Prophet Margin: Prescott Bush Foresees the Future

Originally published in The St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 24, 2004

Transcript, Rush LimboHour, NBC Radio, Jan. 17, 1943

Announcer: Good evening, America! Welcome to the Rush Limbo Hour - brought to you by Bush-Walker! OK girls, take it away!

Chorus: Who put the armor on Hitler's Panzer tanks? Bush-Walker! Bush-Walker! Who helped the Nazis hide their assets in our banks? Bush-Walker! Bush-Walker! And who kept helping Hitler while he was killing Yanks? Bush-Walker! Bush-Walker!

Announcer: Yes, folks, that's Bush-Walker - purveyors of the finest international investments. Now here's our host, a man who always talks out of the Right side of his mouth: Rush Limbo!

Limbo: Ha ha, thanks, Johnny! Hello out there in radioland! My friends, we've got a special show for you tonight. We're honored to welcome one of our very own sponsors: a great man, a great American - Prescott Bush! Come on out, Pres, and say howdy to the folks!

Bush: Howdy, folks.

Limbo: Har har! You know, Press, that advertising jingle that always leads our show - it really says it all, doesn't it?"

Bush: You're so right, Rush. We at Brown Brothers Harriman - that's the chief vehicle for the Bush-Walker fortunes - we're just gosh-darn proud of the way we've always stood up to the "political correctness" crowd, those silly-billies bleating about "ethical investments" and what have you. Gosh darn it, Rush, there's only one kind of ethical investment - one that makes money for you and your business partners. Everything else is just, well, flapdoodle, if I can say that on the radio.

Limbo: Hee hee, sure you can! I said it just yesterday, talking about this war profiteering witchhunt in Congress. I said it was pure flapdoodle, the way Senator Harry Truman and his gang are blackening the name of good American tycoons just trying to make a buck or two in wartime.

Bush: It's a darn shame, Rush. Look at our situation. Now, it just so happens that some of our German business partners are major backers of Hitler and major players in arming his war machine. So what? We were operating in Germany long before Herr Hitler came onto the scene. We'll be operating there after he's gone. That's what we do: We operate. The nature of the regime doesn't matter. king, communist, Nazi, sheik, warlord, poobah, it all comes down to this: Are they open for business? If they are, then we have a duty - yes, a moral duty - to ourselves and to our stockholders to maximize our profits anywhere we can, in any way we can.

Some nervous nellies said we should have divested ourselves of our German interests after the Nazis took power. And let someone else make all that money? No way, Jose! That would be a betrayal of everything we stand for. You know, I always look to the example of my good friend William Farish at Standard Oil. He signed a deal with the Nazis on secret patents for synthesizing rubber. Hitler couldn't have gone to war without it. And after Roosevelt and his pinko cabal led us into this war, good old Bill stood by his Nazi partners and refused to share these precious trade secrets with the U.S. government, despite the American military's dire need for rubber. Now that's honor and integrity for you, Rush! And that's the ethos that we in the Bush family try to pass on to our children. It's just a gosh-darn doodley-doo shame that Bill had his knuckles rapped with those conspiracy charges after that little haberdasher Truman put the heat on.

Thank goodness we pulled enough strings to keep my name out of the papers when they seized our Nazi assets under the Trading With the Enemy Act last year! But things have reached a sorry pass in this country when decent businessmen are forced to give up profits and betray their foreign partners just because of some ridiculous law. I mean, come on! The law is for regulating the behavior of the lower orders; it was never meant to apply to people like us!
You know, I'm starting to think that government is just too darn important to be left to the whims of the so-called electorate and their childish notions about law and justice and morality. I might have to get into politics one day and straighten things out. Because I have a dream, Rush.

Limbo: Say on, brother!

Bush: I dream of a world where no tycoon need ever lose a dime of profit just because it came from the blood of innocent people. I dream of a world where the rabble keep their mouths shut and the well-born can exercise their God-given privileges in any way they see fit. I see a world where votes go uncounted and judges take orders, where bribes flow and kickbacks abound, where public service and private enrichment are joined in one great, golden revolving door. I see a world where war, corruption and deceit are exalted, where stupidity is rewarded and arrogance enthroned in power.

And if I can't get us there, if I fall along the way, then maybe my son or my grandson will pick up the banner and lead us to that promised land. But I believe we'll make it there somehow, Rush. We'll leave this rickety old constitutional republic behind and see our great country submit at last to the natural order, ordained by God and confirmed by history: the rule of elites, backed by brute power, gorging on the toil and blood of others.

Rush: Amen, Pres! My friends, you can forget about Comrade Roosevelt's "freedom from want, freedom from fear" jazz - this is the true voice of American leadership. All hail the Natural Order!

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