A NASTY DYNASTY

What did Kevin Phillips say at the "What We Stand For" conference that made him yesterday' coming attraction for today's report from the Land of Is? Pretty much nothing he hasn't written in "American Dynasty," his devastating examination of the Bush family dynasty going back four generations.

But there's nothing like hearing the message from the horse's mouth. And Phillips's bracing voice dripped with irony and contempt as he delivered his verdict on the behavior of the Bush family. "Over four generations they have honed a pattern of loyalty to [America's] wealthiest 0.01 percent, the top 200,000 families," he said. "How you do that over four generations and not take that loyalty to the White House is not credible. The whole compassion business is clap-trap."

(In the words of one book critic, "It is hard to tell what offends Phillips the most: the Bushes' systematic deceit and secrecy, their shady business dealings, their cronyism, or their family philosophy that privileges the very wealthy and utterly dismisses all the rest.")

Phillips, a former Republican strategist who is now a registered independent, explained that "Republicans wanted a Main Street meritocracy. With the Bushes you get 'special strokes for special folks.'" We also got a nitwit in the White House who was not just "born with a silver foot in his mouth." He grew up to become a failure in the oil business, a major source of Bush family influence and wealth, who always managed to have his losses covered by others. "As the saying goes, 'every time he drilled a dry hole somebody came along and filled it up with money,'" Phillips said.

(According to bloomberg.com, the nitwit's assets are worth as much as $18.9 million: "Bush made his fortune with Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers, where he was managing director. His initial investment of $530,000 in 1989 soared to almost $15 million when he sold his share of the team to venture capitalist Tom Hicks in 1994. Bush was elected to his first term as [Texas] governor that fall.

"He got the money to buy into the Rangers partnership group by selling about 212,000 shares of Harken Energy Corp., an energy services company where Bush served on the board. Bush acquired the stock after Harken bought the energy exploration company he headed. The stock sale paid Bush $848,560.")

Perhaps worst of all, the Bush family has exploited public institutions and taxpayers's money to further its personal interests. The construction of the Rangers's stadium in Arlington, Texas, "shows how big they are on using government programs for high rollers in the private sector," Phillips said. He pointed out that Bush and his associates used the power of emiment domain, which is the right of government to seize private property for public use, to obtain the land for the stadium and a public bond issue to finance it.

"It amazes me," Phillips said, "that Democrats haven't distilled all of this into [a campaign] with a strong cutting edge."