Kitty's Litter

Kitty Kelley's "explosive" nearly 700-page tome on the Bushes, The Family, has been barely out on the streets for a day, but the early news reactions have already made it plain: The sprawling biography simply doesn't matter. The predominant media take on this book is likely to go something like this: In Bush tome, unreliable menopausal scandalmonger again misses mark; world waits out irritating media buzz.

But that doesn't mean the book isn't worth a read – far from it.

Kelley's book is – unintentionally I think – a surprisingly tender portrait of a small, loyal group of vicious undead fiends, persevering against all odds in a world of the callous, uncomprehending living. Kelley does what no other writer to date has really done for the Bushes: she actually makes you admire them for their remarkable ability to remain consistently cold, calculating, predatory and unscrupulous in generation after generation after generation.

In one of the great laugh lines of this or any other biography, Kelley sums up the Bush charm by quoting (third-hand, mind you – there's that damn credibility thing again!) none other than Richard Nixon:

The writer Gore Vidal recalled a conversation with his friend Murray Kempton shortly after one of the journalist's periodic lunches with Murray Kempton. Kempton had mentioned George Bush [Sr.], and according to Vidal, Nixon had responded: "Total light-weight. Nothing there – sort of person you appoint to things – but now that Barbara, she's something else again! She's really vindictive!" Vidal characterized the comment as "the highest Nixonian compliment."

Kelley's book covers some six generations of Bushes in some detail, focusing primarily on the Big Three: Prescott, George H.W., and George W. It is less an intergenerational saga than a breathtaking tale of genealogical one-upmanship in which each successive Bush child strives to indelibly stamp the family name on some previously unconquered region of human iniquity. Each successive Bush is Worst of All in his own way.

The title of Meanest Old Bugger goes to George W.'s great-great grandfather, David Davis Walker, who once wrote a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Republic that said:

I consider [Negroes] more of a menace ... than all other evils combined ... For humanity's sake, I am in favor of putting to death all children who come into the world hopeless invalids or badly deformed ... I am in favor of a whipping-post law ... for wife-beaters and all other petty offenders on whom jail sentences are imposed.

But D.D. Walker hardly represents the pinnacle of the family's achievement. His son, George Herbert (Bert) Walker, had his father declared insane late in life to prevent him from giving away too much family money. Bert would later gain some renown during Poppy Bush's tenure in the White House as the family's great investor in Nazi businesses. And until W. came along, Bert Walker was the family's most exalted Maker of Suspiciously Successful Stock Deals. He was also best in the family at buying things (companies, tournaments, land, towns) and naming them after himself.

Most importantly, Bert also began the proud family tradition of Bush/Walker men who were driven to extraordinary accomplishments by their unconcealed contempt for their fathers, who in turn hated their sons.

Then there was Prescott Bush, W.'s grandfather, who took part in the failed theft of Geronimo's skull (he and his creepy Yale friends stole the skull of a ten year-old Apache boy instead) and denounced playwright Edward Albee on the Senate floor without ever reading his work. Prescott appears in the book as the family's great Cringing Ass-Licker; much of the middle chapters are concerned with his tireless efforts to flatter (in succession) Eisenhower, Nixon, Rockefeller and Nixon again.