A Must Read Alert - "The Fall of the House of Bush"

January 6, 2008

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Craig Unger’s new book, The Fall of the House of Bush is the improbable story of how an army of evangelical Christian millenialists led by Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye found themselves in the service of the neocon crusade to remake the Middle East and, in the process, became the club shaped by Karl Rove and wielded by those two unabashed power-freaks and unreconstructed Nixonians, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

The short answer to how all this happened is, somewhat strange to say, George W. Bush. Strange because Bush the younger is one of the weakest characters ever to have occupied the White House. In contrast, even the wretched Warren Harding looks good precisely because Harding knew so well his own limitations, constantly fretting over his very inadequacy to be president. This president, it would seem, neither knows nor frets. He, of course, decides.

First, though, consider the neocons. To me, there’s not a better or smarter chapter in this book than, “Dog Whistle Politics.” For here we see in detail how the second generation neocons, embodied by this same Bill Kristol, have come to have so much power and influence while wielding so few popular votes.

Craig Explains:

“Even though their ideology was obscure at best to the vast majority of Americans, these three families [Kristol, Podhoretz and Kagan] alone promoted the neocon cause at the Weekly Standard, the New York Post, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, Commentary, the Coalition for the Free World, the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, West Point, the Project for a New American Century, the National Security Council not to mention the White House in no fewer than five administrations beginning in 1981.”

I just finished this book myself and have to say I absolutely loved it. This is a mush have for anyone interested in the darker side of politics –yes it exists, no matter how much you pretend it doesn’t– for both Republicans and Democrats.