Could There Be a Bush III Someday?

Dave Montgomery, in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram (1-23-05):

The man of the hour, of course, is George W. Bush. But, to a larger extent, his second-term inauguration Thursday was also a family affair, another passage in a decades-long journey by one of America's most enduring political dynasties.

The Bushes have been at the forefront of American political life since the early 1900s, steadily evolving and recasting themselves with an incongruous mixture of Yankee blue-blood and Texas redneck. Bush's swearing-in to another four years as the 43rd president marks the latest chapter, but those close to the Bush clan say it is by no means the end of the book.

"They've got a pretty good name on which to run, don't they?" asserts former Secretary of State James Baker III, a longtime friend of the Bush family.

Over the past half-century, the Bush family has fielded two presidents, two governors and a U.S. senator while accelerating the growth of the Republican Party, in Texas and nationally. Waiting in the wings is a large and robust younger generation, many of whom were on display at Thursday's inaugural festivities.

"It's not out of the realm of possibility that there could be another Bush in the White House," says Bill Minutaglio, an Austin author who chronicled the president's life in First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty."

Most speculation these days falls on Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who insists he has no interest in following his father and older brother into the White House. But there is no shortage of politically inclined younger family members who may run in the future, including presidential nephews George Prescott Bush, 28, a corporate lawyer in Dallas, and Pierce Bush, 18, a freshman at Georgetown University in Washington.

First lady Laura Bush, in an interview last week with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and four other news organizations, said she doesn't believe the first couple's 23-year-old twin daughters are interested in a political career, but she doesn't rule it out. And, she added, "I think they have some cousins - boy cousins - who are particularly interested."

The Bushes detest any reference to a dynasty, saying it sounds elitist and aristocratic. But no one disputes the vast reach generations of Bushes have extended over politics and business, at the national level and in nearly a half-dozen states.

Nowhere has the Bush legacy been more evident than in Texas, where George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush combined to effectively reshape state politics as they followed each other into public life.

Today, the older Bush, now 80, is a revered figure among Texas Republicans and his son is praised as a political hero who expanded the party's base far beyond the country club that characterized it.

"Both men have their own circle but there are clearly people who are in both," said Ron Kaufman, a Washington consultant who has been associated with the elder Bush since 1980. "It's pretty hard to find a family that has had more impact on the national scene for a longer period of time."

George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are only the second father and son presidents since John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The family itself has often been compared to other political clans who exerted immense influence throughout U.S. history, including the Roosevelts of New York, the Tafts of Ohio and the Kennedys of Massachusetts.

The former president's father was Prescott Sheldon Bush, a Wall St. banker who served in the Senate from 1953 to 1963 and belonged to the moderate branch of the Republican Party led by President Dwight Eisenhower. His wife, Dorothy Walker Bush, was a descendant of the Walkers of St. Louis. The wealthy family sponsored the fabled amateur golfing trophy, the Walker Cup.

Prescott Bush's father was an Ohio industrialist and a close associate of the Taft family. Former first lady Barbara Bush is the daughter of McCall's magazine publisher Marvin Pierce and a descendant of 19th century President Franklin Pierce.

In many ways, the Bushes display the stereotypical trappings of wealth - summer vacations at the family retreat in Maine, an Ivy League education at Yale, a long and diverse financial continuum stretching from New York banking houses to oil to professional baseball.

One author, Kevin Phillips, cast a dark side to the Bush history by portraying the family as a dynasty that used "deceit" and "cronyism" to get ahead. And one of the president's brothers, Neil Bush, has been depicted in the media as an errant sibling troubled by disastrous business deals and an ugly divorce.

But other historians, as well as family friends, describe the Bushes as a caring and closely knit family, driven by a genuine commitment to serve the public - or, in their words, to "give back" in exchange for the family's good fortunes....