Phillips on the Bushes

Re “Bush Family Values: War, Wealth, Oil,” Opinion, Feb. 8: Kevin Phillips was right: There are connections between rich people and wealth. In spite of the belief that the nonwealthy are untainted by those connections, one only has to look at the amount of cash it takes to run for office. Get real. If you don’t spend your own money to run, you are at the beck and call of those who have paid your way, be it the drug companies, oil companies or whomever.

The real problem is the expense of running for office, and until that is so reduced that the average guy or gal can throw a hat in the ring, and win, the U.S. will continue to be controlled by somebody’s “complex.”

Nancy Lee Wolfen

Reno, Nev.

If I were in the top 1% income group I would probably consider George W. Bush to be one of our greatest presidents. If I were really selfish and did not care about our children’s future and the skyrocketing national deficit, I am sure I would think of Bush as a wonderful president. If I spent my days polluting Mother Nature, I believe that Bush would be my choice for president. If my attitude were that of King Louis and Marie Antoinette (“let them eat cake”), Bush would definitely be my man.

I am proud to state that I am not any of the above. Hopefully the rest of us, the 99% in the remaining income bracket, will wake up and vote this lying, deceitful, vengeful hypocrite out of office before he does any more damage to our nation and our children’s futures.

Ron Keen

Huntington Beach

Phillips’ piece marks an intellectually dishonest shift in the shameless attempts to smear our president. For five years, we have been subjected to left-wing characterizations of our president and his supporters as “lying liars,” “big fat idiots” (from Al Franken’s books) and the like. Now that the left has learned that America rejects this elitist conception, we see a shift to the notion that George W. is part of a century-old covert conspiracy against the “little guy.”

The same George W. they tried to label as a simpleton just transformed into the mastermind of a secret web stretching from W. Averell Harriman, John D. Rockefeller and Nazi banking to the Bay of Pigs, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, E.F. Hutton, Henry Kravis, BCCI and the Saudis. Phillips’ transparent, partisan elitism will never pass muster with the forthright views of mainstream Americans.

Andrew D. Tenenbaum

Los Angeles