Southfork on the Potomac

The American genius is not for perpetuation but for exploration. Hence our general disdain for history. A New Yorker cartoon of two svelte Upper East Siders, one protesting to the other, caught our national approach to genealogy best: "But you know people from California have no ancestors!"

The weeping of George the 41st over the disastrous legacy of George the 43rd, sufficient to taint the Bush name to Jeb's future electoral detriment forever, does not permit sympathy for a doomed dynasty. Yet there is an actual dynasty the Bushes most resemble. It is (drumroll, please) the odious Grimaldis of Monaco.

Venal, sleazy, dim but cunning, the Grimaldis resisted every social movement in Europe for a century and ended up with the ultimate gated community: their own kingdom, run by gamblers, offshore bankers and real estate speculators, for whom the Grimaldis cheerfully front while pursuing lives of great personal excess. The late Grace Kelly was perhaps an improvement in the Grimaldi bloodline, being merely shallow, egotistical and sex- and publicity-addicted.

These Bushes are a hazy, alcoholic trailer-trash TV-starer's vision of aristocrats. The country-club squalor exuded by these cheesily-overdressed twits induces antipathetic shuddering even at a distance.

The only one to be pitied is Bobby Koch, the tubbo in the pink bow tie. He'll probably have to work for a living and, being an ugly male whose mom has little he can inherit, he won't be able to evade it on his back like most of his better-endowed cousins.

Oh, the final dynastic similarity? Unlike the substantial Windsors, Bourbons, Romanovs, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Adamses, Kennedys or Roosevelts, the Grimaldis and the Bushes are bush league wannabe dynasts at best.

Bush Family Photo President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, former First Lady Barbara Bush, and former President George H. W. Bush sit surrounded by family in the Red Room.

Also pictured are, from left, Georgia Grace Koch, Margaret Bush, Walker Bush, Marvin Bush, Jenna Bush, Doro Koch, Barbara Bush, Robert P. Koch, Pierce M. Bush, Maria Bush, Neil Bush, Ashley Bush, Sam LeBlond, Robert Koch, Nancy Ellis LeBlond, John Ellis Bush, Jr., Florida Gov. John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, Mandi Bush, George P. Bush, and Columba Bush.

Not pictured: Neil’s Thai whore, ex-wife Noelle and daughter Lauren; George H.W.’s State Department mistress; George W.’s State Department mistress; or 3,293 American servicemen and women dead in Afghanistan and Iraq as of 7 Dec 06.

White House photo by Eric Draper 2005