much of its history, Brown & Root did well because it made one early, prescient bet -- that a Texas politician named Lyndon Johnson could, and would, eventually become a very important man. That bet turned out to be exactly right, and throughout the '40s, '50s and '60s, Brown & Root was well remunerated for its intimate relationship with Johnson. Halliburton has now hitched its wagon to the Bush administration's star, and so far, the collaboration has been good to the company. But Halliburton's reliance on Bush also highlights the risks to crony capitalism. What happens to Halliburton if its bet on George W. Bush doesn't pay off in November? If history is any guide, it won't be pleasant for Cheney's former employer.

Next Page: When it comes to Texas' political power, the conspiracy is real

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