George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Wright in the campaign, but the witch-hunt against Wright went on. After Bush had won
the election, Bush is reported to have promised Wright a truce. "I want you to know I
respect you and the House as an institution. I won't have any part in anything at all that
impinges on your honor or integrity," Bush is said to have reassured the Speaker. Before
Bush took office, Wright was busy working on his favorite populist themes: the
concentration of financial power, housing, education, health care, and taxes.
In January-February, 1989, the House took under consideration a pay increase for
members. Both Reagan and Bush had endorsed such a pay increase, but Lee Atwater,
now installed at the Republican National Committee, launched a series of mailings and
public statements to make the pay increase into a new wedge issue. It was a brilliant
success, with the help of a few old Prescott Bush strings pulled on key talk show hosts
across the country. Bush accomplished the coup of thoroughly destabilizing the Congress
at the outset of his tenure. Wright was hounded out of office and into retirement a few
months later, followed by Tony Coelho, the Democratic whip. What remained was the
meek Tom Foley, a pliable rubber stamp, and Richard Gebhardt, who briefly got in
trouble with Bush during 1989, but who found his way to a deal with Bush that allowed
him to rubber-stamp Bush's "fast track" formula for the free trade zone with Mexico,
which effectively killed any hope of resistance to that measure. The fall of Wright was a
decisive step in the domestication of the Congress by the Bush regime.
Bush was also able to rely on an extensive swamp of "Bush Democrats" who would
support his proposals under virtually all circumstances. The basis of this phenomenon
was the obvious fact that the national leadership of the Democratic Party had long been a
gang of Harrimanites. The Brown, Brothers, Harriman grip on the Democratic Party had
been represented by W. Averell Harriman until his death, and after that was carried on by
his widow, Pamela Churchill Harriman, the former wife of Sir Winston Churchill's
alcoholic son, Randolph. The very extensive Meyer Lansky/Anti-Defamation League
networks among the Democrats were oriented towards cooperation with Bush, sometimes
directly, and sometimes through the orchestration of gang vs. countergang charades for
the manipulation of public opinion. A special source of Bush strength among southern
Democrats is the cooperation between Skull and Bones and southern jurisdiction
freemasons in the tradition of the infamous Albert Pike. These southern jurisdiction
freemasonic networks have been most obviously decisive in the senate, where a group of
southern Democratic senators have routinely joined with Bush to block overrides of
Bush's many vetoes, or to provide a pro-Bush majority on key votes like the Gulf war
resolution.
Bush's style in the Oval Office was described during this period as "extremely secretive."
Many members of Bush's staff felt that the president had his own long-term plans, but
refused to discuss them with his own top White House personnel. During Bush's first
year, the White House was described as "a tomb," without the usual dense barrage of
leaks, counter-leaks, trial balloons, and signals which government insiders customarily
employ to influence public debate on policy matters. Bush is said to employ a "need to
know" approach even with his closest White House collaborators, keeping each one of
them in the dark about what the others are doing. Aides have complained of their inability