assumed his new post in January, 1973, in the midst of the trial of the Watergate burglars.
He sought at once to convey the image of a pragmatic technocrat on the lookout for
Republican candidates who could win, rather than an ideologue. "There's kind of a
narrow line between standing for nothing and imposing one's views," Bush told the press.
He stressed that the RNC would have a lot of money to spend for recruiting candidates,
and that he would personally control this money. "The White House is simply not going
to control the budget," said Bush. "I believe in the importance of this job and I have
confidence I can do it," he added. "I couldn't do it if I were some reluctant dragon being
dragged away from a three-wine luncheon." [fn 9] Bush appointed Tom Lias as his
principal political assistant. Harry Dent, the former chief counsel to Nixon, was named
the chief counsel to the GOP. Dent had been one of the ideologues of the party's southern
strategy. D.K. "Pat" Wilson became the party finance chairman, and Rep. William Steiger
of Wisconsin became the leader of a special committee that was supposed to broaden the
electoral base of the party. Steiger was immediately attacked by the right-wing Human
Events magazine as "very much a part of the defeated liberal reform movement" in the
party. [fn 10] Richard Thaxton was the RNC patronage director. John Lofton, the editor
of the GOP weekly journal called Monday, was eased out, and went to join Howard
Phillips in the task of liquidating the Office of Economic Opportunity. Janet J. Johnston
of California became the RNC co- chair. Bush inaugurated his new post with a pledge
that the Republican Party, from President Nixon on down, would do "everything we
possibly can" to make sure that the GOP was not involved in political dirty tricks in the
future. "I don't think it is good for politics in this country and I am sure I am reflecting
the President's views on that as head of the party," intoned Bush in an appearance on
"Issues and Answers." [fn 11] Whether or not Bush lived up to that pledge during his
months at the RNC, and indeed during his later political career, will be sufficiently
answered during the following pages. But now Chairman George, sitting in Nixon's
cabinet with such men as John Mitchell, his eyes fixed on Henry Kissinger as his
lodestar, is about to set sail on the turbulent seas of the Watergate typhoon. Before we
accompany him, we must briefly review the complex of events lumped together under the
heading of "Watergate," so that we may then situate Bush's remarkable and bizarre
behavior between January 1973 and August of 1974, when Nixon's fall became the
occasion for yet another Bush attempt to seize the vice presidency. By the beginning of
the 1990's, it has become something of a commonplace to refer to the complex of events
surrounding the fall of Nixon as a coup d'etat. [fn 12] It was to be sure a coup d'etat, but
one whose organizers and beneficiaries most commentators and historians are reluctant to
name, much less to confront. Broadly speaking, Watergate was a coup d'etat which was
instrumental in laying the basis for the specific new type of authoritarian-totalitarian
regime which now rules the United States. The purpose of the coup was to rearrange the
dominant institutions of the US government so as to enhance their ability to carry out
policies agreeable to the increasingly urgent dictates of the British-dominated Morgan-
Rockefeller-Mellon-Harriman financier faction. The immediate beneficiaries of the coup
have been that class of bureaucratic, technocratic administrators who have held the
highest public offices, exercising power in many cases almost without interruption, since
the days of the Watergate scandal. It is obvious that George Bush himself is one of the
most prominent of such beneficiaries. As the Roman playwright Seneca warns us, "Cui
prodest scelus, is fecit"-- the one who derives advantage from the crime is the one most
ann
(Ann)
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