Current Affairs: With a US election due to take place this year, any book about the women around Bush has to be timely and worth reading. One written with such sharp wit and intelligence as Laura Flanders's Bushwomen deserves to be a bestseller. Read it, sisters, if you want to understand where the women's movement has led us, writes Liz McManus.
George W.Bush was elected in circumstances that render his victory highly questionable, but one woman provided enough help to get him across the line. Katherine Harris was secretary of state for Florida.
A staunch Bush supporter, she presided over an election in which, according to Flanders, thousands of people were wrongly disenfranchised, voting machines malfunctioned in poorer (i.e.Democrat) districts, roads to polling stations were blocked by "routine "traffic stops and polling stations were relocated without warning.
Meanwhile,the Washington Post newspaper devoted an entire article not to the electoral irregularities that occurred during Harris 's watch but to the merits of her make-up. In this book, Harris, however, is only an honorary Bush woman. The real ones emerged when Bush took power.
In the 2000 election, women voters were likely to favour Al Gore over George Bush and the Republican Party. In a calculated move to address the electoral gender gap and win favour, Bush appointed several women to his cabinet. This was done with great fanfare, although the truth is that the number of women appointed was no greater than in the Clinton administration.
Bush women headed the departments of labour ,the interior and agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. Condoleezza Rice was made national security adviser and Karen Hughes became the first female White House counsel. These two women, it can be argued, became the most powerful women in the world.
In her book, Flanders sets out her thesis without pulling any punches: "The Bushwomen are the media-friendly face of an extremist
administration,one that's lawyered by anti-civil rights, anti-government fanatics, and fuelled by the theocratic Right. As women they play a particularly insidious role; fiercely ambitious, power-hungry, they preach freedom for corporations and liberty for Americans like themselves, while they act as cover for both a presidency that seeks to dominate the world, and religious autocrats who would like to rewrite the nation's laws according to their interpretations of the will of some god."
God, we Europeans sometimes forget, figures large in US society. Religion - any religion -is an important part of how a person is defined. At a recent press conference, John Kerry was asked by a
journalist whether he thought God was on the side of the United States. It was a trick question and the record does not show how he answered it, but an unsatisfactory answer could have caused him grief.
It is impossible to imagine such a question being asked of a European
leader without it generating laughter. God. Power. Money. These are the fundamentals that matter to the Bush administration -and the greatest of these seems to be Money.
Certainly, looking at the record, big business has an extraordinarily close relationship with the Bush administration. The women who serve in government fit neatly into the equation, coming fully armed as they do out of the corporate boardroom.
These are class warriors who promote free trade internationally while protecting big agribusiness at home, as Ann Veneman has done, or who look after major shipping interests while dismantling labour laws affecting their workers, as Elaine Chow has done.
Christine Todd Whitman is described as "liberal ","moderate "and "pro-choice ", and her appointment was seen as a manoeuvre to placate Bush's progressive wing. Heading the Environmental Protection Agency is a role she has filled with relish but also with a reckless disregard for what environment protection is all about.
Two days after September 11th, she went to Ground Zero and gave New
York 's air and water a preliminary all-clear. The evidence for such a conclusion was flimsy and the ombudsman criticised her roundly for that and subsequent statements she made on health and safety issues relating to 9/11.
It was later revealed that she had actually had all her statements cleared - and altered - by the White House,while the ombudsman was
subsequently driven out of his job.
What is interesting about the Bush women is how important their personal stories are to their public success. "Elaine Chow believes deeply in the American dream because she has lived it, "said George Bush on announcing her nomination.
The picture of the poor hard-working Asian-immigrant family background is sketchy, to say the least, and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, but the myth persists. Hers is the success of hard work, ethics and "character ", Chow maintains. Having a shipping magnate for a daddy must have helped too.
Asian-Pacific women generally suffer some of the lowest levels of pay, yet this Asian secretary of labour wants the minimum wage made voluntary and doesn't see any point in affirmative action.
In Condoleezza Rice, the Republicans were able to promote a woman and a black in one go. In her case, the personal story is presented as the story of her race, the girl made good through dint of her
endeavours. The reality is that she is clearly a gifted individual who grew up in a third-generation college-educated household comfortable enough for her to be shielded from much of the vicious
discrimination that characterised life in Birmingham, Alabama.
Much attention is given to her early years, less to those she spent on the board of Chevron, a company accused of human rights violations in Africa. Even less is said about her role in George Bush senior's administration, where she worked as an adviser on Russia and got things spectacularly wrong.
Karen Hughes, as one of George Bush's closest advisers, gives simple advice about handling the media: "News is contention. If you're willing to criticise, news people are willing to let you start a fight."
Her big regret is that she would have loved to have done public relations for Exxon after the Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill. This is Bush woman rampant: combative, individualist, ready to take on the world and vanquish it.
Laura Flanders's book is a passionate exposé of the role of a handful of successful women in the Bush administration. She writes about the cynical use of a form of feminism which is accompanied by attacks on women, workers and the environment.
As one reviewer put it: "Bush's women are to feminism what his election was to democracy."
Liz McManus is a TD and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party
Bushwomen. By Laura Flanders, Verso, 352pp.£15